INTERVIEWS —

Heat and Life

mental contagion

mental contagion

DP: Art and Environment. For the dancer this seems like the quintessential definition of the form. In Heat and Life, you seem to be breaking down this very connection, or that the connection of life itself is breaking. Can you talk about the process in this piece? 

MPR: Feel the Heat

MPR: Feel the Heat

Catalyst, performing "Heat and Life" at a gas station. Emily Johnson's new dance production is about habitat change due to global warming. (Photo by Cameron Wittig, courtesy of the Walker Art Center)

Global warming has received relatively little attention in this year's presidential campaign. For Minneapolis choreographer Emily Johnson, it's a problem that can no longer be ignored or merely 'discussed.' In her latest dance piece, Johnson puts the audience in the middle of a world overheated by global warming.

Office, Minneapolis, MN, US612.597.7400emily@catalystdance.com

Emily Johnson / Catalyst is based on Mannahatta in Lenapehoking. We work to pay respect to Lenape homeland, people and ancestors past, present, and future by organizing with communities from the Lenape diaspora to build pathways for Lenapeyok return. We have been taught to name Lenape Nations and say cama’i to our relatives from Delaware Tribe of Indians in Bartlesville, OK; Delaware Nation of Oklahoma in Anadarko, OK; Stockbridge-Munsee and Mohican Community in Wisconsin; Moravian Delaware of the Thames in Ontario, Canada; Munsee-Delaware Nation at Munceytown in Ontario, Canada; Delaware of Six Nations in Ontario, Canada. 

We strive to be in good relations with our kin—human and more than human—and in effort to support growing kinstillatory relations and sovereign, liberated futures we are anti-colonial and abolitionist in all capacities. We are committed to on-the-ground water and land protection, consistent decolonization work, and Land Back. 

Quyanaqvaa-lli elpeni to all Sovereign Nations, Indigenous and First Nations people who live in relation to and from Lenapehoking and upon whose lands we work and tour.

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