About
Zoë Koenig is a dance artist committed to producing surreal work that balances a search for emotional and physical extremes with humor and absurdity, forming an expansive movement palette and driving musical score for each work through intensive research and experimentation.
Her work has been presented in Minneapolis at the Walker Art Center, the Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts, the Southern Theater, Squirrel Haus Arts, Praxis Gallery, and the Off-Leash Art Box. She was a 2019 Generating Room Artist at the Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts for the early development of her work Cloud Cover, and has taught contemporary dance workshops through the Cowles Center and Zenon Dance School.
Koenig was a member of the Kanopy Dance Company II in Madison, WI for three years before attending Beloit College where she worked with numerous choreographers, including Kate Wallich and Katy Pyle. At Beloit College, she was awarded the Chavey Family Endowed Award in Dance for Outstanding Performance and the Theater, Dance, and Media Studies Award for Outstanding Achievement in Production, and graduated summa cum laude with departmental honors in Literary Studies and Creative Writing.
She has worked with Twin Cities choreographers Sarah Abdel-Jelil, Nieya Amezquita, Noelle and Leila Awadallah, Alexandra Bodnarchuk, Kristen Howe, Joanna Lees, Erika Martin, and Brenna Mosser; participated in Gabriel Rodreick’s A Cripple's Dance project; and performed work at many festivals, including DUMBO Dance Festival (NYC), Queerly Contemporary Festival (NYC), World Dance Alliance Global Summit (St. John’s, Newfoundland), RADfest (Kalamazoo, MI), Detroit Dance City Festival (Detroit, MI), and Milwaukee Fringe Festival (Milwaukee, WI).
Koenig’s half-evening-length work Cloud Cover premiered in 2022 as part of the Analog Dance Works production Tellus. Her collaboration with composer Nora Nygard, Total Heat Death, was selected for the 2023 Walker Art Center's Choreographers' Evening, and her other recent work Duel Duel Revolution was commissioned by Alternative Motion Project for their April 2023 show, Eleven. She is the recipient of a 2024 Minnesota State Arts Board Creative Individuals grant for the development of an evening-length work, Physical Prizes, in collaboration with Nora Nygard.