Upcoming/Recent
Solo Work
-> turning to stone
-> dance in three prayers
-> All-Fours
-> Descent
Collaborations
-> Relay
→ Emma Lanier + Cauveri Suresh
→ Cauveri Suresh and Ky Frances
→ Samuels/Suresh
Events
-> GEOMYTHS
-> Sketchbook
→ CV
→ Contact
Upcoming/Recent
Solo Work
-> turning to stone
-> dance in three prayers
-> All-Fours
-> Descent
Collaborations
-> Relay
→ Emma Lanier + Cauveri Suresh
→ Cauveri Suresh and Ky Frances
→ Samuels/Suresh
Events
-> GEOMYTHS
-> Sketchbook
→ CV
→ Contact
Two new dance works/geomyths.
Friday, May 22nd 2026 at 7:30pm
The Finnish Hall
1970 Chestnut St, Berkeley CA 94702
Doors open at 7pm. Ask questions and RSVP here. Free to attend, donations welcome.
turning to stone
Choreography and Performance: Cauveri Suresh and Phoenicia Pettyjohn
turning to stone continues an exploration into new mythmaking that deals with themes of destruction, transformation, and renewal. These dances, Destruction Mythologies, draw on existing mythologies as sources of ancient wisdom and create new mythologies in the search for new knowledge to guide us through the seemingly apocalyptic time in which we are living. In this duet we turn to stones, ancient and durable co-conspirators to life on earth, as sources of a subtle wisdom that can help us find our place in an ever-renewing cycle of creation, preservation, and destruction.
Artemisia in the mirror
Choreography and Performance: Audrey Johnson
Audrey shares the most recent experiment in ARTEMISIA, a series of performances unfolding a speculative mythological figure of the american backwoods. Inspired by plants of the Artemisia genus and African diasporic trickster figures, Artemisia is curious about fear, desire, shadow, and what happens when we are willing to encounter ourselves. The project troubles myth-making as a function of nationalist american identity and propaganda, proposing a new myth of traversing the shadow work of american psyche.
Cauveri Suresh (they/them) is a dance artist whose work considers the relationship between bodies and physical environment. As part of Emma Lanier + Cauveri Suresh, they created interdisciplinary performances that responded to site and sculpture. Cauveri’s work frequently deals with themes of time, mythology, and cycles of destruction. Their current project is an iterative series of dance works, Destruction Mythologies, that create new mythology in the interest of new knowledge for individual and collective survival under increasingly unsurvivable conditions. Cauveri’s recent choreographic work has been supported by grants, residencies, and commissions from Sense Object, Merde Project, the Foundation for Contemporary Art, Creativity Explored, Sonoma Ceramics, Destiny Arts Center, and Nava Dance Theater. As a performer, they have had the pleasure of working for KT Nelson, Gerald Casel, Risa Jaroslow, Kickbal, Lauren Simpson, Ky Frances, and Jodi Melnick, among others. Cauveri graduated cum laude from Barnard College in 2018 with a B.A. in Dance. They were born and raised on unceded land of the Confederated Villages of Lisjan Ohlone, and continue to live and work in the territory of Huichin.
Phoenicia Pettyjohn (she/her) is a longtime SF resident, movement artist and educator. She is the rehearsal director/dramaturg for Catherine Galasso’s 10,000 Steps: A Dance About Its Own Making for ODC/Dance. Performance collaborators include Christy Funsch Dance, Catherine Galasso, Aura Fischbeck and Jennifer Perfilio Movement Works. She has also worked with Risa Jaroslow, Sara Rudner (Margaret Jenkins Dance Company Encounters over 60) Miriam Wolordowski Sense Object, Rosemary Hannon, Susan Rethorst and Kira Kirsch among others and has appeared in the works of Maguy Marin, David Dorfman, Neta Pulvermacher, Sara Shelton Mann and Jess Curtis. She is a longtime collaborator with Christy Funsch Dance, recently appearing in her 12 hour piece “Epoch” at ODC Theater and “Kid Subjunctive” at CounterPulse SF and NYC. She is a faculty member at the San Francisco Ballet School and teaching artist in the SF Ballet Dance in Schools and Communities Program and a certified Axis Syllabus teacher.
Audrey Johnson is a dance artist working in choreography, performance, teaching, and herbalism based in Oakland, CA|Ohlone land with roots from Detroit, MI|Anishinaabe land. Audrey’s creative work experiments with the form of improvisation in refusal of colonized time and space. Her performance work has been presented throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and Detroit, and she has collaborated and performed with artists Gerald Casel, Jennifer Harge, Biba Bell, Detour Productions, Stephanie Hewett, among others. She has taught at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, the LINES/Dominican BFA program, Collective Sweat, and various studios in the Bay Area and Southeast Michigan. She holds a BFA in Dance from Wayne State University, and was a co-founder of Collective Sweat Detroit. www.audreyjohnson.space
*Please note that the entrance to the Finnish Hall is only accessible by stairs. More information on access can be found here.
This event is receiving support from a 2026 Sense Object Artist Residency at the Berkeley Finnish Hall.
Reference material:
Mayor, Adrienne. Mythopedia: A Brief Compendium of Natural History Lore. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2025.