Vermont Performance Lab Pairs Native American Artists from Alaska and Vermont for Artist Exchange

Jan. 7, 2011 - PRLog -- Contact:     Luke Stafford, Mondo Mediaworks
       phone:  802-451-0828
       email: luke@mondomediaworks.com



Weaving Traditional with the Contemporary

Vermont Performance Lab brings together two Native American Artists from Alaska and Vermont for Artist Exchange and Fish Skin Sewing Workshop


Guilford, Vermont—  On January 11 Vermont Performance Lab welcomes the return of Alaska-born, Minneapolis-based choreographer Emily Johnson to Guilford for a week-long residency to continue the development of her newest performance work, “Niicugni” (Listen). Johnson will host a workshop, participate in an artist-to-artist exchange, visit community schools and lead a discussion at Brattleboro’s public library.

The focus of the residency will be on engaging various members of the community in the craft of fish skin sewing, a practice Johnson is employing to create an installation of lanterns made from the skin of salmon.  Johnson will be joined by Judy Dow, an Abenaki artist who has been making baskets for 40 years. Johnson is also inviting sewers from the community to be part of a fish skin sewing workshop.  

“Niicugni” is the second in a trilogy of works related to Johnson’s native Yup'ik heritage and represents the confluence of personal experience, cultural tradition and contemporary performance work. It brings to life the very real issues around displacement of native people and, through performance, invites audiences into the dialogue.

Johnson began working on the fish skin installation earlier this summer in Alaska while learning the Athabaskan craft of fish skin sewing. Fish skin sewing is an Alaskan native art form whereby the skin is prepared, dried, and sewn to create clothing, functional vessels, and art. The installation/set design for “Niicugni” will be made of transparent fish-skin lanterns with audio speakers inside. In the final presentation of the work, the fish-skin vessels will hang from the ceiling in a pattern covering the entire stage area and will have the capability to lift and lower during the performance. Audience members will walk through the installation as they enter and exit the theater.

As part of the week-long residency in Guilford, Vermont Performance Lab has organized a number of activities to engage the community in Johnson’s work.  Activities include a Lab Talk with Johnson, Dow and cultural anthropologist and Marlboro College professor Carol Hendrickson at the Brooks Memorial Library, artist visits to the Marlboro Elementary School and the Guilford Central School and a fish skin workshop and sewing bee.


January 12: Lab Talk:

“Embodying Native Culture: The Dance of Tradition and the Contemporary,”

A discussion co-presented by Brooks Memorial Library and Vermont Performance Lab.  Emily Johnson, a native Alaskan choreographer, and Judy Dow, a master basket maker of Abenaki descent, will join Carol Hendrickson, Marlboro College Professor of Anthropology to explore the challenges, rewards and politics facing Native American artists who draw on traditional themes to make contemporary work.

7PM @ Brooks Memorial Library, 224 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT

free and open to the public


January 12-15: Artist-to-Artist Exchange

Two Native American art makers, Emily Johnson of Yup’ik heritage and Judy Dow of Abenaki heritage, will come together in the studios of Guilford Sound for a 4-day artist exchange to share practices around basket making and fish skin sewing.


January 13-17: Fish Skin Sewing Workshop & Sewing Bee

For her newest work Emily Johnson has learned the art of fish skin sewing in order to make an installation of salmon-skin lanterns.  She will teach the traditional Alaskan craft, and community members will help make lanterns.  There is no workshop fee. Participants must commit to making one lantern for “Niicugni” and in exchange will get to take home some salmon. Advance registration required and space is limited.

Please contact Sara Coffey by January 3 at 802-579-3766 or sara@vermontperformancelab.com


January 13 & 14: in-school residencies at Marlboro Elementary School and Guilford Central School  

During a week-long residency in Guilford with Vermont Performance Lab, Judy Dow and Emily Johnson will put the fish skin sewing aside for a morning to make visits to two community schools to share their knowledge and expertise of Abenaki and Native Alaskan handcrafts.  Emily will focus on the craft of fish skin sewing, a Native Alaskan activity while Judy Dow will make a presentation and lead a hands-on workshop on Native Technology in the context of the Abenaki.



The residency activities are made possible in part through grants from the Vermont Council on the Arts and the New England Foundation for the Arts Native Arts Program.

For event updates visit www.vermontperformancelab.com


About Vermont Performance Lab
Working with the notion that the rural communities of Southern Vermont can be a fertile laboratory for incubating new contemporary performance works, Vermont Performance Lab founded its Lab Program in 2006. Since then, each year VPL partners up with other organizations, schools and programs in the region to share resources and promote a two-way exchange between visiting artists and the community.

Emily Johnson is a director/choreographer/curator, originally from Alaska and currently based in Minneapolis. Since 1998 she has created work about the experience of sensing AND seeing performance; her pieces often function as installations, engaging audiences within and through a space and environment – sights, sounds, smells – as well as a place's architecture, history, and role in community. She works to blur distinctions between performance and daily life and to create work that reveals and respects multiple perspectives. This allows for the possibility of multiple meanings - with a goal of stimulating reflection and emotional empathy between performer and audience, and between audience members. Her work has toured across the USA and in Montreal and Russia. She is a 2010 McKnight Fellow and was a 2009 MANCC Choreographer Fellow.

Emily grew up in her native Alaska playing basketball and running long distance. At 18 she left rural living, moved to Minneapolis, and quite by accident, learned to become a choreographer and performer. For the past 16 years, city living has swirled around her, dragging her, literally, away from the physical space of Alaska and the summer and fall family rituals of hunting and fishing, then smoking, drying, canning and freezing food. She is pulled back, conceptually, when Midwesterners and others ask her if she lived in an igloo (myth), if she has an Eskimo name (no), and if it is OK to say the word "Eskimo" (it is, but only sometimes). She is of Yup'ik descent, though she does not speak the language – yet. Emotionally, she is tied to the landscape of South Central Alaska where she was born and to the Yukon-Kuskokwim delta, where her father's family is from. 



Judy Dow resides in Essex Junction and is a professional artist who has been making baskets for 40 years. Her baskets are currently on a three-year national museum tour. Dow holds a bachelor’s degree in American Indian Studies and received the 2004 Governor’s Heritage Award for Outstanding Educator for her work in teaching educators and children about the science, math, history and art of Native American people through workshops and artist-in-residence programs. She has served on a number of boards, including the American Indian Scouting Association, Gedakina, an organization dedicated to strengthening the cultural knowledge and identity of eastern Native Americans, and is a past director of the Dawnland Center. A deep love of the land has led her into developing programs that are both experiential and interactive. Judy is of Abenaki and French Canadian descent, and has made Vermont her life-long home.

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It is Vermont Performance Lab's mission to support the creation and development of new work of contemporary dance and music.