Contributor
A native Cape Bretoner, Molly Johnson is a graduate of the School of Toronto Dance Theatre. Molly works with such amazing people as Susie Burpee, Nova Bhattacharya and Heidi Strauss. She spends her summers performing in parks across Ontario and beyond with Dusk Dances and collaborates regularly with Forcier Stage Works. Molly dances for Montréal’s Le Carré des Lombes, interpreting Danièle Desnoyers’ acclaimed works across Canada and abroad. She was a 2012 recipient of an Ontario Arts Council Residency grant, a 2013 Finalist for the Toronto Arts Foundation’s Emerging Artist Award and there is a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Performance sitting on her desk. She has always written. thisismollyjohnson.com
Photo by Lauren Bunton
Molly Johnson's Work
The Why and How
In Threes and The Fall at the Toronto Fringe Festival By Molly JohnsonMolly Johnson reviews two selection from the 2018 Toronto Fringe Festival: Colleen Snell’s The Fall and Alison Daley, Half Second Echo & Tracey Norman’s In Threes.
Posted August 9, 2018In Review
By Valeria Nunziato, James Oscar, Rachel Silver Maddock, Aparita Bhandari, Philip Szporer, Fawnda Mithrush, Molly Johnson, Mark Mann, Grace Wells-Smith Volume 21, Issue 4The Dance Current reflects on a year of dance criticism, by placing image and text together
When Representation (Almost) Becomes the Norm
Contemporaneity 2.0 at Progress Festival By Molly JohnsonContemporaneity 2.0 is a curating and presenting series with an aim of “unsettling the widespread use of ‘contemporary’ as describing European and white American theatrical dance.” The series opened with Gitanjali Kolanad’s Gandhari. Using Gandhari, a mythological character from the Mahabharata and the martial art form of kalaripayatuu as dual channels of influence and expression, the work is an examination of loss and its effects on the body.
Posted April 4, 2018
A Cosmic Kind of Minimalism
Dreamwalker Dance Company’s Dual Light and a call to criticality By Molly JohnsonWhen introducing her new work, Andrea Nann is direct and affecting and serves to recast the stage as an “outer space” – a place between celestial bodies and also human ones. The work is part of DanceWorks 40th anniversary season.
Posted November 6, 2017
The Shape-Shifting Serpent
Aanmitaagzi draws from an historic Anishinaabe story to narrate contemporary issues By Molly Johnson Serpent People Presented by Coleman, Lemieux & CompagnieSerpent People, takes its inspiration from an historic Anishinaabe story, The Black Sturgeon of Nipissing. While this story is an Anishinaabe one, the performers are artists from a range of communities, nations, clans and ancestries. The ensemble is appealingly egalitarian, a cast of varying ages, identities and skill sets who together create an image of real community – people working together across differences. The mythology of the serpent as shape-shifter and realm-crosser that Serpent People draws on is apparent in these artists, who shift from scene to scene adapting to fulfill roles foreign and familiar.
Posted June 30, 2017
Rallying for Change
The past, present and future of the status of the independent dance artist in Canada By Molly JohnsonHow can we improve the working and living conditions of independent dance artists in Canada? Thirty years ago three dance artists founded the Canadian Alliance of Dance Artists to educate and advocate on behalf of dancers. How have working conditions of dancers changed since then? And what are the pressing issues that need to be addressed in the present?
Posted November 10, 2016The Status of the Independent Dance Artist
By Molly Johnson Volume 19, Issue 5How can we improve the working and living conditions of independent dance artists in Canada? Thirty years ago, three dance artists founded the Canadian Alliance of Dance Artists to educate and advocate on behalf of dancers. How have working conditions of dancers changed since then? And what are the pressing issues that need to be addressed in the present?
Weaving the Threads of Collaboration: Ten Years of The Whole Shebang
By Molly JohnsonThrough Dreamwalker Dance Company, eight editions of The Whole Shebang have been produced in Toronto. And while Andrea Nann continues to work as a dancer, creator and teacher in a variety of contexts, this ever-evolving production has become her company’s signature event.
Posted November 24, 2015
