BEING FUTURE BEING: INSIDE / OUTWARDS
Created by
Emily Johnson
in Collaboration with and Performed by
Ashley Pierre-Louis
Brandi Norton
Stacy Lynn Smith
Sugar Vendil
Emily Johnson
Composed by
Raven Chacon
Lighting Design by
Itohan Edoloyi
Scenic Design by
Emily Johnson
Mask, Wearables, Portal Design and Construction by
IV Castellanos
Sound Engineering by
Sonya Well-Off-Man
Quilt Beings Designed by
Korina Emmerich
Quilts Designed by
Maggie Thompson
Portal Tattoos by
Holly Mititquq Nordlum
Costume Design by
Raphael Regan
Production Management by
IV Castellanos
Administrative Stewardship by
Anangookwe Wolf
Management Support by
George Lugg
Additional contributors during the work’s creation process include Zachary Crumrine, Joelly Dundorf, Kevin Holden, Sara Lyons, Drew Michael, Chloe Alexandra Thompson, Tyler Rai, Joseph Silovsky and Jasmine Shorty
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Emily Johnson / Catalyst is based on Mannahatta in Lenapehoking. 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.
We are happy to bring Being Future Being to Tiohtià:ke in Kanien'kéha, and to share this work with people from these unceded lands. Quyanaqvaa-lli elpeni to all Sovereign Nations, Indigenous and First Nations people from and on these lands.
Quyana
Before this work started, we were different. And now we are here.
Quyana future beings, the joy you are to work with and our orienting our cells to justice. Quyana team Catalyst, moving mountains. Quyana team Festival TransAmériques. Quyana Mylène Guay and Léuli Eshrāghi for our decolonization conversations/action. Quyana Fire Trees, Protect Trees, Sound Trees across Lenapehoking, Tongva, Nipmuc, Pocumtuc, Mohican, Wabanaki, Munsee, Muhheaconneok and N’daakina lands, we are still listening. Quyana my kin in the Branch of Knowledge, your commitment to return. Quyana my dears in the Branch of Scholarship, the future that is here. Quyana Starbeing, welcome to the world. Quyana my love, IV.
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OVERFLOW CALL TO ACTION
Join in solidarity with the organizers of Al-Aqsa Popular University, initiated by UQAM students, as they gather in support of Palestinian liberation and call for the abolition of the Quebec Office in Tel Aviv.
Thursday, June 6, 2024 at 7pm
175 Av. du Président-Kennedy, Montréal, QC H2X 3P2
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ABOUT BEING FUTURE BEING’s FOUR BRANCHES
Being Future Being is collaboratively supported by kinstillatory gatherings of experts in four Branches: Making, Scholarship, Knowledge and Action. These are the central organizational and structural partners who guide the relational frameworks and form the foundations, learnings, possibilities and intersections available in this work. They not only inform research, but also form a lateral supportive structure to shape the work and its resonance, steward its values and impact, and share in accountability and action.
BRANCH of MAKING
Includes all the creators, performers, designers, technical and production crew, and other contributors credited for this presentation.
BRANCH of SCHOLARSHIP
Emily Johnson, Yup’ik choreographer and artistic director, finding futures with more than human kin.
Joseph M. Pierce, ᏣᎳᎩᎯ ᎠᏰᎵ Cherokee Nation citizen, writer, curator, lines on fingers, sun circles waiting, water slipping through.
Karyn Recollet, Urban Cree scholar of a pedagogy of care.
Dylan Robinson, xwélmexw (Stó:lō/Skwah) writer and curator, tl'épstexw tel sqwálewel (making deep or low my thought-feelings / trying to be patient).
Camille Georgeson-Usher, Coast Salish / Sahtu Dene writer, administrator, and artist using running to feel kinship of spatialities.
