Emily Johnson/Catalyst
Live Artery-Being Future Being (work-in-progress)
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Award-winning choreographer Emily Johnson has created a distinguished body of dance works and social choreographies that unite audiences in a shared experience of movement, place, history, collective action, and the continuance of Indigenous cultural practices and perspectives. Her newest work Being Future Being delves into the power of creation.
Featuring a newly commissioned soundscore by Raven Chacon and a cast of more-than-human creatures, Being Future Being builds a visual, aural and ancestral landscape of Indigenous power. By (re)building new visions of the forces that brought this world into being, Johnson brings forth new futures with the potential to reshape the way we relate to ourselves, and to the human and more-than-human cohabitants of our world.
“I view our bodies as everything: our bodies are culture, history, present and future, all at once. Out of respect for, and trust in, our bodies and collective memories, I give equal weight to story and image, to movement and stillness, to what I imagine and what I do not know.”
—EMILY JOHNSON
PRODUCTION CREDITS TO-DATE
Artistic Direction and Choreography by Emily Johnson
Performed by Emily Johnson, Ashley Pierre-Louis, Jasmine Shorty, Stacy Lynn Smith, Sugar Vendil
Composed by Raven Chacon
Sound Engineering by Zachary Crumrine
Quilt Being Garment Design by Korina Emmerich
Quilt Being Construction by Joseph Silovsky / Silovsky Studios
Quilt Design by Maggie Thompson
Producer and Management: George Lugg
Being Future Being is commissioned by The Broad Stage at Santa Monica College, and is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation and Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Bunnell Street Arts Center (AK); New York Live Arts (NY); Portland Institute for Contemporary Arts (OR) and NPN, with contributions from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Additional commissioning and development support is provided by Abrons Arts Center; Portland Ovations; Jacob’s Pillow’s Pillow Lab residency; a Movement Research Residency, funded by the Scherman Foundation’s Katharine S. and Axel G. Rosin Fund; and New York Live Arts’ Live Feed Residency with funding from Rockefeller Brothers Fund, National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, and the Partners for New Performance.
The creation of Being Future Being is made possible in part with support from New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
