Mohawk choreographer and performer Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo will carry out the Ontario premiere of her solo dance work What We Carry from February 6 to 9. The performances will happen at Native Earth Performing Arts at Aki Studio.
The multimedia efficiency work contains 5 scenes related by video interstitials. It tells a private story that begins with language classes, and travels via motherhood and honouring ancestors. By way of her private story, she considers the common life journeys of Indigenous girls.
We spoke to the award-winning Kanienkeha:ka artist concerning the piece, and the story of the way it got here collectively.
Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo
Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo is Kanienkeha:ka (Mohawk) of combined heritage. She grew up in Kahnawake, and is at present primarily based in Montreal.
Diabo studied many dance kinds and genres, and graduated with a BFA in theatre from Concordia College, and from the Native Theatre College. Her dance observe as a choreographer and dancer for greater than 25 years focuses on items that illuminate Indigenous themes/tales/views. She combines various dance idioms, together with Haudenosaunee dance, powwow, and mainstream modern Eurocentric types in her work.
Diabo has carried out throughout North America, Europe and past, together with most just lately on the Banff Centre, the Nationwide Arts Centre, the Confederation Centre for the Arts PEI, Harbourfront Centre Toronto, Place des Arts, amongst others. Barbara was chosen as one in every of solely eight dancers in North America to carry out on the inaugural hoop dance competitors on the Gathering of Nations in New Mexico, the world’s largest powwow, in 2015.
She is at present the Inventive Director and Choreographer of A’nó:wara Dance Theatre, and works to assist and educate Indigenous artists within the dance world via organizations like La Danse sur les routes du Quebec and Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance.
The Interview
What We Carry started with the need to study the Kanien’keha language.
“Sure, I feel, language is a very massive a part of this piece, as a result of to me, language all the time opens up a complete world of the way you suppose,” Diabo says. It’s a window into how a folks and tradition view and expertise the world.
“My grandmother was a speaker, my father was a speaker, however sadly I didn’t study.” Through the years, nevertheless, significantly throughout her time working as a trainer, she began to study Mohawk names and phrases. “I began to develop an ear for it.”
The COVID pandemic and lockdowns left her time to delve into language research extra deeply. Because the pandemic progressed, nevertheless, it added one other impetus to her training. “It was taking our elders, COVID,” she says. “Information was being misplaced; I haven’t realized it sufficient but.”
As a degree of truth, in accordance with the Endangered Languages Challenge, solely about 3,800 Kanien’keha language audio system stay, and amongst them, solely about 200 for whom it’s a first language.
Barbara prevailed on a cousin, a former ironworker who’d as soon as labored together with her dad. Gilbert, the cousin, was greater than enthusiastic.
“Each Friday night, we’d meet on Zoom,” she remembers. They’d work on particular phrases and phrases every time. “I used clips of that, along with his permission.” These clips kind the video excerpts that display between the dance scenes.
Connecting these classes to bounce got here naturally. “My first language […] is dance, shifting via the physique,” she says. It’s a lifelong observe. “I bear in mind feeling like dance is when phrases aren’t sufficient.”
Connecting language together with her personal language of motion added to the sense of wholeness within the work.
“I’m very comfy in dance. I’ve been a dancer all my life.” That features research of classical ballet, modern Eurocentric dance, hip-hop and much more. “I additionally realized our cultural dances.” She provides the normal dances of the Haudenasaunee to her palette.
“All these dances, for me, is a vocabulary.” Barbara stresses that she’s studying new dances and including to that vocabulary on a regular basis.
What We Carry contains quite a lot of totally different components. “This piece has just a few totally different types fused collectively in elements,” she explains. In the direction of the tip, Diabo even sings together with the rating.
Closing Ideas
“What We Carry, to me, the title, is all these experiences, life experiences and influences in our physique, thoughts, and spirit,” Diabo says. She notes that carrying additionally has connotations of accountability when it’s used along with carrying tradition and language ahead to the subsequent era.
“There are 5 scenes.” Barbara is on stage for the whole lot, even because the video segments play between scenes. “Between every scene is a language lesson,” she laughs.
The story incorporates many private particulars and components, just like the century previous buckskin costume used within the piece, crafted by Barbara’s great-grandmother and given to her by her grandmother. In one other scene, she makes use of a cradleboard (a conventional protecting child provider) to speak about motherhood.
Different references are much less direct. “Being an artist, I don’t need to be all the time utterly literal.” The objective is to discover across the experiences and problems with her personal life, connecting to the viewers via sincerity of expression.
“I’m hoping they’re dialog starters,” she says. “I hope to speak quite a lot of feelings […] with out judgment,” she provides.
“I need everybody to have the ability to discover an expertise or connections in it.”
- Discover extra particulars concerning the present, 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.