Northrop Presents
Emily Johnson / Catalyst: Overflow Radio
Friday, Oct. 9-Monday, Oct. 12
Noon-6 p.m. Each Day
Onstage Seating
Pick Your Price
2026-27 Northrop Season
The heart of a 2026-27 Northrop Season pulsing with radical joy, energy, healing and connection, Emily Johnson / Catalyst's newest project, Overflow Radio, introduces an entirely new creative experience to Northrop. The creation of Catalyst director and choreographer Emily Johnson, Overflow Radio is a performance gathering — an immersive and transformative communal experience rooted in Johnson’s decades-long practice of gathering people together with good intention, plenty of time and deep support.
Overflow Radio is a performance, skill share and radio transmission taking place over 24 non-consecutive hours within a massive quilt installation and across geographies and territories. The project also engages local partners to plant 1,000 trees and create a network of 1,000 tree care-ers in a large-scale community-care action. Overflow Radio emerges from Johnson’s practice of creating large-scale social choreographies and features complex contributions from Indigenous writers and scholars, performers, local community organizers, lo-fi radio wave artists, food futurists and land rematriative activists.
This all-ages, boundary-pushing experience is offered in four six-hour performance cycles. Pick Your Price tickets allow for experimentation and the ability to attend one cycle or all 24 hours. Each six-hour cycle will include:
- Seating onstage.
- Gathering around radios to listen to Indigenous writers who will broadcast into the performance space from their territories around the world, offering poetry, essays and stories.
- Viewing, and sitting within, an installation of 84 quilts designed by Maggie Thompson, a Fond du Lac Ojibwe textile artist based in Minneapolis, and inscribed with thousands of hand-written messages. The quilts that are part of a decade-long community sewing process and are an archive of historic moments, migrations and resistance.
- A solo dance performance from Catalyst artists Michelle Boulé, Emily Johnson and/or Brandi Norton.
- Partnering with food sovereignty workers to provide a collective feast — with audience and performers eating together.
- Learning from skill shares, during which local community groups will teach different skills on themes of body, land, protection and more.
Extending the Overflow Radio transmission into the future, the project also engages local partners to plant 1,000 trees in Mni Sota Makoce (Minnesota) and create a network of 1,000 tree care-ers in a large-scale community-care action. Mapping and archiving methods will document each tree’s location, species and fruiting cycles — teaching and inviting people to forage responsibly. More information to come on how to become involved in planting or caring for trees for this project.
Writers and Story-Sharers include:
- Dylan Robinson
- Camille Georgeson-Usher
- Joseph M. Pierce
- Sonia Guinañsaca
- Gwen Westerman
- Diane Wilson
- Eve Tuck
- Hala Alyan
- Joan Kane
- Princess Johnson
- Kai Recollet
Turn your phone off and spend some time gathering to learn, to heal, to connect. Learn more in the FAQ below.
Single tickets go on sale July 14.
Top image: Emily Johnson / Catalyst, "Quilt Being Star," designed by Korina Emmerich; quilt design by Maggie Thompson; worn by Ty Fierce Matteba. Photo by Two Hawks Young.
Related Links, Quotes & Reviews
“In much of Johnson’s work, boundaries between performers and audiences collapse … when her pieces include a meal, or a walk, or an action, these are not peripheral side events propping up the part that is more recognizably dance. To Johnson, they are all equal — they are all performance, they are all dance.” — Dance Magazine
“A magnetic performer, adept at mobilizing people, onstage and off ...” — The New York Times
“A call to listen and imagine; an invitation to experience, even just for a few moments, how bodies could pulsate inside and outwards towards justice.” — Ruina Acesa
“Merging art and activism, Johnson’s expansive work [draws] our attention to the land beneath and around us — to what has been here before and what could be in the future.” — The New York Times
To Help You Decide
Add to Your Season Package
After choosing 3+ qualifying events to a Create Your Own (CYO) subscription package, Pick Your Price to add performance gathering Overflow Radio to your order. If you are not planning to buy a CYO package, single tickets to Overflow Radio go on sale July 14.
