Nick Johnson

Overview

Nick earned his MFA degree in Dance/Drama at the University of Arizona, training with Douglas Nielsen, Jory Hancock, Melissa Lowe and John Wilson. He trained in New York City with dancers Frank Hatchett, Richard Levi, and Ronnie DeMarco and Polish Mime Director Stefan Niedzialkowski. Johnson has dedicated his professional career to the fusion of mime and dance in artistic production and training. Johnson is a founding member of the School for Mime Theatre, a summer residency program based at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, where he taught for 25 years. During this time, the School for Mimes hosted numerous seminars with Marcel Marceau and Johnson cultivated a relationship with Marceau that would further inspire his vision for a physical theatre.  Johnson received a 1998 Kansas Arts Commission Fellowship for his multi-disciplinary vision. Johnson is the Artistic Director for the Alithea Mime Theatre, a professional company in Wichita and also an Artistic Director for the Wichita Contemporary Dance Theatre, the student touring company from the WSU Dance Program. Alithea and WCDT have toured to Mexico, Italy, Taiwan, Shanghai, Poland, Arizona, Arkansas, and the state of Kansas. Alithea was invited to perform at the United Nations in 2006. Johnson won an Interdisciplinary/Performance Art Fellowship from The Kansas Arts Commission in 1999, the Mickey and Pete Armstrong Faculty Award for Special Fine Arts Endeavors 2015, the 2017 Art Educator of the Year Award from City of Wichita and the Dorothy Johansen Hauck Faculty Fellow 2017. Johnson creates original works each semester for the Dance Program, offers master classes in mime theatre and performs with Arts Partners for schools in the Wichita community.