BRANCH of KNOWLEDGE
Organized by River Whittle from the Caddo Nation and Delaware Nation of Oklahoma (Lenni Lenape), the Branch of Knowledge is a collective of Lenape matriarchs who are building power by gathering together and collaborating with accomplices who live in their homelands. The Branch of Knowledge and Catalyst work together in creative guidance and new protocol forms, helping forge pathways for Lenapeyok return to Lenapehoking. The Branch of Knowledge is constantly growing and in the process of adding members from the six Lenape Nations and is currently:
Rachel Snake (Munsee-Delaware Nation)
Red Day Johnson (Delaware Tribe of Oklahoma)
Elizabeth French (Delaware Nation of Oklahoma)
Andy Jacobs (Delaware Nation at Moraviantown)
Lauryn French (Delaware Nation of Oklahoma)
Yeya Takenha Theresa Johnson (Delaware Nation at Moraviantown)
Trinity Guido (Delaware Nation of Oklahoma)
Andi M. Weber (Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians)
River Whittle (Delaware Nation of Oklahoma)
BRANCH of ACTION: Architecture of the Overflow
Guided by IV Castellanos, they craft replicable, locally responsive, Indigenous-centered actions that encourage collective community self-determination, direct response, support, and action with local land rematriation and protection efforts.
You can support the Architecture of the Overflow by building kinships with local Indigenous-led protection efforts and Al-Aqsa Popular University. Volunteer, donate and show up for ongoing efforts for Land Back.
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SUPPORT
Being Future Being is commissioned by BroadStage at Santa Monica College (CA), and is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation and Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Bunnell Street Arts Center (AK); New York Live Arts (NY); Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (OR) and NPN, with contributions from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Additional commissioning and development support is provided by Dance/NYC’s Dance Advancement Fund, made possible by The Howard Gilman Foundation and Ford Foundation; Abrons Arts Center; University of Massachusetts Amherst Fine Arts Center; Portland Ovations; Jacob’s Pillow’s Pillow Lab residency; a Movement Research Residency, funded by the Scherman Foundation’s Katharine S. and Axel G. Rosin Fund; and New York Live Arts’ Live Feed Residency with funding Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Partners for New Performance.
The creation of Being Future Being is made possible in part with support from Native Arts and Cultures Foundation SHIFT: Transformative Change and Indigenous Arts Award, and New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Catalyst is provided fiscal sponsorship services from Foundation for Independent Artists, administered by Pentacle (www.pentacle.org), a non-profit management support organization for the performing arts.
The performances at Festival TransAmérique are made possible in part by Mid Atlantic Arts through USArtists International, a program in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Trust for Mutual Understanding.
SUPPORT EMILY JOHNSON / CATALYST
Make a donation in support of this and other Emily Johnson / Catalyst projects at www.catalystdance.com/donate/
ABOUT EMILY JOHNSON / CATALYST
EMILY JOHNSON is an artist who makes body-based work. She is a land and water protector and an organizer for justice, sovereignty and well-being. Emily is a Bessie Award-winning choreographer, Guggenheim, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, and United States Artists Fellow, and recipient of the Doris Duke Artist Award. She is based in Lenapehoking / New York City. Emily is of the Yup’ik Nation, and since 1998 has created work that considers the experience of sensing and seeing performance. Her dances function as portals and care processions, they engage audienceship within and through space, time, and environment — interacting with a place's architecture, peoples, history and role in building futures. Emily is trying to make a world where performance is part of life; where performance is an integral part of our connection to each other, our environment, our stories, our past, present and future.
Her choreography and gatherings have been presented across what is currently called the United States, Canada, and Australia. Her large-scale project, Then a Cunning Voice and A Night We Spend Gazing at Stars is an all-night outdoor performance gathering taking place amongst 84 community-hand-made quilts. It premiered in Lenapehoking (NYC) in 2017, and was presented in Zhigaagoong (Chicago) in 2019. She choreographed the Santa Fe Opera production of Doctor Atomic, directed by Peter Sellars in 2018. Her new work Being Future Being, premiered on Tongva Land and New York City in 2022.
Emily’s writing has been published and commissioned by The Open Society University Network’s Center for Human Rights and the Arts, ArtsLink Australia, unMagazine, Dance Research Journal (University of Cambridge Press); SFMOMA; Transmotion Journal, University of Kent; Movement Research Journal; Pew Center for Arts and Heritage; and the compilation Imagined Theaters (Routledge), edited by Daniel Sack.
