ZAZ

ZAZ 

By Ryan K. Johnson  

Directed by Ryan K. Johnson  

Wexner Center for the Arts, The Ohio State University 

Columbus, OH 

September 5th, 2025 

Reviewed by William DeVito, Juanita Mejia Restrepo, M. Nance, Robert Pike, and Rufus ZaeJoDaeus   

On September 5, 2025, the five of us experienced the dance company SOLE Defined’s world premiere of ZAZ at The Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts. According to the company’s website, SOLE Defined’s mission is to create pieces “designed to evoke the senses, creating sonic and kinetic performative archives of Black American History through the lens of African Diasporic Percussive Dance methodologies.” ZAZ powerfully realizes this goal: in ninety minutes the show’s director and playwright Ryan K. Johnson leads an energetic cast of six to manifest an expressive docudrama that performs the lived experience of the Black community of New Orleans and reckons with the devastating legacy of Hurricane Katrina. ZAZ deftly casts the theatrical space as a living palimpsest where oral histories, news reports, diverse dance forms, and mourning rituals materialize and dissipate through the physicality of these dancing storytellers. Nearly to the date, this run marked the twentieth anniversary of the disaster that laid bare the social and racial undercurrents dominating America. SOLE Defined’s immersive work responds to that moment by shepherding the bodies in the space—performers and audience alike—in a theatrical experience of shared kinesthesia.  

The production’s intentional flow submerged the current of audience’s bodies in its scenography as soon as they entered the space. Throughout four audience banks oriented around and facing each side of the set’s central dance floor, we sat among the fifty-some chairs at hazily lit cocktail tables that transformed the black box space into “ZAZ,” the titular New Orleans jazz club. Audience members were scattered throughout the space; some sat in a corner, while others of us shared tables with our backs facing a projected wall displaying performance information integrated with family photographs, posters, and other trappings found in a French Quarter establishment. The seating arrangement fostered an unexpected theatrical communion, which was continued in ZAZ’s initial moments: amid jazz-infused hip-hop beats, ZAZ’s host—played by Shannan E. Johnson—beckoned the audience to join her on the dance floor. Several audience members jumped in and improvised, troubling the boundaries between spectator and spectated. As individual actors dressed in everyday clothing subtly integrated into the crowd, they herded all the moving bodies in a coordinated line dance. The collective energy was effervescent, drawing all—even those who remained sitting—into the joyous community of New Orleans.   

The celebration was cut short by the wail of sirens. News clips of the impending hurricane replaced the wall projections, sending us back in time to the weeks preceding August 23rd, 2005. The audience returned to their seats, leaving Johnson onstage to narrate this piece’s origins and his individual connection to the “Big Easy.” Then, this literal calm-before-the-storm shattered, and the audience was engulfed by a frightening simulation of Hurricane Katrina. From an overhead projection, the scuffed dance floor rippled as the water droplets of Katrina’s rain invaded the narrative space. The bright noise of New Orleans horns transformed into a somber-toned spiritual intertwined with the roar of helicopters. The wild abandon of social dance gave way to an athletic pas-du-deux between two embattled survivors struggling for a rescuer’s attention, their movements illuminated by isolated shafts of search lights. This was ZAZ’s power in action: the protean, visceral design emerged through a combination of audience immersion and integrated sound, projection, and lights. As the past evaporated with each scene, experience accumulated on the performing bodies. 

In nearly every sense, the body was the chief investment of ZAZ. In lieu of distinct set pieces, ZAZ championed the visual effect of the promenade. Performers ebbed, flowed, and exploded onto the scene through the nooks and crannies of the entire space, causing the audience to constantly reorient themselves toward the next area of focus. The sonic world of the play married the quintessentially Black musical forms of jazz, hip-hop, and spirituals with the polyrhythmic resonances of body percussion.  

Floor mics caught these punctuated flows along with the scrapes of sand dancing and raps of tap shoes. In one sequence, as the ensemble danced ferociously, they lit the darkened stage with headlamps affixed to their foreheads, re-centering the locus of control from the light grid to the individual performers. ZAZ’s narrative structure prioritized corporeality over character as Johnson’s individual arc melded with the collage of collective experience. The performers cycled through a variety of characters, transforming their voices and changing clothing frequently, and the action never lingered on a single story long enough for emotive identification. Hurricane Katrina’s effects on the entire community were impressed upon all the attendees.  

In a particularly poignant moment, cast members dressed as government officials demanded the audience leave their seats. Dividing us by gender, the rescuers marshaled us throughout the audience banks and declared that we were now “displaced.” This aestheticized imposition harkened to the actual displacement of thousands of New Orleans’s citizens that were shuttled across the country, never to return to their neighborhoods. In reenacting this harrowing experience, ZAZ highlighted the callousness of the government’s process using the actual bodies in the audience. This unique and effective method of theatrical identification crowned ZAZ’s comprehensive commitment to the body.  

As promised in their company mission, the feast of stimulation is the beating heart of ZAZ. Its use of theatrical space and the bodies within it heralded the lived—and living—resilience of a community assaulted, not only by nature, but by our leaders’ apathy towards their plight. ZAZ offers no prescriptive solutions, only experience. Yet, this vivid piece contends that acknowledging that experience is the first step towards a better future. As a coda, the closing moments of the performance advanced this proposition by returning us to the communal dance floor. Now burdened with knowledge and tempered with soul, the continued rhythms of the bodies joyously echoed forth after the storm.  The audience—pulled into the narrative, moved emotionally and physically—kept dancing even after the actors left the stage.