Northern Michigan University's CO/LAB Dance Company will present a concert anchored by the premiere of “Love is a Burning Thing: A choreography tribute to Johnny Cash.” CO/LAB artistic director and assistant professor Karina Johnson choreographed the contemporary ballet piece, which uses several familiar Cash songs to showcase how people experience relationships in their lives. The production is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, Jan. 29-31, with a sensory-friendly Theatre for All matinee at 1 p.m. Saturday.
“A lot of times, dance can feel unrelatable to the general population, so one of my main goals with this company is to get the community more involved,” Johnson said. “There are a lot of Johnny Cash fans out there. My hope is that by blending dance with music many people recognize, it will be more relatable. The ballet isn't about him, but it uses his songs to creatively express the emotional aspects of human relationships. There is a lot more to enjoy in this production. It will be an entertaining evening for a wide audience, even those who haven't danced or attended a dance performance before.”
The Cash songs featured in the ballet include “Ring of Fire,” “I Walk the Line,” “Man in Black,” “Hurt” and “I've Been Everywhere.” The latter will be accompanied by a designed semi-truck set piece.
Johnson said the first ballet she learned as a professional was a contemporary piece accompanied by Patsy Cline songs. She began listening to a variety of music from that era and was inspired to incorporate some into her own work.
“That was 15 years ago, and everything has aligned to the point I can finally achieve what I envisioned,” she said. “I'm now in a role where I choreograph, and because of the rapid growth in our department, it's exciting that we're drawing extremely talented dancers who are capable of not only the complicated technical elements and technique, but can compute how to put steps together. It's not just me trying to problem-solve, but the students having input on what they want to do. It's a more collaborative and fun way to create dance.”
Assistant professor Chris Houston will also premiere his work, “INIT: LOOP” (code for “initialize loop”), inspired by the ‘80s influence on much of the current pop music he has been hearing on students' playlists. He choreographed the piece to “Blue Monday” by the UK band New Order, which the Scotland native calls a “quintessential” ‘80s track.
“It came out in 1983,” he added. “I did some research and discovered that 1983 also marked the release of the world's first computer video game. Fast forward from that, and we've become such a digitalized society with these smaller devices giving us so much power in our hands. I decided to sail this new wave of appreciation for the ‘80s a bit and create a dance with a digital commercialization theme. It's set in a big city, with lots of workers, glam punk and ‘80s fashion. It's done in collaboration with the students, highlighting as many of their strengths as possible.”
The roughly hour-long program will also include another Johnson piece previously staged at the North Coast Dance Festival a couple of years ago, but featuring new dancers, and three student-choreographed pieces.
Tickets for the evening shows are: $25 for the general public; $22 for NMU employees, seniors and military; $15 for youth; and $5 for NMU students. They can be purchased at tickets.nmu.edu. The Theatre for All performance is "pay as you may."
