Body to Land
Over a period of years we will study and re-create through video and movement, seminal works from the repertoire that explore our emotional, physical and cultural relationship to land.
The works identified as the focus for the Body to Land project: Stone Soup, Gawa Gyani, and The River, are all works that embody powerful concepts that express the relationship of humans to land. These embodied concepts invite many levels of meaning in the works. For example, Stone Soup on one level is a ceremony asking permission to enter the territory; on another level, it is a story of an invitation to engage creatively, a story of a trickster/creator engaging one culture with another; on another level, it is a feast, on another a meditation on the symbolic resonance of stone in both European and Indigenous culture. Stone Soup was a performance with the flexibility to be re-enacted in 14 different venues with different partners each time – each partner having a variation in response.
The works included in this project have something to offer to the conversation around reconciliation and the role of dance in creating bridges between cultures. They speak directly to issues of our current time, the challenging relationship between the dominant Canadian society with Indigenous cultures. Central to the task of reconciliation is an inquiry into our relationship to the land where we live, work, play and believe we own. These works were created 20 to 30 years ago and are still relevant today.
Stone Soup 1997
The River 1998
Gawa Gyani 1991
“…it is critical to engage in activities that build bridges of understanding between people. Dance and Music provide an excellent avenue for building these bridges. Dance and Music are expressions of the collective soul of First Nations people and clearly communicate the relationship we have amongst ourselves and the land. Stone Soup will bring together two cultures sharing aspects of their story in a respectful way…”
- Debbie Jeffrey, First Nations Education Coordinator of the Prince Rupert/Tsimshian territory, 1997
All of these works, sprawling across space and time as they did, are now essentially lost to contemporary audiences. Even at the time of their creation, most audiences of Stone Soup, for example, saw only one performance, a moment in the life of the work as a whole. But the concept of the work needs this one final step to render them in their totality, their wholeness, accessible to contemporary and future audiences and artists.
At the time of their creation, the dominant conventions of a dance practice required that dance was primarily created in the studio with professional dancers and performed on stages. These works defied those conventions and transgressed those boundaries. Making these works accessible to a new generation would be a valuable contribution to the art form and current conversations.
Our objective is to create, from the analog video material, writings, photos, drawings and maps that remain from each piece, a documentary video and live movement work that can be grasped by an audience as a singular whole.
3 works - 3 new videos - 3 new movement pieces - each culminating in a live event.
Please see updates on what we are currently working on below, we will keep you updated as we progress!
Stone Soup 1997
Underlying and central to Stone Soup is the Gitxsan concept of Gluk: a ceremony of redoing a wrong, as in replacing a rotten plank in the foundation of a structure. Doreen Jensen, Hahl Yee, Gitxsan elder, artist, writer, activist, educator and thinker, as well as a beloved friend and mentor, introduced and proposed the concept to create a dance that would fulfill a Gluk by touring BC asking permission to enter and dance on each of the First Nations territories we came to.
B2L - Stone Soup
Stone Soup (1995-1997) is the first work we are addressing in this project.
This map was retrieved with permission from Native-Land.ca.
We will use a map to follow the journey we took in 1997. We are looking at a map that marks the language groups defining the territory of each Nation. We are intending to develop our map in consultation with the First Peoples Cultural Council.
The River 1998
The River traces the path of Brewery Creek (Vancouver) through the landscape where it once flowed freely for centuries. Together with the Brewery Creek Historical Society, S'pak'wus Slu'lum Dancers of the Squamish Nation, and other community groups, we created a site-specific performance to honour the layers of history and memory of the now buried waterway.
Gawa Gyani 1991
"…I told Karen about an ancient and still used method of Gitxsan government. When there are differences and conflicts, the two sides would be called in to discuss these differences in neutral territory for just resolution. This ancient system is called Gawa Gyani” - Doreen Jensen
This multi-year project is funded by The Canada Council for the Arts, The BC Arts Council, The City of Vancouver
We are extremely grateful for the generous, multi-year, private donation from the Chapple Family for B2L.