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Program
Four
Friday & Saturday, March 23 & 24, 8pm
Sunday, March 25, 7pm
$15 ($10 students/seniors)
Series pass $45 ($30 students/seniors)
Post-show discussion each night
Catalyst, dances by Emily
Johnson - Heat and Life
Heat and Life depicts a frenetic world fueled by anxiety,
paranoia, and fear – a world Catalyst uses to explore connections
between global warming, overpopulation, degradation of natural and
urban environments, perpetual war, insatiable greed, and how we
contribute and respond to these human-made disasters. Negotiating
rough terrain, each other, and the edginess of having nothing
to lose, seven dancers aim to thrive in an ever-changing landscape.
Using walkie-talkies, electrical cords, 80 pounds of sod, industrial
flashlights, gas masks, helmets, and a bicycle to
adapt, are they emergency workers or disaster survivors? Friends
or foes? In this brutal world, it’s hard to pause to take
a deep, clean breath.
Multi-instrumentalist composer JG
Everest performs his original score live on stage, a hybrid of electronic,
acoustic, and site-specific found sounds. Randy Kramer’s stark
video design enhances the sense of loss and disorientation with
“grass so green it makes your eyes hurt” and Heidi Eckwall’s
scrappy guerilla lighting sets mobile boundaries through which the
dance unfolds.
Emily Johnson is
a director/choreographer/curator originally from Alaska and currently
based in Minneapolis. Her company, Catalyst, has performed since
1998. She works to make deliberate meaning and powerful movement
the essential aspects of dance pieces that are thought-provoking
and entertaining. Marked with fiercely intuitive, minimalist, pedestrian-bent
choreography, her dances include commissions by institutions, theaters,
and colleges throughout the Midwest including the Walker Art Center
and Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts. She has
embarked on international improvisation projects (St. Petersburg,
Amsterdam, and Montreal) and her company has performed throughout
the USA, including ODC Theater in San Francisco, Velocity in Seattle,
and Dance Theater Workshop in New York. Her recent work Heat
and Life was commissioned by the Walker Art Center and is on
a 50-state-tour of the USA (AK, WI, NY, NE, SD, IA, FL, MO, and
TX completed). Her work has been supported by artist fellowships
and funding from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Bush, Jerome,
Puffin, Andersen, and Moore Family Foundations. She is part of the
multidisciplinary artist collective Local Strategy whose members
from New York, San Francisco, and Minneapolis work to create large
scale, site specific art and performance events that draw upon historical,
geographical, and cultural history to animate public space. She
co-curates a dance/film series in Minneapolis called capture!
Her dance-film work has screened at the Women With Vision Film
Series (Walker Art Center), Captured Series (Dance
Theater Workshop), and capture! (Bryant Lake Bowl) and
includes Plain Old Andrea with a Gun (2003), Wingspan
5’2’’ (2005), and a film version of Heat
and Life (in progress). www.catalystdance.com
Originally commissioned by the Walker Art Center.
Photo by Gene Pittman for Walker Art
Center
“...a blend of furious dance, haunting live music...”
- Flavorpill
“Don’t miss!” - Time Out New York
Post-Show discussions
A thirty minute post-show discussion between the audience and artists
will take place after each performance of Heat and Life.
These discussions will each be facilitated by academics and artists.
The facilitators are Alex Wilson of West Town Bikes, Kristen Cox,
conceiver, Fire This Time Fund, and Laurie Palmer, Professor at
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Facilitators include:
Alex Wilson, West Town Bikes
Alex Wilson is a bicycle advocate, holding leadership roles in organizations
such as Chicago Bike Winter, Chicago Critical Mass, Chicagoland
Bicycle Federation, CO-OP Humboldt Park, and Chicago Cargo Bike
and Trailer Company. www.westtownbikes.org
Kristen Cox, Fire This Time Fund
Kristen Cox is a cultural convener and resource developer who founded
the Fire This Time Fund, a new funding initiative to support informal
arts and social change projects by younger Chicago activists, artists,
and educators.
Laurie Palmer, School of the Art Institute of
Chicago
Laurie Palmer's interdisciplinary practice includes sculptural and
public art projects, writing, and a twelve-year collaboration with
the artists' collective Haha. She has written for journals frieze
and Artforum, and published a book called 3 Acres on
the Lake: DuSable Park Proposal Project.
Emily Johnson – Class with Emily
(see workshops)
Symposium: Through Different
Lenses: Community Analysis, Interpretation, and Action towards Environmental
Policy
(see March symposium)
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