RYAN JOHNSON
2026 SOZO FELLOW
RHYTHM ARCHITECT, CREATIVE DIRECTOR & ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF SOLE DEFINED
COLUMBUS, OH
Ryan K. Johnson, MFA, is a nationally recognized percussive dance artist, cultural bearer, educator, and artist scholar whose work centers rhythm as a living archive of American cultural heritage. Dance Magazine has described Johnson as “one of the foremost percussive dance artists in the U.S.” His practice explores tap dance, body percussion, sand dance, and Black vernacular traditions as embodied systems of memory, storytelling, and transmission.
He is Co Founder and Executive Artistic Director of SOLE Defined, a Maryland based performance company and arts organization that transforms the body into an instrument through rhythm, voice, and movement. Under his leadership, SOLE Defined has developed a repertory blending live performance, immersive soundscapes, and multimedia storytelling. The company has been presented at Jacob’s Pillow, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Queens Theatre, and Smithsonian stages, and has toured nationally and internationally across Canada, Mexico, Peru, Italy, and beyond.
Johnson’s choreographic works include ZAZ The Big Easy, which integrates survivor testimony from Hurricane Katrina with rhythm based composition and digital media; The Pulse, an interactive performance experience built on audience participation and polyrhythmic structure; and Body Language, which explores African diasporic movement through live musical invention and improvisation. His work consistently frames rhythm as both cultural documentation and collective voice.
His performance career includes The Beatles LOVE by Cirque du Soleil, STOMP, Step Afrika!, After Midnight, Musicá by Amazon Studios, Ayodele Casel REMIX as Assistant Director and Choreographic Contributor, The Joyce and The Washington Ballet’s The Great Gatsby, blurring the lines between dance, music, and theater.
Johnson has received the 2025 Arts Midwest Cultural Bearer Award, a National Dance Project Award from the New England Foundation for the Arts, and multiple Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Awards. Through performance, education, and community engagement, he advances percussive dance as a vital American tradition rooted in ancestry, innovation, and collective expression. With every rhythm, Johnson excavates history, activates the present, and invites the future, offering percussive dance as a radical site of inquiry, liberation, and cultural restoration.
