Emily Johnson

Visiting Artist | 2023-2024

Collaborators in Residence: Nicole Wallace [Librarian/Archivist], Colette Denali Montoya-Sloan [Librarian/Archivist], and George Lugg [Producer]

Returning Choreographic Fellow Emily Johnson will come to MANCC to further develop her latest choreographic project. While at MANCC, she will further engage Colette Denali Montoya-Sloan in dialogue about what a relational archive could be. Together, they plan to articulate a vision for a model that recognizes an archive’s holdings not simply as distinct objects/data held by/at an institution, but as multifaceted, networked, material manifestations of a range of knowledges, histories, exchanges, influences and interactions. 

Visiting Artist | 2020-2021

Collaborators in Residence: Nicole Wallace [Librarian/Archivist], Colette Denali Montoya-Sloan [Librarian/Archivist], and George Lugg [Producer]

MANCC is currently engaged with Emily Johnson and Indigenous archivists/librarians Nicole Wallace and Colette Montoya-Sloan to design the Center’s first archive residency. Working with MANCC’s Media Specialist through 2021, Johnson and her collaborators will consider amassed documentation from Johnson’s seven MANCC residencies since 2009.

Johnson’s creative process residencies at MANCC helped develop four works by the artist, including The Thank You Bar, Niicugni (Listen), SHORE, and Then a Cunning Voice and A Night We Spend Gazing at Stars. Each residency generated a range of archivable materials, including video, photography, interviews, ephemera, and processes that have centered relationship, community, and gathering in distinct forms.

This research project seeks to imagine a living archive that would allow for new forms of scholarship and inquiry — ones that build upon relationships (both human and more-than-human) in dynamic exchange, rather than isolating intellectual endeavors within individual narratives.

This inaugural archival residency is funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Partnership Project | McKnight Artist Fellow: February 21 – March 6, 2016

Collaborators in Residence: Aretha Aoki, Krista Langberg [Performers}, Maggie Thompson [Textile Designer], Ain Gordon [Director], Julia Bither [Company Administrator]

Emily Johnson/Catalyst returned to MANCC to develop Then a Cunning Voice and a Night We Spend Gazing at Stars, a multi-year project focused in equal measure on making quilts, performance, storytelling, song, and a night of stargazing. The work relies upon people gathering to voice intentions, witness, work, experience time, rest, and imagine.

While at MANCC, Johnson and collaborators explored three layers of community engagement— visioning sessions, quilting, and performance. The visioning sessions, which were originally created in partnership with the Minneapolis-based Native American Community Development Institute, drew participants from FSU’s American Indian Student Association, Schools of Theatre and Dance, DREAM and the FAMU Dream Defenders Student Organization. Attendees were asked to consider, “What do you want for your well-being? For your family and friends? Your greater community? These intention statements were incorporated into quilt squares at a community sewing bee. Eventually, what was made in Tallahassee will be brought together with those of other communities, to become one 4,000 square foot area, designed by textile artist Maggie Thompson (Ojibwe) and be the site for an all night stargazing. Stargazing was simulated at an informal showing as Johnson and her collaborators performed excerpts of the work for and with the audience during a School of Dance Forum.

In addition to the showing for the School of Dance, Johnson opened her creative practice to four School of Dance students (Jocelyn Perez, Heather Boni, Taylor Ennen and Sydney Roberts) who were invited to serve as scribes during the residency. The students were given access to the rehearsal process to document the project as it developed. Johnson asked the group to translate their interpretations creatively by generating a material artifact of their choice in response. Along with working with the scribes, Johnson also connected with students during a session with Dr.Hannah Schwadron’s Contemporary Perspectives on Dance class.

This residency was supported, in part, by a partnership with McKnight Choreographer Fellowships, funded by The McKnight Foundation and administered by The Cowles Center For Dance & The Performing Arts.

Returning Choreographic Fellow | March 10 – 21, 2014

Collaborators in Residence: Ain Gordon [director], James Everest, Nona Marie Invie [composers/performers], Aretha Aoki, Krista Langberg [performers], Heidi Eckwall [lighting design], Fletcher Barnhill [musician], Meredith L. Boggia [manager/creative producer], Julia Bither [company administrator]

Emily Johnson returned to MANCC to develop her latest work, SHORE, the third in the trilogy of works developed at MANCC that include The Thank-you Bar and Niicugni. SHORE is a multi-day performance/installation of four equal parts: dance, storytelling, volunteerism, and feasting. At MANCC, Johnson utilized the period of spring break as an intensive with FSU students and Tallahassee community members. She and her collaborators focused on developing the transition of the work from a large group of performers singing and dancing outdoors on FSU’s Landis Green to a small group of performers on stage. Choir members from the Tallahassee Civic Chorale joined dance and theater students to work with Johnson, culminating in a work-in-progress showing for the School of Dance.

Along with developing the performative elements of the piece, Johnson and collaborators worked with FSU’s Campus Sustainability to organize a Landis Green clean-up the evening before the showing as a way to further connect with the environment and encourage volunteerism. Additionally, Johnson collaborator James Everest met with Mr. David MacManus, FSU’s Assistant Director of Grounds and Landscape Operations to learn more about the history of the trees on Landis Green to augment the storytelling elements of SHORE.

Near the end of the residency, Johnson met with Dr. Kris Harper from FSU’s History Department. Dr. Harper specializes in the history of science and was able to offer Johnson insight into the relationship Americans have had toward waterways and water usage and how this influences contemporary attitudes towards water.

SHORE premiered at Northrop Presents Grand Reopening June 20-21, 2014.

