SHORE is Emily Johnson/Catalyst's new dance work. It is the third in a trilogy of works that began with The Thank-you Bar, and continued with Niicugni. SHORE is a multi-day performance installation of dance, story, volunteerism, and feasting. It is a celebration of the places where we meet and merge—land and water, performer and audience, art and community, past, present, and future.
SHORE is Emily Johnson/Catalyst's new dance work. It is the third in a trilogy of works that began with The Thank-you Bar, and continued with Niicugni. SHORE is a multi-day performance installation of dance, story, volunteerism, and feasting. It is a celebration of the places where we meet and merge—land and water, performer and audience, art and community, past, present, and future.
Northrop: When we interviewed you last spring about Niicugni, the second in this trilogy of works (SHORE being the third), you said as you’re making one work in this series, the next one begins. At what point in your process did you know what SHORE would encompass?
Emily Johnson: It was a natural progression—I remember looking around the room during one of our fish-skin sewing workshops during the making of Niicugni. I was overwhelmed with gratitude—for all of the energy and work people were donating to Niicugni through their preparations and sewing of the fish-skins. I decided I needed to continue to research this—why people come together and how the energy and actions of a group of people can have an effect on a project, on the world.
6.) Storytelling has been such an important part of the whole trilogy—stories told in so many different ways—and now, in SHORE, you present us with something called "Silent Story"—how did that come about?
I’ve always thought about the stories in each of our bodies—the stories we remember and know and also the stories that are somehow passed on and live in our bodies without words. I want to honor all of these stories that are in each of us. What we call ‘silent story’ isn’t about showing anything at all—it’s about sharing a vulnerable state, a joyful or grief-ful moment. We—Krista Langberg, Aretha Aoki, and I are creating stories in our minds and you see the effort of that. The stories are shared in that moment …you see us live a moment, we share that moment with you. It’s different for each of us. For me, it’s emotional and it’s not ‘performed’ at all. It’s real—it’s a real story. And it’s always different, always a new story—every rehearsal, every performance—each one of us is thinking a story that we haven’t thought before.
As Emily Johnson prepares her biggest performance to date, she explains her expansive view of what dance is, and what it can be.
For choreographer Emily Johnson, movement has a ripple effect that goes well beyond the stage. Dance, Johnson says, influences the rhythm of the world we live in.
That explains why “Shore,” Johnson’s latest project, embraces many elements that at first may seem far afield. It includes storytelling, conversation, community volunteerism, even feasting over several days.
“I look at the world in terms of movement and spatial relationships,” she said. “Birds flying, traffic — I try to think about how my dances relate to all this stuff already happening.”
For Johnson, every part of what she does acts in concert with the rhythm of the world. “SHORE,” the third piece in a trilogy Johnson has been working on for the past seven years, uses that as its theme.
The trilogy didn’t start as such, but 2010’s “The Thank-you Bar” spawned so much material that it proved a springboard for “Niicugni (Listen)” in 2012. “SHORE” will end the series with a massive bang — it has four different parts and takes place over an entire week.
The piece [SHORE] is beautiful and wondrous and wanderous and intriguing; welcoming, inviting, and yet private and hidden at the same time.
I love how the three movers-and-shakers [dancers] embrace their heavy breathing/fatigue, even accentuate it, channel it and augment the performance with it... It makes me think of stamina, and its limits, and how we deal with its limits.
Limits, and dealing with limits, seemed to me to be a motif that ran throughout the performance. For how long can we stomp around, virulent/frantic/big/loud/intense, before we come to a rest? For how long can we rest, still, lying on the ground, before we flail frantically and ecstatically, moving fast as if having a seizure?