Emily hosts monthly ceremonial fires on Mannahatta in partnership with Abrons Arts Center and Karyn Recollet. She was the Pueblo Opera Cultural Council Diplomat at Santa Fe Opera 2018-2020, and a lead organizer of First Nations Dialogues. She was a co-compiler of the documents, Creating New Futures: Guidelines for Ethics and Equity in the Performing Arts and Notes for Equitable Funding, was a member of Creative Time’s inaugural Think Tank, and serves as co-lead for First Nations Performing Arts.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
IV CASTELLANOS is a Queer Trans* Bolivian-Indige/American, and an abstract performance artist and sculptor who creates solo, collaborative, and group-task vignette performances. They construct/deconstruct all their own objects in their performances, and/or in shared process and practice with their collaborators. In addition, they have a studio practice and create stand-alone sculptures not meant to be activated by performances.
RAVEN CHACON is a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, performer and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, collaborator, or with Postcommodity, Chacon has exhibited or performed at Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, REDCAT, Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, 18th Biennale of Sydney, and The Kennedy Center. Every year, he teaches 20 students to write string quartets for the Native American Composer Apprenticeship Project (NACAP). He is the recipient of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Music, a United States Artists fellowship in Music, The Creative Capital award in Visual Arts, The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation artist fellowship, and the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition. He lives in Albuquerque, NM.
ITOHAN EDOLOYI is a multidisciplinary lighting designer whose work is rooted in community and culture. Her work aims to continue storytelling in non-traditional ways, crafting meaningful experiences through the lens of light and immersion. Her work ranges from installation and public works to lighting designs for experimental theater to theater, dance and events. Itohan has co-curated Lincoln Center’s Social Sculpture Project alongside scenic designer, Mimi Lien and is the lead curator for InLight Collective. Her work as an artist has been presented at JACK Arts, LaMAMA Galleria and Brooklyn Arts Terminal and as curator published by Rosco Spectrum and mentioned in Vogue Philippines. Itohan was the recipient of the 2021 Lilly Award and was the recipient of the 2018 Gilbert V. Hemsley Lighting Internship. More at itohanedoloyi.com.
KORINA EMMERICH has built her Brooklyn-based brand, EMME Studio, on the backbone of Expression, Art and Culture, where items are made-to-order in their studio located on occupied Canarsee territories. She is leading the charge to embrace art and design as one, and weaving it into her brand story. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, her colorful work is known to reflect her patrilineal Indigenous heritage from The Coast Salish Territory, Puyallup tribe. Items are made from upcycled, recycled, and all-natural materials giving respect to the life cycle of a garment from creation to biodegradation. With a strong focus on social and climate justice while speaking out about industry responsibility and accountability: Emmerich works actively to expose and dismantle systems of oppression and challenge colonial ways of thinking.
HOLLY MITITQUQ NORDLUM is an Iñupiaq (Inuit) artist who comes from the northern village of Kotzebue, Alaska. Nordlum works in a variety of media, using each to best cast light on Indigenous people. Her tattoo work and traditional markings revitalization effort is based on a 10,000-year-old Inuit history and is a machine-free process that facilitates healing, pride, and celebration from the traumas of colonization and individual experience. She organizes trainings, using traditional patterns in in-depth sessions to foster real change for people—in the end, creating community in the marks left behind. Nordlum speaks publicly about the systems which continue to oppress her people and prevent their thriving. In 2004 she earned a BFA from the University of Alaska. She has received a Time Warner Fellowship with Sundance, an Art Matters grant, an Alaska Humanities Forum grant, an Alaska Native Visionary Award, a Rasmuson Artist Project Grant and Artist Fellowship, NDN Collective Indigenous Artists’ Grant and was part of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) Artist Leadership Program.
ANANGOOKWE WOLF (Ojibwe, Assiniboine, Dakota Descent) is a visual artist, poet, and Administrative Steward for Emily Johnson/ Catalyst. They utilize forms of craft and storytelling to interweave familial narratives concerning cultural inheritance and present-day afflictions. Anangookwe is the recipient of residencies, grants, and awards through Vermont Studio Center, Mas House, First Peoples Fund, Alaska State Council on the Arts, and they are a 2024 Indigenous Nations Poets fellow. Anangookwe is now based in Manahatta in Lenapehoking where they are excited to immerse themselves in the arts and collaborate on urban food forestry and Indigenous agriculture projects.
BRANDI NORTON (Iñupiaq) is a curator and dancer based in Rhinebeck, New York. She currently works as curator of public programs at Bard’s Center for Indigenous Studies. She holds a BFA in dance from the Juilliard School, and an M.S.Ed in early childhood education from Bank Street Graduate School. She works to bring Indigenous artists, educators and thought leaders to Bard college for public facing events. Before joining the Center for Indigenous Studies, she co-founded the dance company OtherShore, and was a dancer in the Trisha Brown Dance Company for nine seasons. Norton also had the privilege of being an elementary school teacher in New York City.
