Tigertail presents Bessie Award-Winning Choreographer Emily Johnson

Miami-Dade County Auditorium. March 22 and 23, 2013. 8:30 p.m.

Tigertail will present the recent Bessie Award-winning choreographer Emily Johnson on Friday & Saturday, March 22 and 23, 2013, at 8:30 p.m., at Miami-Dade County Auditorium’s On Stage Black Box, in a concert featuring Johnson’s critically-acclaimed work Niicugni, influenced by her Alaskan heritage.

Emily Johnson grew up in her native Alaska playing basketball and running long distance. At the age of 18 she left rural living, moved to Minneapolis, and “quite by accident,” as she put it, learned to be a choreographer and performer. She is of Yup’ik descent, though she does not speak the language. Emotionally, she is tied to the landscape of South Central Alaska where she was born and to the Yukon-Kuskokwim delta, the home of her father’s family. There, she participated in the summer and fall family rituals of hunting and fishing, then smoking, drying, canning and freezing food.

Niicugni means Listen in the Yup’ik language. The word is a directive to pay attention, to listen. The work quietly compels attentiveness, layering multiple dances, live music, stories, and histories into a space occupied by past, present, and future. It will be performed by Johnson and includes herself and dancer Aretha Aoki, composer James Everest, violinist/electronic musician Bethany Lacktorin, and lighting designer Heidi Eckwall. The work is housed within a light/sound installation of 50 hand-made, functional fish-skin lanterns and live music. Johnson discussed her use of the lanterns with New York Times dance writer Gia Kourlas prior to Niicugni’s run at the Baryshnikov Art Center. “There is the story of the fish that migrated for thousands of miles, the fish that fed people,” she told Kourlas. “There is all the energy put into the object, and then the relationships and conversations that developed during the workshops. That process is the dance itself. It is as important as what is onstage. If you’re sitting in an audience, you might not get that whole story, but that story is there.”

Johnson is currently based in Minneapolis. Since 1998 she has created work that considers the experience of sensing and seeing performance. She is a 2011 Native Arts and Cultures Fellow, a 2010 and 2009 MAP Fund Grant recipient, a 2009 McKnight Fellow and a 2009 and 2011 MANCC Choreographer Fellow. Her dances often function as installations, engaging audiences within and through a space and environment – sights, sounds and smells – interacting with a place’s architecture, history, and role in community. She works to blur distinctions between performance and daily life and to create work that reveals and respects multiple perspectives. Allowing for the possibility of multiple meanings, her work stimulates reflection and emotional empathy between performer and audience, and between audience members.

Tickets are $30 for general admission; $50 VIP ticket (priority entrance and seating); $20 Students and seniors (65+) w/ ID, and Artists. Tickets can be purchased online at www.tigertail.org or by phone 305.324.4337.

Tigertail at On Stage Black Box
Miami-Dade County Auditorium
2901 West Flagler Street
Miami, FL 33135
305.324.4337
www.tigertail.org

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