By Zoe Jung

Robert Henry Johnson, a Bay Area dancer, choreographer, and playwright, passed away on Dec. 16, 2022. His body was identified in March.

Johnson will be missed deeply. He worked in the Bay Area for decades, teaching a generation of Black artists.

He was born Jan. 30, 1968, to Robert Gonzales, a guitarist, and jazz singer Lady Mem’fis. He grew up in the Western Addition neighborhood showing early talent in theatre and dance.

One of the first students to graduate from the San Francisco School of Performing Arts, Johnson went on to receive a full scholarship to the San Francisco Ballet School in 1985, where he studied for four years. After graduating, he moved further into the world of writing and choreography.

He applied for a playwrights’ residency at Sugar Shack Performance Gallery in 1992 where he staged, directed and developed several of his plays. For his poetic and lively writing style, he was honored with the Levi’s & Strauss Certificate of Literary Appreciation that same year.

In 1993, he founded the Robert Henry Johnson Dance Company the same year his first play, “Poison Ground,” was featured in the Bay Area Playwrights Festival and was produced by the Hartford Stage Company two years later.

Over time he created works for the Bavarian State Ballet, Ballet British Columbia, Oakland Ballet, and others.

Trending

Rise in Abductions of Black Girls in Oakland Alarms Sex-Trafficking Survivors

Although his troupe performed for several years, earning local and national acclaim, he disbanded it to focus on solo efforts.

Among those efforts were writing plays and poetry. In the months before his passing, he had taken up a challenge to create poems just for his Facebook audience.

At the turn of the year, Facebook posts from friends showed they were concerned that they couldn’t get in touch with him, especially around his birthday.

When his death was announced, there was an outpouring of grief on social media.

On March 27, Wanda Sabir of Wanda’s Picks radio held an online memorial for Johnson. Each person attending was given a five-minute window to remember Johnson, tell stories about him, speak to his passing, and celebrate his life.

More than 80 people came to watch the memorial on YouTube, which ran for about two hours.

Dancer, teacher, and author Halifu Osumare began the memorial with a libation, invoking the spirits of the ancestors to help mourners through their grief and help Johnson’s spirit find its way.

Raissa Simpson, the founder of PUSH Dance Company, said, “He was young, gifted, and Black, the epitome of it. And he also mentored so many of us, so many of us young Black choreographers. He stood up for us, he protected us . . . he did a lot for us.”

Sherrie Taylor, Johnson’s cousin, said, “He was such an inspiration to everyone here. He will always be a bright light in my life because that’s what he did. He shined like a bright light. He was a wonderful person, and I just wish I could have spent some more time with him.”

Antoine Hunter said it was “a time to celebrate that light that was lit from the day I met him.” At the end of his speaking window, Hunter shared that the last words he said to Johnson were “I love you.”

Another celebration of Johnson’s memory will be held April 8 at the Zaccho Dance Theatre at 1777 Yosemite Ave., San Francisco, and another on May 27 at the African American Art and Culture Complex at 762 Fulton St, San Francisco. Time to be announced.

By Kathy Chouteau

Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) is partnering with Richmond’s NIAD Art Center and other Bay Area organizations serving artists with developmental disabilities to present “Into the Brightness: Artists from Creativity Explored, Creative Growth & NIAD,” a large-scale, multimedia exhibition Fri., May 19, 2023, through Jan. 21, 2024.

OMCA said it will be “a major exhibition celebrating the myriad works of world-renowned contemporary artists with developmental disabilities producing work of incredible power, exuberance, humor, complexity and joy across multiple mediums and styles.”

Artists from Creativity Explored in San Francisco and Creative Growth in Oakland will join NIAD in the exhibition, sharing their “powerful work across multiple artistic disciplines” including painting, sculpture, film, multimedia, textiles and more, per the museum.

Photo courtesy of the Oakland Museum of California.

It’s the largest museum exhibition to date featuring artists from the three Bay Area organizations, including: Saul Alegria, Peter Cordova, Tranesha Smith-Kilgore, Marlon Mullen, Dorian Reid, William Scott, Dinah Shapiro, Nicole Storm and Marilyn Wong.

“Our organizations were founded under the premise that everyone has creative potential that deserves to be nurtured and celebrated,” said Creativity Explored, Creative Growth and NIAD Art Center in a collaborative statement.

Trending

The Case Against SB357: Black, Vulnerable and Trafficked

The organizations added that the existing and emerging artists from their studios “are powerful members of the Bay Area art scene who provide an important lens into how art is a tool for communication, expression and connection.” They said they’re excited “to bring this show to life” with OMCA.

