Northrop and Emily Johnson Receive $50,000 Joyce Award for SHORE, Set to Premiere June 2014

Northrop at the University of Minnesota received a $50,000 Joyce Foundation Award to commission Emily Johnson's SHORE, set to premiere in June of 2014, soon after the grand re-opening of Northrop. The Joyce Foundation yesterday announced Northrop as one of four recipients of the 2013 Joyce Awards, a prestigious honor that commissions new works from artists of color.

Each artist and nonprofit organization will receive a $50,000 award to support their project and the process of engaging people in its creation. Winners were selected on the merit of their artistic idea, the quality of their body of work, and an artistic process that offers opportunities for innovative community interaction. Joyce Award winners will present works that challenge and engage surrounding communities. Winners' projects will take place in Chicago's Grant Park as well as Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, and will join 10 years of winners spanning six states, energizing new audiences and yielding 35 new works of art.

2013 Winners include:

Emily Johnson is collaborating with University of Minnesota's Northrop to present SHORE, the third and final work in a trilogy of Johnson's performances. This multi-day event integrates dance, storytelling, volunteerism and a shared feast blending native traditions and contemporary dance. The work is timed to coincide with the Dance/USA conference and the grand re-opening of the university's state-of-the-art preeminent academic, cultural, and performing arts center in June 2014.

Northrop is also copresenting Niicugni, the second piece in this trilogy by Emily Johnson/Catalyst on April 21, 2013 at The O'Shaughnessy at St. Catherine University as part of the Women of Substance dance series. Niicugni ? the word ? is a directive to pay attention, to listen. Niicugni the dance quietly compels such attentiveness through its layering of multiple dances, live music, stories, and histories. Housed within a light/sound installation of hand-made, functional fish-skin lanterns, Niicugni asks - can we pay attention to the ways we do and do not listen to our bodies, histories, impulses and environments? Equating the molecules of land with the cells that comprise our bodies, Niicugni is also about how land, or plce, like our bodies is a repository of past, present, and future. It holds, at once, myth and truth, magic and evil, hope and death, laughter and monsters, as well as ancestral histories and cultural identities. In the moment of each performance, Niicugni wonders if we can recognize the importance of everyone in the room? Can we see ourselves as part of the whole? Can we absorb that everyone we see is here now and will be gone?

Eduardo Zuñiga is collaborating with Luna Negra Dance Theater to present AGORA, a free-to-the-public multimedia dance, video, and public art piece in Grant Park. His work will be built on Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz's piece "Agora," a permanent installation in the park. The artist will present sixteen onsite performances over three days in June 2013, documenting the experience on video for later use in Luna Negra's season.

Reginald Baylor is collaborating with ART Milwaukee to present TypeFace, a series of outdoor paintings affixed to boarded-up abandoned homes, store fronts and buildings in some of Milwaukee's most blighted neighborhoods. Beginning in October 2013, Baylor will collect community-generated stories and then make new paintings reflective of community dialogue. A website has been created to digitally document every step of the creative process, from community engagement to production of the final works.

Seitu Jones is collaborating with Public Art St. Paul to present The Community Meal, a dinner stretching a half-mile-long across the city of St. Paul where 2,000 participants will dine. Exploring ideas of food deserts, consumption, marketing and production of food, this happening aims to bring people together for dynamic dialogue and exchange. With support of local urban farmers, restaurants, chefs and featuring performances of spoken word artists, the meal will take place in September 2014 and will be the culmination of Jones' yearlong "listening project" with residents within the St. Paul area.

Additional information on each artist and their project is available at The Joyce Foundation's website where artists and art institutions are invited to learn more and network with their peers in the field. Additionally, in celebration of ten years of the awards, the Foundation has created a video showing how the commissions received by previous artists have come to life over the years.

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