(The following was submitted as a "you be the critic" letter from Anchorage choreographer/dancer Courtland Weaver.)
Pas des trois: Joel Pickard (l) and James Everest (r, Johnson's husband) dance with her as well as supplying the music. They'll also presented post-performance concerts in Anchorage and will when the piece is presented in Homer, Oct. 16-18.
Alaska born and Minneapolis based choreographer/performing artist Emily Johnson wrote, directed and performed in “The Thank-You Bar” at Out North. I attended the 9 pm show on Friday, October 9. Before the show began, we were invited to visit an exhibit in an adjacent gallery entitled “This Is Displacement”, curated by Ms Johnson and Carolyn Anderson. The exhibit’s perspective of questioning what culture is, why is it important and whom is entitled to lay claim to it set a tone that carried into the theatre.

The space was divided in two halves with two rows of chairs in the center, musical instruments at one end and empty space at the other. Roughly 20 of us were offered the chairs or cushions on the floor. Joel Pickard and James Everest, musicians and composers of the work, alternately entered, played a sequence from a variety of instruments which were in turn recorded and played back in a loop, layering the sound and creating a new perspective with each additional track. This, it turns out, was a completely fitting metaphor for the entire work; how memories are made, stored, brought back and how those memories are distorted, hidden or clarified by our continued life experience, and how our personal experience adds to the culture of our ancestors and affects that of our descendents.

Emily Johnson is an engaging performer. Her movement is direct, focused and rhythmic, relying on form and shape to define its pattern and continuity. Add in some understated physical prowess, a descent nearly to the floor on one leg with the other leg stretched in front of her that appeared to be effortless, and her training and choreographic discipline are obvious. Once local dancer Chris Reintsma joined her, the basic vocabulary for the work we’d seen was clearly defined.

Mr. Pickard and Mr. Everest created original music that was at once subtle and driving. It never overpowered the performance of the dance (both danced a trio waltz with Ms. Johnson) and was key in connecting one section of the dance to the next. Again, the layering of familiar things in new ways was vital. A wonderful moment was when the trio stood shoulder to shoulder facing us and sang “I Fall to Pieces” with nothing moving but the big toe on Emily’s left foot, which was tapping in time to the song while the complex wail of our collective past screamed in a back room somewhere.

“The Thank-You Bar” relies heavily on Ms. Johnson’s storytelling. Particularly moving was the final section of the work, where she sits in a child’s wading pool filled with leaves and surrounded by us and relates the story of the Blackfish and her brother’s need to study it. So many images were imparted and posed, that I wished for just a few more moments of something silent to arrange and contemplate them by.

The visual elements of the show were inventive and useful. The musicians’ shirts loaned an air of formality and nostalgia, and the donning of her Que-ana Bar down vest was an excellent touch. I particularly liked her use of movement detecting lights, flashlights and the hand written signs, some telling us things we know, some things we couldn’t know, and all pointing out what we eventually should know.

The main question this evening left me with involved these cultural memories and the institutionalization thereof: if something is repeated often enough by enough people over enough time, is it truth? or at least close enough to truth that we can base critical judgments by it?

At the bottom of the program Ms. Johnson says “As for the truths and abstractions in this piece: I can only speak of what I actually know.”

For myself, I know that I hope that she comes back to Alaska often so I can follow this young artist through many more years and many more of her creations.