Emily Johnsonis an artist who makes body-based work. Originally from Alaska, she is of Yup’ik decent and is based in New York City. Since 1998 she has created work that considers the experience of sensing and seeing performance. Her dances function as installations, engaging audiences within, through, and into a space and environment — relating to place via land, history, and role in community. Emily is trying to make a world where performance is part of life; where performance is an integral connection to each other, our environment, our stories, our past, present, and future. A 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, Johnson is the recipient of a New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie) and a 2014 Doris Duke Artist Award. Her work is supported by Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, Creative Capital, MAP Fund, a Joyce Award, the McKnight Foundation, and The Doris Duke Residency to Build Demand for the Arts. Johnson was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota 2013–2014 and an inaugural 2014 Fellow at the Robert Rauschenberg Residency. Johnson’s written work has been published and commissioned by Dance Research Journal (University of Cambridge Press); SFMOMA; Transmotion Journal, University of Kent; Movement Research Journal; Pew Center for Arts and Heritage; and the recently published compilation, Imagined Theaters (Routledge), by Daniel Sack. Then a Cunning Voice and A Night We Spend Gazing at Stars premieres in Lenapehoking (NYC) with PS122 on Randall's Island and will tour to Chicago, San Francisco, and Narrm (Melbourne, Australia)
Alex Fialhois a Brooklyn-based curator and arts writer. He is a frequent contributor to Artforum, and Programs Director at Visual AIDS, where he facilitates art projects and conversations around both the history and immediacy of the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic. Melissa Levin is currently Vice President, Artists, Estates and Foundations, Art Agency, Partners and recent former Vice President of Cultural Programs at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC). Together, Fialho and Levin co-manage The Michael Richards Estate and have co-curated two exhibitions of the work of Michael Richards (1963-2001) in NYC: Michael Richards: Tar Baby vs. St. Sebastian, on view at Francis M. Naumann Fine Art from September 8–November 17, 2017, and Michael Richards: Winged, on view in summer 2016 at LMCC's Arts Center at Governors Island, and referred to by Holland Cotter in The New York Times as "the most moving show I've seen this summer." For LMCC, Fialho and Levin's additional co-curatorial credits include the Creative Insider's Guide to Lower Manhattan; (Counter)Public Art, Intervention & Performance in Lower Manhattan from 1978-1993;and Trisha Brown: Embodied Practice and Site-Specificity.
Sacha Yanow is an NYC-based performance artist and actor. She has performed in theater, film and dance works by artists including Karen Finley, Julie Tolentino, Laura Parnes, Katy Pyle, Theater of a Two-Headed Calf, and Sarah Michelson. Her own performance work has been supported through residencies at The Field and Yaddo, and presented at Dixon Place, the Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Movement Research and The Kitchen. Yanow currently serves as the Director of Art Matters Foundation and previously worked at The Kitchen as the Director of Operations. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the William Esper Studio’s Actor Training Program.
