Sunday Post and Anna Johnson talks Bella Yaga @thecowlescenter

Today's post will link up to The Sunday Salon, The Sunday Post and Stacking the Shelves for weekly updates.

           LOOKING FORWARD TO NOVEMBER

Anna Johnson (above)

Anna Johnson is with me today. 
Anna is an interdisciplinary performance artist with a focus on music, moving image, and object theatre. She writes songs for the electric folk band Bella Yaga and sings with Mila Vocal Ensemble, a women’s acapella group grounded in the vocal traditions of Eastern Europe.

With Bella Yaga she has self-produced multiple full-length performances that fuse live music with theatre and visuals. Most notable are “Memory Palace” at Pinwheel Arts in June 2017 and the celebrates her debut album “Slipped From a Subtle Skin” at Open Eye Figure Theatre in August 2018. Anna performed at Cowles Center as part of Red Eye Theater's New Works 4 Weeks Festival.

Anna, where did your love for creating traditional Eastern European music come from?

I grew up in a family of musicians and dancers. My parents danced Eastern European folk dance among other traditional dances, so the music and culture was around me from a young age. As an adult, I became more interested in these vocal traditions and discovered Mila Vocal Ensemble, a women's group in St. Paul that studies and performs traditional acapella (voices only) songs from Eastern Europe. I've been singing with them for almost two years. I love how this music feels in my ears and my body.

How did you learn how to do the film aspects for 'Isolated Acts'?

I've done theatre and visual art since I was young, and got my undergraduate degree in studio art. In school I studied photography, film history, and experimented with video installation. I think my eye for video production comes from my experience in two-dimensional art and in theatre/performance art. I've applied what I learned in digital photography towards digital video editing, and love producing film because I get to craft all aspects of the image and how they interact with time.

Can you share a funny or interesting experience that you shared with your fellow musicians during the creation of 'Isolated Acts'?

The piece was completed in rough draft form three weeks before opening. We had a final showing with our cohort of the other festival artists and Red Eye directors. Afterwards, I got together with my bandmates/co-creators. Alana, the drummer in Bella Yaga, is a talented theatre director. She drew out a huge timeline of the show on giant sheets of paper on the wall.

 We mapped out what I wanted the emotional arc to be and figured out what actually had to happen to accomplish it. We concluded that "I had to act!" I couldn't just show a process unfolding and exist onstage, I had to "play myself," be the protagonist and show the emotional arc of the show through my own emotional state.

 Alana and I had rehearsals and she directed me towards the acting that I did in the final piece. I think this really strengthened the story we told, especially since there were no spoken words.

During the performance, I was drawn to how connected your fans seemed to be.  Can you talk a little about what your fans mean to you and how you've acquired so many?

We four in Bella Yaga are lucky to be connected to many performing arts communities in Minneapolis- theatre, dance, underground music, puppetry, traditional music... in fact, we all met through these community connections. So we have a lot of supportive friends that care about what we create and want to support us. There is a wonderful culture of showing up for each other's art that exists in this city!

I also think our work is unique in that we consider all aspects of performance in our work and unite musical elements (in this case original and traditional), cinema, and theatre design. Our shows are feasts for the senses and pleasurable on an aesthetic level, but also offer stories and threads of meaning that resonate on emotional and spiritual levels for different folks.

 I feel humbled that I can translate my private and personal world into what I find meaningful and beautiful, and through this language of creative abstraction it becomes something that another person can resonate with on a deep and personal level.

Contact Anna

facebook

@bellayaga

Please leave a comment below.

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ON THE BLOG

 On a side note.  I had some car issues that left me stranded in Excelsior after leaving Old Log theater.  My Hyundai Sonata literally broke down as I was pulling into a lakeside area.  I found out that there was a recall on a part in my engine, so I quickly took it to the dealership after getting a jump.  Hyundai was able to fix it and only charged me for the diagnostic, thank God!