artist statement

I am a dance-theatre performance artist, storyteller.  

As an intra-disciplinary collaborator you may experience poetry, music, spatial composition, installation art, video projections, technology, nature, food, drink, and audience participation in my work.  I have always orchestrated my creative journey, education, and opportunities.  Cobbling together a vast, non traditional pedagogy and career.  It has been wild, gritty, full of freedom and play, with few boundaries.  I now find myself seeking. 

I know what I know, and I know what I don’t know, but I do not know, what I do not know. 

I have an insatiable desire to explore, learn and share.

As I age, I am aware of my body changing. I am not as strong, aches, pain, vision weakening, skin thinning, hair graying.  What am I capable of as a dance artist today?  In five years?  Understanding mortality sits in me with gratitude, love, acceptance, beauty, validation, peace.  

With patient wisdom, my choreography is evolving, manifesting in poignant, touching, honest, human stories.  

New ways of storytelling.  Deeply sharing and listening, experiential, holistically, sensual, stories.

reese johanson is a mother, artist, producer, director, writer, choreographer, philanthropist, actor, dancer whose experience in  theater, dance and stage production spans over 30 years. 

A graduate of the National Shakespeare Conservatory NYC, Reese trained in acting, dance and performance production, most inspired by physical theater mentor Joan Evans,  Joan Evans Techniques. In San Francisco working with Mary Overlie and The Six Viewpoints led to international master classes and private tutelage. She continues her studies with Evans when possible. Overlie, RIP June 5, 2020, remains with Reese in the horizontal.

An innovator and entrepreneur of production in the arts and entertainment, in NY and Boston Reese co-founded production and performance companies Oronoco, the Subconscious Cafe and Open Faucet. In New Orleans she opened the special event company Party Girl Productions, managing countless events and galas for a wide range of businesses including nightclubs, hotels, newspapers, museums, galleries, and individuals. She is the founder and former artistic director of Art Klub NOLA Inc., New Orleans-based non-profit organization. She founded and facilitated Art Street, artist residence, maker and event space, presenting arts and culture  programming.

Reese’s performances and affiliations include being a company member of Chard Gonzalez Dance Theatre for 5 years, in 2012, the “reese johanson (collective)” emerged, producing Melange a Trois, 3 city project, with Jen Hicks in Boston, Ross Hamlin in Santa Fe, and Reese in New Orleans. She collaborated with Elizabeth Wautlet, Paris and Marije Nie, Amsterdam.  She produced the annual, ambulatory UNROUTE touring internationally, working with at least 100 artists.  Les Gitans was produced with multiple  New Orleans producing partners and is now being reworked under the name Xenos. Other notable rj(c) productions: with Daneeta Jackson, Flashback,  and with Susan Millar Boldissar and Laura Patterson, They Don’t Eat Corn Here, directed by Todd D’Amour, (award-nominate). She has worked with producers Nari Tomassetti, Bremner Duthie, and MC Sweet Tea, choreographing and performing in their works, and collaborated and performed with Ann Glaviano in Known Mass 2 and St. Maurice Church, and with Shannon Stewart in Be/With and in several summer, winter, and fall solstice and equinox durational, improvisation projects.  Other collaborating projects: REBOMIJO, with Susan Millar Boldissar merged live music, poetry and dance in Bach to Bach and It's All In Your Head, and with Daneeta Jackson in DJ/RJ Co-Lab, theatre, dance and film were blended in M/Other for Luna Fete. She has worked as a featured show host for nola.com and a featured columnist for Art + Design Magazine, New Orleans Art & Design Magazine, and Scat Magazine. 

Connecting with other communities is vital to Reese. She has been in residence as artist, collaborator, and cultural ambassador at Penasco Theatre, New Mexico; Lake Studios, Berlin; New Voices, Paris; PickUp Club and NDSM Fuse Gallery, Amsterdam; Fix in Art, Thessaloniki; 11 Jane Street Art Center, Saugerties.

Teaching and giving back to the community have always been priorities to Reese. She was a teaching artist with KIDsmART, Art Camp 504, Upturn Arts, Jefferson Performing Arts Center, and Music Box. At Art Klub NOLA she facilitated the kids’ arts programming, including music, theatre, dance, visual arts and summer camp activities.

As founder of Art Street Inc. and Art Klub NOLA, Reese played the key role of on-site manager,  in charge of programming and development, seeking and facilitating symbiotic partnerships, recruiting teaching artists, and spearheading outreach for community activities, artist residents, student enrollment and publicity purposes.  

Currently she is in residence at Angela King Gallery, Evolve Space, preparing Extraordinarily Ordinary for national and international presentation.