{"id":24979,"date":"2024-02-07T09:00:57","date_gmt":"2024-02-07T17:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=24979"},"modified":"2024-02-15T12:15:58","modified_gmt":"2024-02-15T20:15:58","slug":"raven-spirit-dance-honours-land-with-confluence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2024\/02\/07\/raven-spirit-dance-honours-land-with-confluence\/","title":{"rendered":"Raven Spirit Dance honours land with Confluence<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Close your eyes and imagine you are on the banks of the mighty Klondike and Yukon rivers in Dawson City; you hear the rush of each body of water as it meets, each energy weaving together to create something new and numinous. The force of this energy is the inspiration behind Raven Spirit Dance\u2019s production of Confluence<\/i>, a contemporary dance piece that brings together traditional Indigenous ways of knowing with modern dance to create imagery that reflects each artist\u2019s values and relationship to the land.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about us weaving in and around each other, it\u2019s about moving forward,\u201d says Raven Spirit Dance co-founder and co-artistic director Michelle Olson. \u201cThe piece tracks how we move forward in generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Raven Spirit Dance is bringing contemporary dance piece Confluence to the University of Victoria on February 17 (photo by Erik Zenstrom).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The artists involved in the piece span an age range from those in their 20s to those in their 50s.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is about the process of sharing knowledge, passing knowledge, and then also being in relationship to each other in community,\u201d says Olson, \u201cand in specifically being a circle of women.\u201d<\/p>\n

For many Indigenous cultures, the role of women as leaders in their society is directly tied to the land, because the Earth\u2019s cycles are imprinted in her body. This understanding stems from a worldview in which the land is pedagogy. The work that Raven Spirit Dance does to honour the land and ancestors, as well as the physical and mental space in which they create, is just as important as the finished product.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will smudge the space at the beginning, or have smudge available during rehearsal,\u201d says Olson, who is a member of the Tr\u2019ond\u00ebk Hw\u00ebch\u2019in First Nation. \u201cWe have circle to make sure we are in relationship to each other, and we sing ourselves in and we sing ourselves out.\u201d<\/p>\n

This practice allows the artists to orient themselves into the work through song and leave the work in the room through song. Olson likens the creation process to that of the flight pattern of geese.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a leader and then then when the leader falls back, someone else takes the lead and we are all supporting the flight, the journey,\u201d says Olson.<\/p>\n

This collaboration process won Raven Spirit Dance an Isadora award in 2023, the first time a collective had taken the provincial dance award home. This speaks strongly to the matriarchal power of the group, who understand the generative power of a circle of women.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think in this very capitalist, regimented society that\u2019s all angles and lines and roads that intersect, there is not the circles that we need,\u201d says Olson. \u201cI think that circle is important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Confluence<\/i> has been in development for the better part of 10 years and has seen many people leave their mark on its evolution. Throughout the process the group has sought council from the land, venturing to the headwaters of Lynn Canyon to pay homage and seek wisdom from her waters. The group will feast and create a spirit plate for the ancestors as a way of honouring and acknowledging that they are always in the room as part of the creation process. Another part of that creation process is when arts organizations want to work with Indigenous artists, and Olson says that needs to be done with the right intent.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet the artist lead the conversation,\u201d says Olson, \u201crather than being slotted in because you need an Indigenous person for the part, [or] because you need a certain number of diversity people involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Confluence
\n<\/i>7 pm Saturday, February 17
\nPay what you can, starting at $5, UVic Farquhar Centre
\nuvic.ca\/farquhar<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Close your eyes and imagine you are on the banks of the mighty Klondike and Yukon rivers in Dawson City; you hear the rush of each body of water as it meets, each energy weaving together to create something new and numinous. The force of this energy is the inspiration behind Raven Spirit Dance\u2019s production […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24980,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,305],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-february-7-2024"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24979"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25043,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24979\/revisions\/25043"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}