Emily Johnson is a director/choreographer/curator, originally from Alaska and currently based in Minneapolis. Her company, Catalyst, has performed since 1998. Johnson works to make deliberate meaning, random association, and powerful movement the essential aspects of dance pieces that are thought-provoking and entertaining.

Marked by fiercely intuitive, minimalist, pedestrian-bent choreography, her dances include commissions by institutions, theaters and colleges throughout middle america, including the Walker Art Center, Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts, Three Legged Race, the Red Eye Theater, Macalester College, St. Olaf College, and the Walker Art Center and Southern Theater as part of Momentum, New Dance Works. Johnson has been presented by Franconia Sculpture Park, the ODC Theater in San Francisco, Velocity in Seattle, and the Southern Theater in Minneapolis as part of Scuba, a national touring dance network and has self-presented in numerous venues including Dance Theater Workshop in New York, the Red Eye Theater in Minneapolis, and the Que'Ana Bar in Clam Gulch, Alaska. She has embarked on performance projects in Montreal, Quebec; St. Petersburg, Russia; and Amsterdam, Netherlands and has toured her company to Alaska, California, Washington, Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota, Nebraska and New York. She has led movement workshops in Chicago, Minneapolis, Montreal and through the VIZIT Agency in St. Petersburg. Her repertory work has been set on the dance program students at Carleton College, Macalester College and the University of Minnesota.

Johnson is the recipient of numerous awards including a Bush Artist Fellowship (2004), Jerome Artist Fellowship (2001, 2002, 2003, 2004), Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship (2001); her work is currently supported by the Puffin Foundation and the Elmer L. and Eleanor J. Andersen Foundation.

Her longtime collaborative efforts include work with composer JG Everest, videographer and editor Randy Kramer, lighting designer Heidi Eckwall and costumer Angie Vo. She is part of Local Strategy, a multidisciplinary art collective that investigates and animates public spaces through collaborative artistic effort. Local Strategy created "Landmark : 24 Hours at the StoneArch Bridge," an event that won "BestPublic Art Performance 2006" in the Minneapolis City Pages.

Embedded in the Minneapolis dance community, Johnson served as administrator for the dance and music improvisation series Mulch, held at Intermedia Arts for three years. She currently co-curates capture!, a dance film series at the Bryant Lake Bowl, produces the experimental dance series Windfarm @ Rogue Buddha, and serves on the board of Springboard for the Arts, a nonprofit arts organization working with the business needs and career goals of artists of all disciplines.

Johnson received her BFA summa cum laude in 1998 from the University of Minnesota where she was awarded the two-year Gertrude Lippincott Scholarship for creativity and the Waller Minority Scholarship for outstanding contribution to University.

In January, 2008 she will being a regular column, writing about creating and viewing contemporary dance, in the online zine, Mental Contagion.

Her writing on the cultural dance traditions of the Yup'ik Eskimo people of Alaska has been published in the Journal for the Anthropological Study of Human Movement.

Multi-instrumentalist/composer JG Everest (composer & music director) hails from Minneapolis where he has been a seminal figure in the vibrant music scene for 15 years, performing with a variety of projects and musicians, from rapper Slug of Atmosphere to Prince, as well as his own groups Lateduster, Sans Le Systeme, The Dijonettes and The Sensational Joint Chiefs. From 2002-04, Everest worked with electronic/multimedia pioneer Riz Maslen in her UK-based group, NEOTROPIC, co-writing and performing much of the 2004 album White Rabbits (MUSH.) Since 2002 Everest has been a close collaborator with choreographer Emily Johnson and Catalyst—writing and performing original scores for several performances around the U.S. and Canada with both Lateduster and as a solo artist. In recent years, he has come to utilize effects and looping pedals in creating multilayered compositions in real-time performances that allow him to create vast, expansive soundscapes as an individual performer, using guitar, keyboards, voice, percussion and samplers. In creating the soundscore for "Heat and Life," Everest incorporated sound samples of dancers' movement and various environments where the piece was created and performed (ocean beaches, glaciers, bogs, old factories and riverbanks) to infuse each performance with the audio imprints of those moments and meanings. He performs "Heat and Life" live, directly connecting the movement with sound and helping shape the drama as it unfolds, bringing each performance a powerful immediacy. Everest is also currently performing in Minneapolis groups Roma Di Luna & Vicious Vicious. For more information, go to: www.jgeverest.com.

Vanessa Voskuil, an enthusiastic Catalyst member from 1998 - 2005, has been residing in the Twin Cites area since graduating with a BFA in dance from the University of Minnesota in 2000. Catalyst works include Plain Old Andrea with a Gun, Move Through, Fair Luck, Close to Giving Up, If I Shut My Eyes-You Can Not See Me, Power Play, I Could Quit If I Wanted Too, and Heat and Life. Vanessa also performs regularly with Minneapolis-based dance companies Stuart Pimsler Dance & Theater, New and Slightly Used Dance by Matt Jensen, and The Live Action Set. Vanessa has also had her own choreographic work presented in the Isolated Acts Series (2004) at the Red Eye Theater and was a featured sight specific performance artist during the Best Feet Forward Series at the Southern Theater (2004). Other productions include Red Eye Theater's popular performance weekend, Works-In-Progress (2003), and the diverse multidisciplinary theater series, Works/Plays, at the Rogue Buddha Gallery (2003). Other Choreographic undertakings are Franz Kafka's The Trial by Steven Berkoff at the Red Eye Theater, (2003) and Once Upon a Mattress at Bismarck State College (2003).