Myron Johnson is continuing his renaissance by bringing his signature holiday show to the Cowles Center in downtown Minneapolis.
Johnson, whose Ballet of the Dolls company is in dormancy, will stage the iconic "Nutcracker (Not So) Suite" with James Sewell Ballet. He has been teaching with the company since last spring.
"We hope this will be a new artistic home for Myron," Sewell said recently. "Myron was one of my first teachers and primary inspiration for getting going in this."
Johnson suffered an emotional breakdown in early 2014, succumbing to the constant pressures of running the Dolls in a time of diminishing resources and funding. He spent nine weeks in a hospital and then continued his recuperation on his own.
In an interview last April, he said he had started to teach with Sewell. That involvement deepened when the Cowles Center asked Sewell's executive director, George Sutton, about making a holiday show. Johnson's "Nutcracker" seemed a natural possibility.
"We see it as an annual project with Myron's involvement every year," Sewell said.
For his part, Johnson said he agrees this marks a new chapter in his creative life at age 62.
"I ended up dealing with challenges rather than creating work," he said of the period leading up to his crisis. "It took a while for me to admit that. Now I'm going back to where I started — focused on the work."