Come and Dance 2011: an Aboriginal Dance Festival
Compaigni V'ni Dansi (CVD) Society is pleased to announce the full program line-up for Come and Dance: an Aboriginal Dance Festival, featuring the 6th Annual Louis Riel Day Celebrations.
When November 16 - 19
Where: The ScotiaBank Dance Centre (677 Davie Street) and the Aboriginal Friendship Centre (1607 East Hastings Street)
Tickets: Single day tickets: $20 non-members; $15 members; $5 students. Three day pass: $49 non-members; $33 members. For more information call 604.636.7075.
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Vancouver is located in the heart of traditional Aboriginal territory and as the city celebrates the 125th year of its founding, Come and Dance honours the traditional and contemporary dance of our Aboriginal communities. Everyone is invited to Come and Dance and to celebrate the multi-faceted Aboriginal heritage that is a vital part of Vancouver's cultural identity today.
The Come and Dance Festival at a glance:
Nov 16 at 5pm – Louis Riel Day Blessing (at the Aboriginal Friendship Centre), featuring Tom McCallum. A free community event honouring Louis Riel and celebrating our vibrant Métis culture through performance and food.
Nov 17 at 8pm – Dance Program 1: West Coast to Contemporary (at the Dance Centre) featuring Chief Ian Campbell, Eagle Song Dancers, Raven Spirit Dance, the Dancers of Damelahamid
Nov 18 at 8pm – Dance Program 2: First Nations to Contemporary (at the Dance Centre) featuring Traditional Mothers and Grandmothers Dancers, Pow Wow Rhythm Dancers w/Red Thunder Dancers, Paula Ross, M.Pyress Flame, Mariko Kage, Yvonne Chartrand and Byron Chief Moon.
Nov 19 at 7pm – Métis Night & Dance featuring the 6th Annual Louis Riel Day Celebration (at Aboriginal Friendship Centre). An evening of traditional Métis music, dance, storytelling and food featuring Tom McCallum, Andrea Menard, Jules Chartrand and the Louis Riel Metis Dancers
All Festival events hosted by Greg Coyes
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Artist Biographies
Chief Ian Campbell: November 17
Chief Ian Campbell is a hereditary chief of the Squamish Nation. His family lineage descends from the Squamish and Musqueam First Nations of the Coast Salish people. His ancestral name is Xálek’ and his Chieftain name is Sekyú siyám. Chief Campbell is an elected Council member, an official spokesperson for the Squamish Nation, and is the Cultural Ambassador & Negotiator for Intergovernmental Relations, Natural Resources & Revenue which is the economic arm of the Squamish Nation. Named one of British Columbia’s “Best and Brightest Up & Comers”, Chief Campbell participates on many boards and advisory committees in a diverse array of organizations, including the Fraser Basin Council, Aboriginal Achievement Awards, Justice Institute Advisory, and North Vancouver Outdoor School Advisory.
Jules Chartrand: November 19
A Métis historian from St. Laurent will be reading Louis Riel poetry during the Métis celebration.
Yvonne Chartrand: November 18
Yvonne Chartrand is a Manitoba Métis. She is also the founder and Artistic Director of Compaigni V'ni Dansi, Yvonne gives workshops throughout BC and across Canada. She is a master Métis jigger and a choreographer who creates contemporary dance theatre telling Métis stories. Yvonne is a champion jigger winning multiple times at the Canadian Red River Jigging Championship at Saskatchewan's John Arcand Fiddle Fest . In 2011, Yvonne received the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton award for dance which recognizes outstanding mid-career artists. Her most recent solo contemporary work was Stories from St. Laurent, which will be followed up in March 2012 by Cookin' It Up Métis.
Byron Chief-Moon: November 18
Byron Chief-Moon is a choreographer, producer, writer, actor and dancer from the Blood Tribe and Samson Cree Nation of southern Alberta. He founded the Coyote Arts Percussive Performance Association/CAPPA in 1999 to facilitate the storytelling of his maternal grandparents and ancestral stories, exploring and creating dance that incorporates traditional storytelling and songs, contemporary music, new media and performance techniques. Byron has appeared in many film, stage and television productions nationally and internationally as actor and dancer. Byron has co-produced dance films with Soaring Heart Pictures and Mouvement Perpétuel that have been screened at many film festivals and featured on APTN and Bravo!
Greg Coyes: Festival Host all nights
Over the last twenty years Greg has worked as an award-winning film-maker, writer, and as a teacher. In 1992 Coyes was one of the founders of Dreamspeakers Film Festival, which presents indigenous films in Edmonton, AB. Greg has consulted and written for the Smithsonian at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, and taught film and television at Capilano University and at the Native Education Centre in Vancouver.
