Browsing: Indigenous

Toronto’s Kaeja d’Dance returns for its 12th year in Toronto’s historic Seaton Village with the award-winning Porch View Dances: Real People Dancing In Real Spaces. The idea behind the Porch View Dances project is to pair non-professional dancers with professional choreographers. After spending some time rehearsing, the new cast eventually invites neighbors to watch the result, paying what they can. People interested to perform have to answer a short questionnaire about themselves and why they want to be involved but no dance background is required: it’s about creating movement and pleasure. Porch View Dances mingle ordinary lives and artistic expression through dance and…

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Hearing new SMCQ artistic director Ana Sokolovic talk about the 2023 Montreal/New Musics (MNM) festival, it’s hard not to get excited. “I joke that the only problem with this festival is that it is in Montreal. It’s because when we go to the festivals very often it’s not in our city, and then we go to spend the entire time in that city. And we’re seeing absolutely everything,” she said. “Everything is happening during the events—during the concerts, but also in between the concerts. During the lunch, during the supper, during the cocktail, having this opportunity to talk with people…

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Medicine is an important element of composer Andrew Balfour’s creative pursuits. “People think of music as a refuge, but music can also be a powerful entry point to healing,” he says. The notion of healing is one close to the Cree composer’s heart. His work is characterized by the combination of polyphony and Indigenous themes related to history and identity. He skilfully pokes holes in the Eurocentric narrative of classical music even as he uses its foundations to explore serious issues. Such a creative instinct has painful roots. As an infant, Balfour was taken away from his Cree mother as…

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Émilie Monnet presents Okinum, her signature show. Credit: Clark FergusonBecause her healing process still resonates within her, Émilie Monnet presents a new incarnation of Okinum, her signature show. Espace Go, Oct. 4-22. Finalist for the Prix Michel-Tremblay (2019), finalist for the Grand prix du livre de Montréal (2021), Okinum is autobiographic: “Okinum is dear to me, it is my first play, the birthing of my voice as a theater artist,” confides Émilie Monnet. Inspired by the recurring dream of a giant beaver, Okinum is an intimate reflection on the notion of inner dams, a tribute to the power of dreams…

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More than ever, the priority of this year’s International First Peoples’ Festival—the event that reaffirms the relevance and importance of First Nations artists, filmmakers, storytellers and dancers—is to create encounters, decompartmentalize imaginations, and free up talents capable of bringing forth the unprecedented. After a brief break, the director of the International First Peoples’ Festival is back at work. André Dudemaine has directed the festival for more than 30 years and, with his team, is putting the finishing touches on this year’s edition. For the visual arts section, which will be presented at La Guilde, the Festival will ­welcome Abenaki author,…

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Tim Brady loves a good challenge. His latest: setting poems in an Indigenous language to music. To do this, the composer-guitarist chose a poem collection entitled Uiesh (“Somewhere”) written by famous Innu poet Joséphine Bacon. “I really loved Joséphine Bacon’s work,” he said. “I thought it would be quite a challenge to compose music a singer would perform in an Indigenous language. The linguistic, grammatical, and syllable structures are very different from European languages. Joséphine helped me a lot, and I concluded that my music needed to use a simpler rhythmic language, more clear-cut to help each syllable stand out.…

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Elle Angèle Dubeau, solo violin; Valérie Milot and Antoine Mallette-Chénier, harp; Lydia Etok and Nina Segalowitz, throat singing; La Pietà Analekta, 2022 Angèle Dubeau, solo violinist and conductor for the string ensemble La Pietà, has decided to use the ensemble’s 25th anniversary album, Elle, to showcase a variety of contemporary female composers. The result? A thrilling experience where the listeners never gets too comfortable with one style. Just as they come to understand the cool and brooding nature of Rebecca Dale’s Winter, for example, they’re surprised by the fiery Inuit throat singing of Katia Makdissi-Warren’s Mémoire. The album is filled with…

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Toronto, July 7, 2022 – The SOCAN Foundation is thrilled to announce Laura Niquay as the recipient of the annual TD Indigenous Songwriter Award. The critically acclaimed Attikamek artist from Trois-Rivières, QC is being recognized for her songs “Moteskano” and “Nicto Kicko”, works that offer a glimpse into her energized folk-grunge universe. Created in 2018, The SOCAN Foundation’s TD Indigenous Songwriter Award was created to recognize and celebrate the artistic merit demonstrated by Indigenous songwriters of any genre. Niquay will receive a cash prize of $10,000 in addition to opportunities and efforts toward her career development. Special distinction awards of…

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REVIEW: Of Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members, at New York City’s Soho Rep, 45 Walker Street; running through Sunday, June 19 (viewed here June 8). “The Great Wheel of Puerto Rican confusion spins on!” So declaims one of the characters in playwright Mara Vélez Meléndez’s capaciously titled new theater piece, Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members, now playing at the Soho Rep. It’s a tag line that aptly summarizes the dizzying action and ambitious collision of themes that Meléndez sets in motion for this provocative hour-and-three-quarters of theatrical razzle…

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Montreal, June 14, 2022 – June 21, National Indigenous Peoples’ Day, is a sunny holiday. In these luminous days of June, opening the generous season of summer, Land InSights invites the public to celebrate the solstice in an immemorial continuity: ceremonies, concerts, poetry, perpetuate ancestral traditions today. At sunrise, a ceremony will be held at the First Nations Garden and will be webcast live via Facebook at 5:00 am. At the sun’s zenith, on the Quai de l’Horloge, great greetings will be given by Mohawk elders, the Buffalo Hat Singers’ drum and the songs of Innu artist Kanen. Along the…

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