Joel K. Linebach is a graduate student in Macromolecular Science & Engineering who recently graduated from CWRU’s department of dance with his MFA in May 2024.
Linebach’s choreographic work, Kinetic Echoes, was selected to be presented this year at Cleveland Dance Festival 2024!
Every November, The Movement Project hosts Cleveland Dance Fest, an annual 3-day festival featuring new works from local artists, the regional midwest, and beyond in their Professional Concerts Series (4 concerts), Youth Showcase, Virtual Dance Film Gallery, and master classes for professional and pre-professional dancers.
Kinetic Echoes will be presented in the third Professional Concert on November 23rd, 2024 at 6:00 PM at the ARIEL LaSalle Theater at 823 E. 185th Street, Cleveland, Ohio 44119. Tickets can be purchased online at https://www.themovementproject.org/festival-schedule-tickets-24 for ~$18. If purchasing tickets, note down Linebach’s name at check-out.
Originally choreographed for his thesis concert, VITROMER, Kinetic Echoes is a short quartet, funded in part under the auspices of the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University with a Graduate Research Grant. During the work, dancers utilize wearable technology to create a complex, dynamic, and whimsical work that showcases the intersection of movement, sound, and technology. At its core, this work serves to answer the question of “what does dance sound like?” by layering choreography to craft the dancers as multi-dimensional instruments through shared movement phrases.
Linebach also holds a BA in dance and a BS and MS in polymer engineering. At CWRU, he received the 2021 Lily Dreyfuss Memorial Award for Excellence in Dance, the 2022 and 2023 Kathryn Karipedes Scholarship for Modern Dance, the 2024 Naomi Wolin Award for Excellence in New Directions in Dance, and a 2023 Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities Graduate Research Grant.
Additionally, he performed works choreographed by prominent choreographers Gary Galbraith, Larry Keigwin, Janice Rosario, Pam Tanowitz, and Pascal Rioult.
Outside of CWRU, Linebach has performed excerpts of works by Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Jose Limon, Yin Yue, Ronald K. Brown, John Lehrer, Mark Morris, Omar de Roman de Jesus, and Bill Wade. Choreographically, Linebach holds an interest in combining technology and dance, exploring how the two can exist coherently together while also combining visceral artistry with technical complexity.
Concerning dance science and medicine, Linebach is interested in the biomedical implications of plastics in dance. Most recently, Linebach has joined Inlet Dance Theatre as an apprentice for the 2024-2025 season while continuing to choreograph as an emerging artist in Northeast, Ohio.