In late September, Assistant Professor Kristi Johnson, Ed.D., will head to the Blue Ridge Mountains to create a dance film.
Thanks to a recently awarded North Carolina Choreographic Fellowship, Johnson will gain nine days at Trillium Arts, an artist’s retreat on 22 rural acres. Along with three dancers of her choice, the fellowship will include lodgings, rehearsal space and a $1,000 honorarium.
The film will be based on a poem by Jaki Shelton Green, the poet laureate of North Carolina since 2018.
“The poem is based on the Black woman’s ability to persevere and rise from her ashes despite obstacles, oppression, and racism,” Johnson said.
This is Johnson’s second time behind the camera. In 2021, the Justice Theater Project asked her to direct a film based on Green’s album, “The River Speaks of Thirst.” That film has since been shown at six film festivals.
“I did the casting and directing,” said Johnson. “I got bit by the film bug.”
Dancing Since she was Breathing
At North Carolina Central University (NCCU), Johnson is better known as the NCCU director of dance. She established and directs the dance minor program, oversees the dance education concentration, and founded and is the director of the NCCU Repertory Dance Company and the NCCU Flight dance team, which performs during halftime at NCCU basketball games.
“I’ve been dancing since I’ve been breathing,” said Kristi Johnson. “However, I started formally training when I was 13.”
She grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she studied dance at Scotlandville Magnet High School and later attended Southern University and A&M College, a public historically Black university.
At Southern University, she joined the Fabulous Dancing Dolls dance team for four years, serving as captain and choreographer for two years.
The next several years passed quickly as she divided her time between teaching, training and dancing. She taught jazz and modern dance at Louisiana State University and earned a Master of Fine Arts in modern dance at Texan Christian University in 2003. She taught at Jacksonville University, Texas Christian University and Douglas Anderson School of the Arts.
She moved to the Triangle area in 2011, when her husband was hired at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and started the nonprofit, The Triangle Dance Project, to increase visibility for emerging dancers. She met someone who encouraged her to meet the director of dance at NCCU
In 2014, she was hired to teach one class at NCCU. Her workload increased over time.
In 2016, the longtime director of dance retired, and Johnson took over. Johnson pursued a doctorate in kinesiology, which she completed in 2021.
Over the years, Johnson has choreographed at least 40 dances, a process in which she collaborates with her dancers.
Her inspirations usually derive from poetry, human interaction, or social issues affecting American contemporary society.
“Once I find the inspiration, I choose dancers based on how well their movement style aligns with the aesthetic of the piece,” Johnson said.
She next talks to the dancers about what the dance is about. For a dance performed at the North Carolina Museum of Art about how Black women grieve, release and hope, Johnson spoke to her dancers about grieving and what inspires their hope for the future.
“That’s an individual experience,” she said. “Then we drew movement from those experiences.”
To be clear, it is not about the music. Her choreography might be designed in silence.
“I don’t like the music to tell me how to move,” Johnson said.
