Producing
Emily Johnson / Catalyst
Emily Johnson is an artist who makes body-based work. She is a land and water protector and an activist for justice, sovereignty and well-being. Emily is a Bessie Award-winning choreographer, Guggenheim and United States Artists Fellow, and recipient of the Doris Duke Artist Award. She is based in Lenapehoking / New York City. Emily is of the Yup’ik Nation, and since 1998 has created work that considers the experience of sensing and seeing performance. Her dances function as portals and care processions, they engage audienceship within and through space, time, and environment — interacting with a place's architecture, peoples, history and role in building futures. Emily is trying to make a world where performance is part of life; where performance is an integral part of our connection to each other, our environment, our stories, our past, present and future.
Her choreography and gatherings have been presented across the United States and Australia. Recently, she choreographed the Santa Fe Opera production of Doctor Atomic, directed by Peter Sellars. Her large-scale project, Then a Cunning Voice and A Night We Spend Gazing at Stars is an all-night outdoor performance gathering taking place amongst 84 community-hand-made quilts. It premiered in Lenapehoking (NYC) in 2017, and was presented in Zhigaagoong (Chicago) in 2019. Her new work in development, Being Future Being, considers future creation stories and present joy.
CalArts Center for New Performance
CalArts Center for New Performance (CNP) is the professional producing arm of California Institute of the Arts, established in 2002 to provide a unique artist- and project-driven framework for the development and realization of original interdisciplinary projects. CNP extends the creative ethos of CalArts into a direct dialogue with professional communities and audiences at the local, national and international levels, and supports emerging directions in contemporary performance.
Current projects, touring or in development, include Daniel Alexander Jones’s Altar no. 1 – Aten, Nataki Garrett and Andrea Leblanc’s The Carolyn Bryant Project, Juli Crockett’s adaption of Emilio Cruz’s When This War Is Over, You’re Going to Get It George, Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol’s El Camino Donde Nosotros Lloramos, Octavio Solis’s Scene with Cranes, and ongoing podcast series.