Niicugni is a new dance performance centered on movement, story, and sound housed within a light/sound installation of hand-made, functional fish - skin lanterns. It equates the land we live on with the cells that comprise our bodies and calls upon audiences to remember that land is alive with ancestry, memory, and possibility, and that our bodies also hold these things.

Niicugni premiered in Tallahassee, we're at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art right now and our tour continues to New York, New Hampshire, Arizona, Alaska, Minneapolis, Florida, and Oregon.

I love to tour, sharing dances and stories with audiences in as many different places as I can. It's my livelihood and my love and I do believe the dances I make have a good effect on the world.

Touring also means: airline and driving miles, hotels, shipping, theaters, and electricity. All of which takes alot of energy. Making our tours carbon neutral does not solve the problems of global warming or Hurricane Sandy or energy consumption. But it helps. I think every bit helps. And I want our tours to continue having a good effect on the world.

As it should be, making a tour carbon neutral is not cheap. Help us by supporting Niicugni as it tours and I will partner with Native Energy to make our tour carbon neutral.

Offsetting the carbon we produce to tour is an important part of my environmental goals. Working with Native Energy doesn't just offset carbon - it helps finance new projects that address global warming and supports sustainable local communities, creating economic benefits for Native Americans, Alaska Native Villages, family farmers, and rural communities.

GIVE between 10 and 11 am CST on Thursday, November 15th and your gift will be matched! Thank you John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for their matching grant!

Oh and we'll send you our love. Seriously.

A postcard. A real letter.

And if you send a gift of $750 or more we'll send you a lovely, handmade package of goodness every other month through the life of the tour (June 2013). It might be photos (real ones) from tour, along with some leaves we dried and pressed, a page of notes from rehearsal, one of Max's amazing doodles, a download card for new James and Bethany music, our bingo score sheets, a handmade paper mask, bits of detritus from this long long love affair with making dances and things...I'm not promising these little gifts of goodness will be valuable, but they will be made with love.

Also -- Good deeds matched with gifts. Gifts matched with good deeds. I suppose as long as we are all doing good...the more the merrier. On Give to the Max day. Catalyst will receive a BONUS if we get more new donors - so even if you give $5 -- it goes toward our BONUS! I've never received a BONUS! Let's do it!

THANK YOU!!!

-Emily