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LOS ANGELES– Umyuangvigkaq: Yaanga, Long Table Durational Sewing Bee
May 6, 2018 @ 8:00 am – 2:00 pm
Free
LOS ANGELES– SUNDAY, MAY 6, 2018 “Open dialogue and powerful moments of realization…” —Hyperallergic ORGANIZED WITH EMILY JOHNSON/CATALYST Umyuangvigkaq is “a place to gather ideas,” and this free Long Table and Durational Sewing Bee gathers Indigenous thinkers, artists and allies to engage in generous activity, and to explore the intersections of contemporary Indigenous and American cultures. Led by Emily Johnson (Yup’ik), Karyn Recollet (Cree) and Indigenous women leaders from the US, Canada and more, the Long Table is a space to center Indigenous voices in the art world and beyond. New topics unfold throughout the event, inviting personal reflections and critical interventions, as well as storytelling and other First Nations knowledge forms. Umyuangvigkaq: Yaanga invites all participants to listen, to speak, and to express themselves through sewn messages on quilt squares—contributing to a more than 4,000-square-foot quilt that becomes a blanket for audiences around the country, as part of Johnson’s all-night performance gathering Then a Cunning Voice and A Night We Spend Gazing at Stars.
3–9PM // ACE HOTEL DTLA, SEGOVIA HALL 929 S Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90015 Los Angeles Performance Practice and the organizers acknowledge this gathering is held on the traditional lands of the Tongva people. We offer our gratitude to generations of elders, stewards of the land of Yaanga (Downtown Los Angeles).
// RSVP // This event is free. Reservations recommended. • • • Presented in conjunction with the Indigenous Choreographers at Riverside Gathering, hosted and co-directed by Jacqueline Shea Murphy and María Regina Firmino-Castillo, April 27 to May 6, 2018. Full program details at http://icr.ucr.edu. Made possible with generous support from Ace Hotel DTLA; the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) with funding from the California Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts; and California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, www.calhum.org. 
ABOUT EMILY JOHNSON Emily Johnson is an artist who makes body-based work. A Bessie Award winning choreographer and Guggenheim Fellow, she is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota and New York City. Originally from Alaska, she is of Yup’ik descent and since 1998 has created work that considers the experience of sensing and seeing performance. Her dances function as installations, engaging audiences within and through a space and environment—interacting with a place’s architecture, 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. Emily received 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. Emily 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. She is a current Mellon Foundation Choreography Fellow at Williams College. With her collaborators she recently completed the third in a trilogy of works: The Thank-you Bar, Niicugni, and SHORE. Her newest work is Then a Cunning Voice and a Night We Spend Gazing at Stars, an all-night outdoor performance gathering that takes place on and near eighty-four community-made hand-sewn quilts.
