Margaret Grenier’s company, Dancers of Damelahamid, will perform their piece Spirit and Tradition on July 26 and 27 at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket, Massachusetts, as the only Canadian company presented this season. She says, “It’s certainly an invitation that not only were we so happy to receive but also because I feel that it is in response to a significant shift that is taking place within the dance sector in which [presenters are] bringing forward the work of Indigenous artists.”
Dancers of Damelahamid is an intergenerational dance company that emerged in the 1960s by Grenier’s parents, Chief Kenneth Harris and Margaret Harris, and grandmother Irene Harris. She notes that at the time, their work was focused on “dance revitalization because it was following the lifting of the Potlatch Ban.”
Grenier says Spirit and Tradition was created in response to a significant shift within her family: “My father passed in 2010 and … we were invited just shortly after that to go to Shanghai for the World Expo. We had already had this commitment in place, so the piece really reflected a very hugely significant change within our family and our practice because up until that point, everything was under my parents’ leadership and guidance.”
Spirit and Tradition marked the beginning of a new choreographic path for the company: “Everything that was done up until that point, even though we were choreographing works, they were all based on archival material, and this was the first piece where we sort of shifted that where we wanted to begin, adding a more contemporary approach,” says Grenier.
Pam Tatge, the executive and artistic director of Jacob’s Pillow, sees the piece as part of new growth at the festival as well. As she says, “I was very interested in the fact that we’ve had very little masked dance here at Jacob’s Pillow and wanted to showcase that tradition.”
Grenier and her team have created a new mask, depicting a mountain goat, specifically for their presentation at the Pillow. She calls it a transformation mask and explains that “A mountain goat is very significant to our home territories and a lot of our stories and oral histories.… It speaks to not only transformation, but also our values and teachings that come from those stories [are] that of the mountain goats. They live in the mountains; it’s a very precarious environment, and so the teaching that goes with that is a metaphor for the path that we take in life.… We really only take it one step at a time, and we have to do this in a good and clear way, and then the path unfolds as we go.”
This will be the first time Grenier has attended the festival in any capacity. In addition to presenting Spirit and Tradition, she will be taking time to connect with Indigenous Peoples and histories of the region surrounding the festival. The Nipmuc, Wampanoag, Narragansett, Agawam, Mohegan, Pequot, Schaghticoke and Abenaki peoples currently live on this land. She notes that the festival has taken steps to create these opportunities to forge new relationships in this way.
Tatge highlights the fact that themes of reciprocity and ecological sustainability, expressed in Spirit and Tradition, are also central to the festival’s goals: “There is simply no other place in the world to see dance quite in the way you experience it in dialogue with nature at Jacob’s Pillow. And the idea of having a company, having a work, whose themes focus not only on environmental sustainability but reciprocal relationships – this is what we are seeking to build in the communities that surround Jacob’s Pillow. We have an international and a national gaze, but we haven’t always had a local and regional gaze. And we believe that the best way to build relationships is to build partnerships that are reciprocal.”
While Spirit and Tradition has toured to many locations around the world including China, Germany, Peru, Ecuador and Scotland, experiencing this multimedia piece against the backdrop of the Berkshire Hills is one of the reasons Tatge was excited to bring it to the festival. As she says, “Seeing their elaborate regalia set against the backdrop of the Berkshire hills, I think it’s just going to look magnificent.”
Grenier also sees this connection between the work and the festival: “It is a festival that is deeply connected to land in terms of its setting, in terms of, you know, the history and the values of the festival. And we as a company, our practice, likewise, is rooted in not only connections to the land but the oral histories that speak to how we care for our lands, how we maintain our ancestral teachings and stories that make our existence … a sustainable one in relationship to our lands and resources.”
Spirit and Tradition will play at the Henry J. Leir Stage on July 26 and 27 at 6 p.m.
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