Dancers of Damelahamid: November 17
According to Gitksan history, Damelahamid is the original city where our first ancestors were put on earth from heaven. Our dance group is named after this city. Since time immemorial Gitksan songs have been performed in the feast hall and played an integral part in defining art and culture. Irene Harris was the last in our lineage to experience a traditional upbringing within the feast system. She witnessed the banning of the Potlatch and lived to see the culture revived in the 1960s when our family established the Dancers of Damelahamid. Irene taught the ancient dance traditions to her son Ken Harris who upheld these traditions throughout his lifetime. In 1987, the group moved for the first time from the area of Damelahamid, along the Skeena River to Vancouver, BC. Since 2004, under the leadership of Ken’s daughter Margaret Grenier, our group has transitioned to a professional dance company that has self produced several theatre based productions, three in six years, while asserting time honoured practices. Our performances give recognition to the distinctiveness and time depth of our many Indigenous cultures across Canada. Excellence is achieved through collaboration of artistry with guest dance artists, sound designers and graphic artists.
Eagle Song Dancers: November 17
Spakwus Slolem, (translated, "Eagle Song Dancers”), are members of the Squamish Nation. A Great Canoe gathering took place in 1993, called "The Gaatuwas", in Bella Bella, BC, paddlers from the Squamish sea-going Canoe enjoyed the culture so much they decided to continue and became known as Spakwus Slolem , travelling and presenting at venues in Switzerland, Taiwan, Japan, across Canada, and locally, as well as Washington State. Our cultural history is steeped in tradition, spirituality, canoes, family history, legends and stories of our Ancestors. Teachings that we observe today on Tribal Journeys, paddling our sea-going canoes, to visit villages of our coastal relatives. The image of the canoe is from our Squamish Kwxulth Family (Sea-going canoe Family), and is very active on the water. Spakwus Slolem is pleased and honoured to present songs and dances of yesterday, as well as today, and feel very honoured to represent our People in a good way, as our Ancestors had intended.
Mariko Kage: November 18
Mariko Kage is a dance artist of mixed race descent raised in Japan. Combining over 30 years of diverse arts training in Tokyo, Los Angeles and BC, she has produced and performed shows integrating dance, poetry and song. With a blackbelt in Aikido, she teaches workshops and is the proud mother of seven. Dance is the third language of her soul and she believes there is a story in every cell of our body.
Louis Riel Métis Dancers: November 19
Established by Yvonne Chartrand in 2001, this professional dance ensemble has extensive training in traditional Métis dance. Traditional Métis dance is a unique blend of European reels and waltzes with the dances of our Native American heritage – creating one of the most intricate and difficult of any Aboriginal peoples. The Louis Riel Métis Dancers perform regularly and can often be seen at local events and festivals throughout the year including: Canada Day, National Aboriginal Day, Talking Stick Festival, Festival du Bois, Heart of the City Festival, Dance Allsorts, and the Noon Dance Series.
Tom McCallum: November 16 & 19
Tom McCallum is a Metis Elder and storyteller. Tom is committed to educate, entertain and increase community bond through his engaging stories. He believes that storytelling connects the past with today and may impact the future.
Starr Muranko: November 18
Starr Muranko is a traditional & contemporary dancer/choreographer who has trained and performed throughout the Lower Mainland, San Francisco and as far away as New Zealand and the Andes of Peru. She holds a BFA in Dance from SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts and has trained internationally at the Performing Arts School in Ghana, West Africa and the American Conservatory of Theatre in San Francisco. Starr is committed to supporting Indigenous people and the living expression of their cultures through dance, music and story telling and honors her mixed heritage of Métis, Cree and German in all of her work.
Andrea Menard: November 19
Andrea Menard, a multi-talented Metis actress, singer/songwritter and screewriter, is a gifted performer. With a voice that chills your spine, she dazzles on stage and screen, bringing audiences to tears. Her voice is lyrical, raw, and reminiscent of the jazz and blues singers of the 1940's, yet she captures the simplicity of the great folk artists. She has released two award-winning albums: The Velvet Devil and Simple Steps as well as her new CD, Sparkle.
Powwow Rhythm Dancers w/Red Thunder Dancers: November 18
A powwow is a gathering, where people meet to dance, sing, socialize and honour Aboriginal culture. The Powwow Rhythm dancers will showcase a few styles that one would see at a powwow: the Jingle dress (which comes from the Odjiway Nation), Women's Fancy (with light, fast footwork), Men's Fancy Feather (super fast!) and the Hoop Dance. The hoop dance is a form of storytelling dance, where hoops are used to create different form of animals, the environment, beings and other symbols. Using anywhere from one hoop to a hundred hoops. The Red Thunder Dancers are representing the Haudenosaunee, Iroquois, the people of the Longhouse will be showcasing the Smoke dance. Which originated from slow, war dances, danced exclusively by men and the social dances done in the Longhouse. Nowadays, the dance is faster and danced also by the women.
