RYAN K. JOHNSON

Ryan K. Johnson, M.F.A., is the first body percussionist awarded a  Guggenheim Choreography Fellowship (2024) and the Executive Artistic Director of SOLE Defined Percussive Dance Company. He is an artist-scholar dedicated to exploring and promoting African Diasporic Percussive Dance. Johnson employs these physical practices, infused with immersive sound and media technologies, as a creative method to archive Black Americans' oral and documented histories. He cultivates performances that provoke, inspire, and ignite solution-oriented dialogue, reflection, and action among audiences, all with an ethic of care for the communities connected to these historical moments. Johnson's commitment to developing resource-driven, innovative programming is evident in his latest work, ZAZ: The Big Easy, a 2023 New England Foundation of Arts National Dance Project awardee. This performative archive addresses the oral and documented histories of Hurricane Katrina survivors and their realities. Johnson is the first post-MFA scholar at The Ohio State University Department of Dance.

His performance credits include performing with Gregory Hines and Marvin Hamlisch with The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, a featured artist in Ayodele Casel's Diary of a Tap Dancer v.6, and most recently, a featured rhythmic performer in Musicá by Amazon studio. He contributed as a composer, choreographer, and onscreen talent for a BB&T Zelle commercial and has performed in shows such as Step Afrika!, STOMP, Cirque Du Soleil, Broadway's After Midnight on NCL, Rose Rabbit Lie, and resident tap dancer with The Washington Ballet under the direction of Septime Weber. His company, SOLE Defined, has performed at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Lincoln Center, and the Maui Cultural Arts Center, to name a few. He was awarded The John F. Kennedy Center's Social Impact Office Hours Residency in 2023, where he created The Pulse, which premiered at Jacobs Pillow. He received the 2021 Bakers Award, the 2012 Coppin State University Dance Legacy Award, the 2010 DC Metro Award for Outstanding Individual Performance, and the 2008, 2017, and 2020 Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award.

Ryan dedicates his work to his mother, Dr. Vanessa Jackson, grandparents, Barbara Jackson and Donald Richardson, and his Uncle Art Sommerville.