I’m still in Manhattan, performing in Oakland resident Ishmael Reed’s off-Broadway play now at Theater for the New City.

I’m not a New York tourist, I’m more like a working resident. Acting like a New Yorker.

That’s not to say I’m brash or rude, but when it comes to whether or not there’s protests over the possibility of an impending Trump indictment, most New Yorkers seem more concerned with when the cold weather is going away, not when Trump is going away, or with any repeat of Jan. 6.

And if anyone wants to “take back the government” in the name of Donald Trump, I’d like to see them take on the NYPD.

I’m actually still quite immersed as an actor in Ishmael Reed’s “The Conductor.” In Reed’s play, a fictional Indian despot’s actions impact Indian Americans who face a wave of xenophobia and are forced to flee to Canada on an “underground railroad.”

Hence, the need for a “conductor.”

Turns out everyone who is feeling some heat may need to flee the U.S.

“The Conductor” runs through March 26. Get tickets so see in person or live-streamed here:

https://theaterforthenewcity.net/shows/the-conductor-2023/

Reed wasn’t so prescient to include the possibility of a Trump indictment (or four) in a storyline but  I now wonder if the twice-impeached former president of the United States will soon need a “conductor.”

Trending

Oakland Post: Week of May 17 – 23, 2023

To get to Canada? After all that he’s said about Justin Trudeau?

I was thinking out loud on this issue with Asian American Studies Professor Daniel Phil Gonzales on www.amok.com (Episode 489/481).

We go straight to wondering if Trump will get convicted for any of the cases that are brewing. From minor to major, they include the hush money/Stormy Daniels/falsifying of documents case in New York; the voter fraud and possible racketeering case in Georgia; the Mar-a-Lago stolen presidential documents case; and possible federal charges connected to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

If Trump is ensnared in any or all of them, would he even have the courage of a Martha Stewart to don a matching orange jumpsuit? Or does he just flat out leave the country?

Gonzales says he leaves. But to where?

I think Trump has his Putin parachute ready under his left arm. And under his right arm, there’s his North Korean parachute fashioned together with love letters from Kim Jong Un.

Ah, a former president in exile because he dared to be president again?

That’s the narrative the Republicans are drumming up, as if all this is simply a political “witch hunt.” We won’t know till we see any official charges.

Republicans can opine about the legal process, but it’s another thing to intimidate the New York DA with threats of congressional investigations.

What’s worse is that law-and-order Republicans can’t see their blind spot when it comes to the respect for the rule of law when their own fearful leader is the possible perp.

Trump’s reaction was simply to go off half-cocked, not even knowing what the charges are. But most appalling is his “go to”—the call for violence.

“Protest, protest, protest,” Trump wrote in his social media posts over the weekend, prompting calls for “civil war” among his base. Trump respects the law so much, his best response to a possible indictment in New York is to throw a dictator’s tantrum.

This is a man who doesn’t understand American democracy and didn’t deserve to be president even once.

And it’s not just the GOP leaders under Trump’s spell, but even some in our communities still supporting the twice-impeached former pres.

When it comes to Asian Americans running for president, Nikki Haley is still mum. But there’s one presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, the anti-woke Indian American rushing to Trump’s defense.

“This will mark a dark moment in American history and will undermine public trust in our electoral system itself,” Ramaswamy said, undermining a standing criminal investigation by  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

We should all be rooting for Bragg, a Harvard College and Harvard Law graduate who grew up in Harlem and knows what it’s like to be stopped by police for no good reason other than one’s race. Bragg has said his prosecutors will not be intimidated.

If Bragg’s indictment comes down this week or next, Trump will be treated both like a former president, and a common criminal. No man is above some kind of perp walk, right?

That’s never happened before in history. Will it make him more popular? That’s Chris Rock’s spin. But no democracy-loving American I know would ever vote for an indicted outlaw for president.

And once Bragg lights the wick, it should clear the way for Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis, another African American with a keen sense of justice, to explode on the scene.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has decried all the politics and said he just wants to see equal justice for all. What a hoot.

We all do, especially those of us in the BIPOC community, where equal justice is too often hard to come by. Ask Tyre Nichols’ family in Memphis.

Me?  I can’t wait to see the first presidential mug shot.

NOTE: I will talk about this column and other matters on “Emil Amok’s Takeout,” my micro-talk show. Occasionally Live @2p Pacific. Livestream on Facebook; my YouTube channel; and Twitter. Catch the recordings on www.amok.com.