This residency was made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Returning Choreographic Fellow | September 9 – 23, 2012

Collaborators in Residence: Aretha Aoki [performer], Heidi Eckwall [lighting designer], James Everest [composer and multi-instrumentalist], Bethany Lacktorin [violinist/electronic musician], Max Wirsing [company administrator and dramaturgical feedback]

Choreographic Fellow Emily Johnson returned to FSU for the final production residency and world premiere of Niicugni (Listen).  Niicugni (Listen) was presented on September 21, 2012 as part of FSU’s Seven Days of Opening Nights Festival. The piece marks the first time a MANCC artist has premiered their work in Tallahassee. Niicugni (Listen) is the second in a trilogy of works defining story and place as they relate to Johnson’s Yup’ik heritage and personal confluences of cultural traditions and contemporary performance work. The first part of the trilogy, The Thank-you Bar, also developed at MANCC, was awarded the 2012 Bessie for Outstanding Performance. 

Using a Yup’ik word, Johnson titled the piece, Niicugni (Listen), which is a directive to pay attention. The work compels attentiveness through its layering of multiple dances, live music, stories, and histories. Housed within a light/sound installation of handmade, functional fish-skin lanterns, created specifically for the work by community volunteers across the country, Niicugni (Listen) questions the ways we do and do not listen to our bodies, histories, impulses, and environments. Equating the molecules of land with the cells that comprise our bodies, Niicugni (Listen) is also about how land or place, like our bodies, is a repository of everything past, present, and future. 

Based on research from previous residencies, Johnson incorporated 40 members of the local Tallahassee community, creating a parallel dance whose cyclical entrances and exits in the work alter the landscape of the stage. Catalyst will tour Niicugni (Listen) to eight cities throughout 2012–13. The work will receive its New York premiere in January 2013, as part of Performance Space 122’s 8th Annual COIL Festival.

This residency was made possible by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The presentation of Niicugni at FSU was made possible by the MetLife Community Connections Fund of the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project. Major support for NDP is also provided by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation with additional support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Returning Choreographic Fellow | January 16 – February 6, 2012

Collaborators in Residence: Aretha Aoki [performer], Heidi Eckwall [lighting designer], James Everest [composer and multi-instrumentalist], Bethany Lacktorin [violinist/electronic musician], Max Wirsing [company administrator and dramaturgical feedback]

Johnson was in residence at MANCC in 2012 to further the development of the performance/installation, Niicugni (Listen).  Movement, story and sound are housed within an audiovisual installation of hand-made fish skin lanterns created specifically for the work by community volunteers across the country. Niicugni (Listen) equates the land we live on with the cells that comprise our bodies and calls upon audiences to remember that land is alive with ancestry, memory, and possibility, and that our bodies also hold these things. It takes into account the simultaneous forces that build and break down our bodies and earth, bringing life and death – the ultimate contradiction – into the conversation.

Guided in part by her initial inspiration for the work, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and resulting map of her families’ land parcel, Johnson met with FSU Geography Professor Dr. Victor Mesev and Map Quilt Artist and FAMU Professor of Architecture Dr. Valerie Goodwin (www.quiltsbyvalerie.com). Johnson asked both scholars to consider how their respective fields might approach the task of creating a map of her work.  

During the residency Johnson continued to explore how to layer groups of community members into the work. She met with knitters, wind instrument players and gardeners from the local community to distill small common motions that were then incorporated into the piece. Her residency culminated in a public showing in which the community members participated by joining Emily on stage to perform their common movement. 
     
This residency was made possible by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Returning Choreographic Fellow | February 20 – March 8, 2011

Collaborators in Residence: Aretha Aoki [performer], James Everest [composer and multi-instrumentalist], Bethany Lacktorin [violinist/electronic musician], Heidi Eckwall [lighting designer]. 

Johnson was in residence at MANCC in 2011 to begin developing a new performance/installation,  Niicugni (Listen). During the 2011 residency, Johnson worked with groups of community members, specifically, artists, hula hoopers, roller derby girls, tango dancers and knitters, to collectively find a sound and movement gesture related to their common interest. Emily worked with the groups to find the small, common gesture: the bend in the knees before a backspring or the twist of the hips required of a hula hooper before she swings the hoop into motion. She researched how these tiny, known actions layer individually with cooperation and how the actions and interests of our neighbors might create the landscapes we live in. She explored if she can layer this small community dance upon Niicugni, interested to know if the presence of individuals and their actions is heightened by their appearance on stage or by the moments after their departure.

Johnson also shared nine performances of The Thank-You Bar at the 2011 Southeastern American College Dance Festival, which took place at FSU in the days that followed her Niicugni residency. 

This residency was made possible by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Choreographic Fellow | January 24 – February 14, 2009 and August 9 – 16, 2009

Collaborators in Residence: James Everest and Joel Pickard [multi-instrumentalists + composers].

Johnson conducted research on home, origin and displacement, partially by way of roving outdoor experiments with students, and by meeting with local animal behaviorists and a storyteller from the Pine Arbor Creek Community. The Thank-you Bar is a performance/installation of dance, live music, storytelling and visual image connecting ideas of displacement, longing, and language to history, pre-conceived notions, architecture, and igloo-myth.

The Thank-you Bar premiered at Out North, in Anchorage, Alaska in 2009 and toured to TBA Festival, ODC Theater, Vermont Performance Lab, DiverseWorks, Living Arts, New York Live Arts, The Dance Center at Columbia College, Northrop Auditorium, and ACDFA through 2011.