Dancers of Damelahamid full-length work Raven Mom will hit Toronto’s Fleck Dance Theatre on November 29. The efficiency is a part of a cross nation tour supported by a variety of dance presenters.
Raven Mom celebrates the influence of sturdy matriarchs throughout the generations, and is carried out to stay authentic music and vocals. Particularly, it’s an homage to the late Elder Margaret Harris, who co-founded Dancers of Damelahamid in 1967.
She can be mom to the corporate’s Govt & Creative Director Margaret Grenier. The performers embody Margaret Grenier, and Harris’s grandchildren Nigel Baker-Grenier and Raven Grenier, in addition to Margaret’s niece Tobie Wick and daughter-in-law Rebecca Baker-Grenier.
We spoke with Margaret Grenier in regards to the custom in addition to Raven Mom. First, a bit obligatory background.
The Potlatch Ban
Many Canadians stay unaware of the extent of the means by which the Canadian authorities tried to erase Indigenous tradition.
Within the late nineteenth century, what was referred to as the anti-potlatch proclamation went into impact, turning into regulation on January 1, 1885. It outlawed the celebration of the potlatch ceremony, and particularly dance. For the Indigenous individuals of North America’s Pacific Northwest coastal area, the potlatch ceremony was a cornerstone of not solely their tradition, however their society itself, expressed in ceremonial kind.
The regulation was in pressure for greater than six a long time, many Indigenous individuals had been charged and imprisoned for the offence of performing conventional dance. The Potlatch Ban was in impact till 1951.
These cultural practices, nonetheless, continued and survived in secret inside Indigenous communities.
Elder Harris
Elder Harris (1931-2020) was a Cree Elder. Initially from Northern Manitoba, she would spend most of her life on the Northwest Coast of British Columbia. She educated together with her mother-in-law, Gitxsan Matriarch Irene Harris, and have become decided to revitalize and educate Indigenous cultural follow, the place music, dance, storytelling and regalia making are an integral a part of heritage.
In co-founding Dancers of Damelahamid, and educating future generations, she had a huge effect on the revitalization of Indigenous dance alongside the entire Northwest Coast. A part of the theme of Raven Mom is underscoring the pivotal function girls have performed when it comes to preserving cultural information, together with music, dance, tales, and regalia making.
Immediately, due to the legacy of Harris and others, historically based mostly cultural practices are seeing a resurgence.
Govt & Creative Director Margaret Grenier: The Interview
Dance types an integral a part of Gitksan tradition, and that of different West Coast First Nations.
“That’s one thing that encompasses much more for us in our follow. We’ve used dance to hold our oral historical past ahead all through time. Basically, dance has instructed the tales, going again to our origin tales, important occasions in our historical past,” explains Margaret Grenier.
“The way in which I might describe dance is that’s carries the ancestral information that we use to determine our values or the best way stay and carry ourselves in our world.”
It goes past the concept of making artwork or efficiency; it’s an important a part of identification. The Potlatch Ban turned cultural follow into an underground act of resistance.
“The Potlatch ban, for us, in our households, it lasted the vast majority of the lifetime of my grandmother,” she factors out, noting that her personal grandmother, who was born in Eighteen Eighties, was already an elder when it was lastly rescinded within the Fifties.
Her mom Margaret Harris would grow to be an elder in her personal proper.
“She educated individuals, after which they carried it on to verify it will be revitalized, that we might have the flexibility to hold it ahead in the present day.”
The dance as it’s practiced in the present day retains the identical types because the custom, however has additionally advanced. As a approach of preserving historical past, it now additionally tells the story of what occurred through the Potlatch Ban, and its results that stretch to in the present day.
“We add to that narrative with the voices of in the present day,” she says. Immediately’s story features a narrative of resurgence, and of creating their very own house inside the colonial context. “That does grow to be a part of our story as nicely.”
The pandemic added a give attention to the necessity for well being and wellness, and the isolation of younger individuals specifically through the lockdowns. Dance, music, and storytelling join the neighborhood the place the function of matriarch is a crucial one.
“It ties into what we’re saying about it being a follow,” Grenier explains, “the care that comes with it, as a result of it does come from girls, moms and grandmothers, they’re doing it for his or her youngsters too. It’s not a simple weight to hold.”
The generations who’ve taken on the duty of rebuilding have a vital job. “It has been carried out with such love, such imaginative and prescient, and hope for change.” That hope is for an impetus that strikes in the direction of one thing that’s much less fragile. “For previous generations, it actually was on the shoulders of people,” she notes. Reaching extra individuals, and creating and increasing the attain of a vibrant and dwelling tradition is the purpose, the place a community and established establishments can take the weigh off the shoulders of people.
“It’s extra than simply the gentleness that we’d affiliate with girls, it’s actually that deep power that’s wanted to do the work,” she says. “That’s one thing very particular that ladies actually carry — the capability to persevere […] to carry on to the hope.”
Raven Mom
“Margaret Harris, she was very outstanding,” says Margaret Grenier. She describes a girl who not solely labored tirelessly for her family, however who created a house that was at all times open for others. She recollects her fostering dozens of kids through the years, and dealing with troubled girls within the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. “She did a lot for others. Loads of it was by means of cultural teachings, educating music and dance.” Harris created neighborhood by means of these practices.
To commemorate her, it needed to be one thing particular. “We needed to do a piece that actually spoke to what she left us, not simply when it comes to artwork, however what she taught us by means of her generosity, her dedication to others.”
The teachings she discovered from her mom had been many. “We’d like to have the ability to see as people, what we will do. What might appear like an excessive amount of, actually isn’t.”
Raven Mom unfolds in a collection of vignettes that inform a narrative, mixing motion, music, music, regalia, masks, and sculptures of the Gitxsan individuals. Historically, the Raven crest, which seems in numerous types all through the piece, denotes transformation, and it embodies the lineage of cultural teachings.
The manufacturing is ready to authentic music and stay vocals by Raven Grenier, in collaboration with composer Ted Hamilton, and incorporates multimedia projections by Indigenous artist Andy Moro.
Northwest Coast artists David A. Boxley, David R. Boxley, Jim Charlie, Raven Grenier, Kandi McGilton, and Dylan Sanidad contributed their work to the manufacturing, together with a Raven transformation masks that opens to disclose a collection of smaller human faces, interconnected, inside. Every of the smaller masks represents a technology of daughters who’ve been impressed by their matriarch. Designer Rebecca Baker-Grenier crafted a raven cloak fabricated from feathers. The work represents a standard Gitxsan piece that has not been utilized in dance efficiency for a lot of generations.
Making a multimedia piece got here naturally. “I believe that in itself is in some ways is reflective of our follow,” Grenier says. “With a view to have dance, we’d like music,” she says.
“That’s what our mom actually instilled in us, was, that to be able to do the follow, you possibly can’t depart any of it behind.”
She says that the response has been overwhelmingly optimistic, in tune with the best way the work was conceived. “Work that’s created with that intention, can be felt by the individuals who see the work.”
- There might be two performances of Dancers of Damelahamid’s full-length multimedia work Raven Mom for its Toronto premiere on November 29 at Harbourfront Centre’s Fleck Dance Theatre. Discover extra particulars and tickets [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is a Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. She is an skilled freelance author, blogger and writing teacher.
