DanceHouse presents Red Sky Performance's sumptuous, kinetic Trace
The contemporary Indigenous dance company takes inspiration for its new work from Teme-Augama Anishinaabe traditional knowledge about the night sky
Red Sky Performance’s Trace. Photo by David Hou
DanceHouse is honoured to present Red Sky Performance’s Trace from November 24 to 27 at 8 pm and November 27 at 2pm at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts
Red Sky Performance’s Trace begins with an image of a giant black hole being slowly lowered down from the sky. At the same time, a dancer descends from the heavens supported in her earthbound journey by the other company members. With Trace, the contemporary Toronto-based Indigenous dance company takes its inspiration from Artistic Director Sandra Laronde’s Teme-Augama Anishinaabe traditional knowledge about the night sky, the stars, and their influences on society and culture.
Laronde draws upon the fact that Indigenous peoples have mapped the night sky for thousands of years, the stories inspired by the stars, and the belief that we are all part of the universe—and it is part of us.
The hour-long piece moves between segments strongly rooted in storytelling, dramatizing how Indigenous peoples’ values depend on the importance of origins: a vision that embraces both the dreamlike and ritualistic and the contemporary here and now. Conceived by Laronde and choreographed by Jera Wolfe, Trace examines the roots of the Anishinaabe, and how people imagined their origin by looking at the sky and the stars. The process made her wonder—what traces do individuals leave behind, how do they shape culture?
“Trace is a highly kinetic contemporary dance and music work inspired by Indigenous sky and star stories, offering a glimpse into our origin as well as our future evolution,” Laronde says. “We are traceable to the beginnings of the universe, our ancestral origins stretching across the Milky Way to the atoms burning inside of us in the here and now.
“Trace is a sumptuous creation that looks at all things traceable and what we leave behind as humans, as a culture, as a nation, and as an individual.”
Métis choreographer Jera Wolfe won the 2019 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Choreographer for Trace. His choreographic work includes new creations for Canada’s National Ballet School, Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet School and Company, Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre, School of Contemporary Dancers, and Tulsa Ballet Centre for Dance Education.
Together, Laronde and Wolfe have conceived and created a beautiful meditation on what it means to be Indigenous now and in the future. As a company, Red Sky Performance both captures the experiences of contemporary Indigenous artists, and produces original work to expand the ecology of contemporary Indigenous performance.
For more information and tickets, visit DanceHouse.
Post sponsored by DanceHouse.