Raven Spirit Dance: November 17
Raven Spirit Dance was formed in 1999 and incorporated in March of 2005. The core members of the company are the General Manager, Janice Beley, and Artistic Director, Michelle Olson and Artistic Associate, Starr Muranko. Raven Spirit Dance currently has 5 active productions and are currently working on two more. Ashes on the Water by Quelemia Sparrow, A Neworld Theatre and PTC Production, Co-produced with Raven Spirit Dance. Ashes on the Water will be presented during Dancing on the Edge in July, 2011. More details to follow. Raven Spirit will also be in rehearsals in May with our project, Frost Exploding Trees Moon. Show details will follow.
Raven Spirit Dance is active in contemporary dance and aboriginal communities by teaching, facilitating workshops, mentoring and residencies. In 2010, Raven Spirit performed an excerpt from Songs of Shär Cho as part of the Cultural Olympiad in Vancouver. Over the past 5 years Raven Spirit has created 5 new works, Ta’wan, Evening in Paris, Luk T’äga Näche, Gathering Light and Frost Exploding Trees Moon. In the past few years, the company has had a successful six-week tour of a show for young audiences, assisted in the development of a theatre/dance piece at the Firehall Arts Centre in Vancouver and continued its relationship with the Dänojà Zho Cultural Centre (Dawson City) bringing fully realized dance works and teaching opportunities to Artistic Director Michelle Olson’s home community of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in. In 2007 Raven Spirit premiered Evening in Paris at the Firehall Arts Centre and 2008 toured Songs of Shär Cho with CanDance Indigenous Dancelands and performed a new site-specific work, Ta’wan during International Dance Day. In September 2008, Raven Spirit Dance began a year-long residency at the Scotiabank Dance Centre in Vancouver and completed the residency with a performance as part of the Noon Dance Series in September 2009 and in November 2009 the company was in collaboration with urban ink production society and the Downtown Eastside Writer’s Group on Dreamcatchers. This was performed on November 1, as part of the Heart of the City Festival. In 2010 the company performed an excerpt of our new production, Gathering Light, at the Weesageechak Festival in Toronto and premiered the piece at Dancing on the Edge on July 17. Gathering Light will be presented as part of Dance Allsorts on April 17, 2011 at the Roundhouse in Vancouver.
Paula Ross: November 18
Choreographer and dancer; born Pauline Cecilia Isobel Teresa Campbell (Vancouver 29 Apr 1941). Of part Scots, part native ancestry, Paula Ross began to study ballet at the age of five in Vancouver with Mara McBirney. She danced in McBirney's Panto-Pacific Ballet at the age of 12, and at 15 left home to join the Moro Landis Dancers chorus line at the Bellevue Casino in Montréal. For four years she travelled the club and show circuits in Canada and the United States as a dancer and comedienne, working with such performers as Sophie Tucker, Danny Kaye and Donald O'Connor. She Pacific Dance Theatre in the early 1960s, eventually becoming a principal dancer, and in 1965 launched her own modern dance company, the Paula Ross Dance Company. The company presented a repertoire created by Ross in collaboration with her dancers and toured across Canada and to San Francisco and was commissioned to create new works for the Vancouver centennial celebrations and EXPO 86. In 1987 she moved with her family to Vancouver Island, where she continued to teach. Ross explored many styles in a search for a choreographic language that would best allow her to make what she called her "visual poetry," her "universal tribal metaphor." She won the Chalmers choreographic award in 1977. Her choreography often bore a strong social or environmental message. Among her most successful works were Coming Together (1975), about the effects of imprisonment on native men, Strathcona Park (1980), celebrating a provincial park on Vancouver Island, and Shades of Red (1982), about aspects of womanhood. David Rimmer’s 1982 film, Shades of Red, was built around the re-choreographing of these three dances for the camera. She remounted Coming Together in 1993 for the Danny Grossman Dance Company in Toronto for a national tour. Ross continues to create, and in 1991 received a Canada Council grant that allowed her to take her first trips to Japan and France.
M.Pyress Flame: November 18
A theatrical multidisciplinary dance performance artist, movement/theatrical libertarian, and a varied community arts programs instructor, actor & clown. She is lives in Vancouver and has been teaching for over 15 years.
