Today we’d like to introduce you to Holly Johnston.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
As a young child, I loved to whirl, fall, flip, whip and tumble. I was always moving my body. It was the most natural way of expressing myself, it just made total sense to me, while sitting down and being still seemed silly. I was a dedicated gymnast from age 5-age 10. I took some dance classes for a couple of years in my early adolescence at a local studio in Ventura, CA where I grew up. I loved dancing but even at this young age, I did not understand why the size of my body was evaluated more often than my actual skill as a dancer. At 13 years old, after being weighed on a scale in the back room of the studio, I decided to leave the studio and to leave dancing behind. The focus on my body size had rendered the experience of dancing meaningless. I did not dance again until I entered college as a dance major at Loyola Marymount University. This program articulated dance and dancing as expressions of being human, not as tyrannical thinness in tights. We worked with great rigor, we pushed our bodies to new limits, we were drenched by the sweat of our efforts…and our dignity was wholly embraced by our Chair, Judy Scalin. This experience with dance as an expression of being human has shaped my work for more than 20 years. In 1997, after my undergraduate work, I was artistically entrenched with Tongue Contemporary Dance, Artistic Director Stephanie Gilliland. Stephanie’s artistry, visionary choreography, and fierce physicality informed my development as a performer, choreographer, and movement maker. After Tongue disbanded in early 2005 I decided to start my own dance company, Ledges and Bones, in October of that same year. I continue to create dances with Ledges and Bones and have toured nationally with my collaborators. I have an MFA in Choreography from Jacksonville University.
Please tell us about your art.
I work as a dance educator, lecturer, guest artist and freelance choreographer. I am a somatic specialist and work with individual clients through my practice-Integrated Human Bodywork. I dance for a living, this is what I do in the world, but who I am in the world is a human body dancing her aliveness through space and time. I create dances. I create spaces. I create kinetic worlds for bodies to inhabit or to just visit for a brief moment. I script movement poems that share stories from the lived experiences of bodies. I am in awe of the tenacity of persons who fight again and again against a system of oppression that has unjustly marked our bodies by race, gender, economic and educational status. Dancing is a birth rite. Our bodies are sacred. Our dancing bodies are forces of nature fleeting and forever, visible and invisible, tangible and intangible. We are mighty and vulnerable. We are insightful and ignorant. We can learn and unlearn. We are imperfect and beautiful. We are alive, we are human…shall we dance together?
Do you have any advice for other artists? Any lessons you wished you learned earlier?
Say ‘yes’ to learning. Dedicate yourself to practice. Be rigorous, be entitled to nothing…work is its own reward.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
I recently shared a new work, Skin Leaves, at ODC Theater in SF in April 2018. I am currently incubating my next choreographic project and am still too early in the process to announce performance dates. You can see more of my work at www.hollyjohnston.org. This website also contains information about my bodywork practice Integrated Human Bodywork. If you are interested in supporting my work you can make a donation through our fiscal sponsor, Dancer’s Group/Ledges and Bones.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.hollyjohnston.org
- Email: ledgesandbones@gmail.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/holly.johnston.777
Image Credit:
Taso Papadakis, Rober Salas, Denise Leitner
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