Our flexible Create Your Own package lets you choose your experiences from any three or more in-person events from the 2026-27 Northrop Season! Limited time: Subscription packages are on sale only through Sept. 24.
Subscribers enjoy:
- Savings of 20% when you buy three+ Northrop Season events*
- The highest discount of the year — no sale or discount will be greater
- Best seats — be among the first to choose / exclusive discount for Price Zone 1 seats
- Partial payment plans
- A newly added bonus — also get 20% off tickets to more Northrop Season performances purchased any time throughout the year!
- Flexibility at no extra cost — get unlimited free ticket exchanges
- Our appreciation for supporting Northrop programming and Centennial Commissions! Your purchase helps make a difference.
*Some exclusions apply.
Explore Discounts
Groups of 10 or more save 10% and pay lower per ticket processing fees on adult ticket prices for 2026-27 Season in-person events at Northrop, excluding Encore and Pick Your Price events. Discount cannot be combined with other discounts or offers.
You might enjoy this performance if you love(d):
This is Catalyst’s third appearance at Northrop; the last was in April 2013.
Build Your Package
View the Season
FAQs
You are welcome to come for all 24 hours! (And are encouraged to do so!) But, the event is divided into four six-hour gatherings to allow people to select a shorter time period. You can attend one day or all four.
Creator Emily Johnson says, “It’s an invitation, not a demand.” We would love for you to stay the whole time, and there will be breaks for transitions, rest, eating and to access bathrooms during the gathering. But, you will be allowed to leave and return as needed.
The six hours will be choreographed by Emily Johnson, and each hour threads to the next as she guides and welcomes you into the space. Some hours will be spent gathered around real radios, listening to incredible Indigenous and First Nations authors in live Overflow Radio broadcasts. One hour will be spent witnessing Johnson, Norton or Boulé dance a one-hour score. Another hour will be dedicated to sharing food together with local food-justice organizers and another dedicated to learning a new skill.
While it’s true all days will be a little different, they will each contain the same elements of story, movement, food, skill sharing and community. We suggest you attend whichever day or days work(s) best for your schedule. Friday will be geared toward University of Minnesota campus involvement, although all are welcome. Monday is Indigenous People’s Day, and the event will be geared toward honoring and welcoming the Indigenous community, as well as reaching a closure of the 24 hours of gathering.
Check back at the end of August. Catalyst will be part of a technical residency, refining the program and other details. We will post them here.
Yes! People of all ages, from Children to Elders, are welcome!
No! That will be left to the performers, First Nation and Indigenous authors and experts who are brought in.
The audience will be welcomed onstage, with some choosing to sit or lay on the quilts provided, and others will be able to sit in chairs and other options. If you need particular seating or accommodations, call the Box Office at 612-624-2345 or email nrpaccess@umn.edu. Learn more about our accessibility services.
Emily Johnson and Catalyst are curators of this program alongside some incredible Minneapolis-based partners. If you would like to keep posted on their work, follow the Catalyst website and Instagram.
Acknowledgments
Overflow Radio is a National Performance Network Creation & Development Fund Project commissioned by Roy and Edna Disney / CalArts Theater (REDCAT) and co-commissioned DiverseWorks, MASS MoCA and University of Minnesota Dance Program.
Overflow Radio is developed through creative residencies provided by MASS MoCA, Roy and Edna Disney / CalArts Theater, University of Minnesota’s Imagine Fund with support from the McKnight Foundation and Danspace Project with support from the New York State DanceForce, a partnership program of the New York State Council on the Arts.
Overflow Radio is created with generous support from First Peoples Fund, Howard Gilman Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance and the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and The Mellon Foundation.
Northrop is rooted in Minnesota, a name inspired by the Daḳota name for this region, Mni Sota Makoce, the land where the waters reflect the skies. We are proud of and thankful for our place as part of a public university. We also acknowledge that this land has a complex and layered history. We invite you to remember that Northrop is located within the past, present and future homelands of Dakota people. We show up in support of Native and Indigenous culture builders, and hosting Overflow Radio is an example of that ongoing work. Land acknowledgement is one of the ways we educate our campus and community about our relationships with the land and each other.
This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.