ASHLEY PIERRE-LOUIS is originally from Miami, FL. She attended New World School of the Arts and later Florida State University, where she graduated with a BFA in dance. She is currently a dance artist and creator freelancing and exploring choreography in New York City. When making, she asks herself and audiences to imagine what our physical, emotional, and psychic expressions of what is deepest and strongest and richest within each of us is, and how we can share them collectively, in order to create a sense of freedom in the mind and body. She currently performs with Shamel Pitts’ multidisciplinary performance collective TRIBE, Emily Johnson/Catalyst Dance, and Edisa Weeks’ DELIRIOUS Dances. She is also the Dream Partner & Program Manager for Florida State University’s Arts in NYC program, as well as the Artist Services Associate for Performance Space New York (PS 122). She has worked as the dramaturg for Shamel Pitts | TRIBE's work Touch of RED & the Associate Choreographer for the play Help (2022) by acclaimed poet and playwright Claudia Rankine. She was named one of Gallim’s 2021 Moving Women spring artist - in - residence & received a professional apprenticeship for the Dance Division at the Juilliard School (2020).
RAPHAEL REGAN is an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. He received his MFA in Costume Design and Production from the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music (CCM). Costume Design: Sovereignty (Harlequin Productions), The Heart Stays (feature film), Collective Noun (Corkscrew Theatre Festival), King Lear, Apartment 3A, Romeo & Juliet, Race, Escape from Happiness (Stella Adler), Taiga in the Berkshires, In search of (Williamstown Theatre Festival) Little Shop of Horrors, Pippin, 9 to 5 (Highlands Playhouse). Assistant Costume Design: A Walk on the Moon (George Street Playhouse), Harmony (NYTF), A Sherlock Carol (New World Stages), Anastasia (Second National Tour), Fandango for Butterflies (La Mama), Mlima’s Tale (Westport Playhouse), Skeleton Crew (Westport Playhouse).
STACY LYNN SMITH is a neurodivergent, Black multiracial performing artist, choreographer, director and Green Circle Keeper at Hidden Water (by and for those affected by childhood sexual abuse) whose practice synthesizes various lineages of improvisational forms, somatics, experimental theater and butoh. Dedicated to collaboration, Smith creates, devises, improvises and performs across disciplines and genres with an array of talented artists: DeForrest Brown Jr., Anna Homler, Karen Bernard, Thaddeus O’Neil, Rakia Seaborn, Vangeline Theater (2008-2017), Michael Freeman, Saints of an Unnamed Country, Salome Asega, GENG, Donna Costello, Bradley Bailey, Michele Beck, Jasmine Hearn, mayfield brooks, Jill Sigman, Kathy Westwater, Josephine Decker, Emily Johnson, Peter Born, Okwui Okpokwasili and more. Smith's work has been presented at Movement Research at the Judson Church, Socrates Sculpture Park, 92StY, Performance Mix Festival, Snug Harbor Dance Festival, CAVE, St. Augustine's Church via Abrons Arts Center, Rosekill, Glasshouse and more. As Psychic Wormhole (with Alex Romania), Smith is creating their abstract memoir, RECKONING, the duo's first feature film. Smith is a 2022-2024 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence and 2024 Djerassi AIR.
MAGGIE THOMPSON was born and raised in Minneapolis, MN. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Textiles at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2013. As a textile artist and designer she derives her inspiration from the history of her Ojibwe heritage, exploring family history as well as themes and subject matter of the broader Native American experience. Thompson’s work calls attention to its materiality pushing the viewer’s traditional understanding of textiles. She explores materials in her work by incorporating multimedia elements such as photographs, beer caps and 3D-printed objects. In addition to her fine arts practice, Thompson runs a knitwear business known as Makwa Studio and is also an emerging curator of contemporary Native art, and has worked on curating special exhibits for Two Rivers Gallery, the McKnight Foundation and the Minnesota Museum of American Art.
