MOMENTS after walking into a Chelsea cafe the choreographer Emily Johnson accepted a compliment for her vintage black-and-white brocade coat. But there was a catch. “You do,” she said as her blue eyes twinkled mischievously, “have to take it off awkwardly.”

Emily Johnson at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, where her work will appear.

Ms. Johnson slipped her arms out of the sleeves, lowered the fabric to the floor and stepped out of it.

“It’s really a dress,” she said.

Fittingly, Ms. Johnson’s richly detailed dance-installations are full of surprises too. A Minneapolis artist originally from Alaska, Ms. Johnson returns to New York to present “Niicugni,” the second piece in a trilogy of works related to her Yupik heritage, at the Baryshnikov Arts Centerbeginning Wednesday. The presentation is part of Performance Space 122’s Coil Festival.

So much has happened between then and now. The usher told Baryshnikov (oh look, it’s Baryshnikov) how much she loves “the space.” The critics clustered on the sidewalk, debating what they liked. (For me it was “the dancing.”) Walking, waiting, talking; waiting, parting, walking. The theater of the to-and-from. The spectacle of everything that, officially, is not one.

I saw Emily Johnson’s The Thank-you Bar in fall 2011 at NYLA. The show began with a walk through the backstage area of the theater, signs mischievously posted along the way with incongruous labels: a white brick wall held one that read “Vaux Swifts nest in this beam.” We entered the stage floor to take one of the 30 seats available in the limited capacity show, sitting either in chairs or cushions on the floor. Our seats, located in the middle of the space, rather than along an edge, meant we were surrounded by the show’s installation, which through its simple construction prevented this immersion from overwhelming. The remainder of the performance—roughly an hour’s worth of interweaving story, music, movement, and light—continued with this intimate yet nimble quality that created a real sense of gentleness that was as soothing as it was powerful.

See if you can you snare a ticket to tonight's concluding presentation of Niicugni--an interdisciplinary, movement-based work by Minneapolis-based Emily Johnson/Catalyst.

Presented at Baryshnikov Arts Center as part of PS 122's COIL fest, the 70-minute work offers rich storytelling through poetic words, movement, soundscape and scenic design--all reflecting the values inherent to Johnson's Central Alaskan Yup'ik heritage. 

THE NATIVE PEOPLE OF AUSTRALIA LIVE WITHIN a phenomenology they call Dreamtime. At moments, Dreamtime may encompass the linear time of everyday life, otherwise known as “one-thing-after-another” time. But Dreamtime, or the “all-at-once,” is much more, too: a web in which the culture’s creation stories, generations of ancestors and their influence, and life and death and power co-exist in an infinite confluence of past, present and future.

In Western cultures, we consider our everyday awake time “real” and the hours in which we sleep our time for dreaming. Australia’s native people believe, conversely, that Dreamtime is what’s most real, a state in which all time is simultaneous and in a continual, natural and universal process of creation. All minds participate in Dreamtime, they believe, willingly (consciously) or not.

How do you listen to the quiet? This is no simple question, at least when it comes to describing “Niicugni” by Emily Johnson, choreographer and artistic director for Catalyst. The subtly beautiful and occasionally mystifying work had its local premiere Sunday night at The O’Shaughnessy at St. Catherine University in a co-presentation with Northrop Dance at the University of Minnesota.

Director / Choreographer Emily Johnson talks about Niicugni (nee-CHOOG-nee), the second part of her trilogy that began with The Thank-you Bar.

Why do you refer to your work as "performance installation", as opposed to "dance"?
The work I do is definitely rooted in the body – in dance. But I have a very broad definition of
what that means: our bodies, even in "stillness," dance. There's the blood moving through us, our hearts pumping, our cells dividing and growing and dying, the synapses in our brain firing...so we dance, always. And it isn't performance, but it is (to me), dance. And I think that is a beautiful thing. However, there's this problem with the word, too... it can direct expectations. I don't dislike the word, and sometimes I do use it. It is just not inclusive enough.
My hope is that "performance installation" is inclusive: of dance, of many methods of
communication (visual, aural, architectural, historical, implied), of all forms of performance and
specifically of the performances I make. Installation is really about how I try to immerse a place
and audiences within the context of a particular show. I want to engage many senses: have sound come from all over, offer something you might hold or take care of, something you might smell - it's all to encourage a broad way of paying attention to the place we are in and the people we are near.

Choreographer Emily Johnson speaks with writer/director/actor Ain Gordon about Niicugni, co-presented by Performance Space 122 and Baryshnikov Arts Center as part of COIL 2013.  Niicugni is part 2 of her trilogy of works, which include The Thank-you Bar, winner of a 2012 Bessie Award for Outstanding Performance, and part 3, SHORE, to premiere in 2014. She discusses her research around the act of gathering, her Alaska upbringing, storytelling in performance, the impact of physical land and cultural heritage, and the importance of paying attention.