Emily Johnson and her award-winning Catalyst Dance Company are returning to the Arrowhead Center for the Arts on February 7. The show features original music and local community members have the chance to interact with the performers.
“I want to be on the land my
ancestors dug into, pulled
from, rose up from—and
fell into. I want to be on this
land, listening, and I also
want to let the land be.”
Emily Johnson
Reached earlier this month, Emily Johnson and her award-winning dance performance company Catalyst were performing in New York City, but Johnson said by phone that she can’t wait to return to Grand Marais with her troupe for their February 7 performance at the Arrowhead Center for the Arts.
Catalyst, said Johnson, will bring Niicugni to the stage at 7:30 p.m.
An Alaskan native with Yup’ik roots, Johnson moved to the Twin Cities in the 1990s to attend the University of Minnesota to pursue a degree in physical therapy, but after attending a dance class she realized she loved to perform and she switched her major. In 1998 she began working on creating performances that, “uniquely connect us to our land, our lives, and to each other.”
Niicugni is the second performance in a trilogy that took more than seven years to create. It is a Yup’ik word that means “listen” or “pay attention.” She said it questions, “The ways we do and do not listen to our bodies, histories, impulses, and environments. It is performed within light/sound installations of hand-made fish skin lanterns that hang over the stage and audiences.”
The first performance in her trilogy is The Thank-You Bar, and the last of the three is called SHORE. Throughout the trilogy Johnson said she tries to “connect the audience to the land, or lives and to each other.”
The pieces, said Johnson, were written in response to a feeling of being “disconnected from place, people, ceremony, and tradition.”
She said she misses her family and friends in Alaska, especially large family gatherings, “Where we come together to harvest and put up our salmon, to butcher the moose my dad hunted. These gatherings include intense work, but in that work there is tradition: knowledge (how to smoke salmon strips just right); the passing of knowledge (my young nephew learning to do what I did at his age); food, of course, because we always eat together; stories, jokes; drama. We share our work, our time together, and then through the year we share the bounty.
“This is the kind of tradition that I miss. I need to connect with people, with communities and place. My work is the way I do this,” said Johnson.
These elements and history come into play in her troupe’s actions and movements on stage. Often the audience is engaged and sometimes takes part in the performances.
Johnson will also conduct a Fish-skin Sewing workshop at the Grand Marais Art Colony on February 27- March 1.
Local dancers wanted!
One way that Emily Johnson creates an experience that allows audiences to notice and pay attention to things they might not have seen before is to have a few small groups of local dancers make very brief appearances on stage (30 seconds) at select moments during the performance. Through dance the performers share an imaginative look at their vocation.
For example, in a New Hampshire performance, a group of beekeepers walked on stage in the same way they approach a hive – smelling, listening, watching closely. A water aerobics class imagined the moment they first enter the pool at their YWCA in Minneapolis. Farmers and gardeners in Tallahassee made a planting gesture into the stage floor.
Being part of a local group in Niicugni is an immensely rewarding experience that allows those audience members a chance to get more deeply involved and connected to this performance experience, and allows the piece to truly reflect some of the people and culture of the communities where it is performed.
No performance experience necessary, in fact this is a role for non-performers. The commitment is simply two evenings for the dress rehearsal and the show, 3 hours on both Friday and Saturday, 6-9 p.m. at the Arrowhead Center for the Arts.
All participants receive a free ticket for the performance, as well as a complimentary ticket for a friend or family member. Participants sit in the audience and watch the entire show, getting up from their seats only for their brief appearance onstage.
If you are interested in joining Emily Johnson of Catalyst for this very special performance of Niicugni, please contact Julia Bither at julia@catalystdance.com for more information and details.
Leave a Reply