SUGAR VENDIL (she/they) is a composer, pianist, and interdisciplinary artist who is forging new creative pathways as a second generation Filipinx American and future ancestor. She started her artistic life as a classical pianist, and after spending nearly a decade searching for her own voice, her practice evolved into making music and performances that integrate sound, movement, and unconventional approaches to the piano. She has a keyboard/synth duo, Vanity Project, with composer Trevor Gureckis. Vendil is based in Lenapehoking, known as Brooklyn, where she lives with her partner and toddler, who she hopes will pursue dance and volleyball but will not force him/them. Vendil’s work germinates from a kinesthetic and improvisatory approach rooted in lived experiences. Her sense of physicality and artistic autonomy is evident in her work, whether it is music, performance, or visual scores. Vendil was awarded a 2022 NPN Creation Fund grant and 2021 MAP Fund grant to support Antonym: the opposite of nostalgia, which is being co-commissioned by Living Arts Tulsa, High Concept Labs, and National Sawdust. Antonym is a finalist for NEFA’s NTP Creation and Touring Fund. Commissions include music for 3.1 Phillip Lim’s F/W 2024 show, Simple Tasks 2 on Jennifer Koh’s Grammy-award winning album Alone Together; a Chamber Music America commission to write for The Nouveau Classical Project; ETHEL’s Homebaked 2019, and ACF | Create. She scored films by Jih-E Peng’s May We Know Our Own Strength (2021) and GATHER (2023), both art films centered on works by visual artist Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, and The Rite of Spring (2024), written and directed by Nick Nocera. In early 2024, her visual scores were part of the National Arts Club’s 2020 Fellows group exhibition, Light, Line, and Sound. She showed two ink-on-paper scores, and trapunto etude (2024), a beaded and embroidered canvas score inspired by the art of Pacita Abad. Vendil loves dancing and collaborating with other makers. She is part of choreographer Emily Johnson/CATALYST’s Being Future Being and was a musical collaborator with treya lam for Marie Lloyd Paspe and Almasphere’s bumalik. Vendil composed the music for Phil Chan’s Ballet des Porcelaines in 2021, and premiered composer-saxophonist Darius Jones’ LawNOrder at The Stone and Being Caged in ICE at Roulette in 2018. This year, she is dancing in Adrienne Westwood’s [ ]. Her album, May We Know Our Own Strength, is out on Gold Bolus Recordings.
SONYA WELL-OFF-MAN is a multidisciplinary sound artist who explores the boundaries of sound, space, and perception. She creates noise music, sound design, and sound installations that challenge the conventional notions of music and art while exploring interpersonal phenomena between the listener and sound by creating works that focus on distorting the sense of time and evoking a sense of disquiet Ness through a variety of media including installations, video, and sound to create an immersive experience with oneself. Her work is influenced by experimental, industrial, and ambient genres, as well as by the sounds of nature and urban environments.
RIVER WHITTLE is a two-spirit Caddo, Lenape, and white artist, youth mentor, and organizer. River aims to uplift the well-being of all Indigenous people with their work. She is learning to become a shell worker, metal worker, and potter, and is an experienced photographer. You can reach River through their instagram @natanehriver or via email at miarw96@gmail.com.
GEORGE LUGG is a settler of Irish descent currently working from Porto, Portugal. He is a producer, curator and consultant who has been working in the field of contemporary dance and performance for more than 30 years, and since 2018 has provided producorial and management support for Emily Johnson / Catalyst. He works as an independent consultant and producer for artists and institutions, and recent production credits include David Roussève / REALITY’s Daddy AF(premiering 2025), Faye Driscoll’s Come On In (2020) and Thank You For Coming: Space (2019). As a consulting producer for CalArts Center for New Performance he has supported the development and creation of Chen Wu-kang and Sun Ruey-horng’s Closed Tomorrow (premiering 2025), Daniel Alexander Jones’ Altar no. 1 (2021), Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol’s El Camino Donde Nosotros Lloramos (The Road Where We Weep) (2020) and Virginia Grises’ rasgos asiaticos (2020), among others. He was associate director of REDCAT in Los Angeles for a decade, twice served as Lead Program Consultant in the Performing Arts for the Creative Capital Foundation (2012, 2020), was a Hub Site Representative for the National Dance Project, and on the U.S. curatorial team for the National Performance Network’s Performing Arts Asia, and Performing Americas Projects.
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BOOKING & MANAGEMENT
George Lugg :: george@catalystdance.com :: +1 213-446-9556
