University of Minnesota Dance Program

This deeply collaborative two-year research project engages Emily Johnson, a leading Indigenous activist—and University of Minnesota alum—in a co-designed, multi-scalar initiative that demonstrates the transformative possibilities of performance practices rooted in justice and the civil and sovereign rights of humxn and more-than-humxn kin. The project, which centers the body as an essential medium for addressing complex and charged issues and questions, will include multiple performance happenings created and produced in collaboration with the Northrop, George Morrison Center for Indigenous Arts, and The Department of Theatre Arts & Dance; a hybrid undergraduate course built around Emily Johnson and her dance company Catalyst's Decolonization Rider; and a symposium created in thought partnership with Indigenous scholars, artists, and activists as an active process of re-worlding. This application supports year one activities.