INTERVIEW WITH CHOREOGRAPHER DARLA JOHNSON

 


Darla Johnson is a choreographer, teacher, and author was the co-artistic director of Johnson/Long Dance. Johnson founded the Austin Community College dance department and has received three teaching excellence awards. She is the co-director of The JUSTICE Project, a collaborative performance work with co-director Nicole Wesley, that has been presented in Atlanta, Austin, San Marcos, and in Bedford and Newcastle, England. Her most recent publication is as co-author of a chapter published in The Young are Making Their World, Essays on the Power of Youth Culture which documents the process and impact of creating The JUSTICE Project with dancers at the McCallum Fine Arts Academy in Austin. She is a poet, dancer, maker of dances, teacher, published author, gardener, lover of life.

Her dance film Where you’ve nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them takes is title from Cormac MacCarthy’s, The Road. It is a collaboration between the students in the Sophomore Performance class, Jeremy Brown, and Darla. For eight weeks on ZOOM, this class investigated social and spiritual concerns through reading, writing, and movement. Some of the topics investigated were resistance versus readiness, conversion versus diversion, yearning and merging. The students incorporated movements that included swaying, rocking, miming gestures, and the game of rock-paper-scissors. Students made 30-second videos based on these explorations. Then Darla discussed flow, content and context with Jeremy, who works his magic in the editing. These beautiful collaborations never cease to amaze; the result is always more than any of one involved could imagine.

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