Emily Johnson/Catalyst

"Fresh and fierce, evocative and disciplined." �" Dance Magazine

Originally from Alaska and currently based in Minneapolis, director/choreographer/curator Emily Johnson has created work since 1998 that considers the experience of sensing and seeing performance. Her dances often function as installations, engaging audiences within and through a space and environment�"sights, sounds, smells�"interacting with a place’s architecture, history, and role in community.

Niicugni is a new performance centered on movement, story, and sound housed within a light/sound installation of hand-made, functional salmon skin lanterns. Second in a trilogy of work, it equates land we live on with 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. Taking into account the forces that build and simultaneously breakdown our bodies and earth, Niicugni brings life and death�"the ultimate contradiction�"into the conversation.

A post-performance conversation with the artists will take place immediately following each Women of Substance performance.

Part of the O'Shaughnessy's Dance Series. Presented in partnership with Northrop.

Tickets include a $2 restoration fee.