Ice Follies 2016

Aanmitaagzi, Serpent People (Installations and Performance), 2016

This year, Aanmitaagzi’s project, Serpent People, will engage with Ice Follies. Serpent People is a unique multi year community engaged project.  Artists of Aanmitaagzi and community have been researching, developing and creating art in and around historic Indigenous serpent stories and figures. Aanmitaagzi will be presenting works from Serpent People and holding Open Studio workshops throughout the festival.

This is the first year of this multi-platform project. Over three years the project will include partnerships / collaborations, community-engaged workshops, intensives and site-specificart events. These workshops and events will culminate in a full-scale community engaged dance theatre production in 2018.

Serpent People is inspired by an historic Anishinaabe story, The Black Sturgeon, from this area shared by Aanmitaagzi artist, Perry Mcleod-Shabogeesic. Like many of our stories, this project provides an opportunity to gather, reflect and express our stories and imaginings through art-making. During the festival Aanmitaagzi will present works from Serpent People:

• A performance at the festival opening
• Installations
• Open Studio: Community-engaged workshops @ Big Medicine Studio
• Story Telling Event

Aanmitaagzi Storymakers

Penny Couchie / Co-AD– Choreography, direction, performer and installation

Penny Couchie is a dancer, actor, teacher and choreographer of Ojibway ancestry from Nipissing First Nation. She holds an Honors BA in Aboriginal Studies and Drama from the University of Toronto and is a graduate of The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. Penny has performed as a dancer and theatre artist in principal roles both nationally and internationally. She has guest taught at universities and colleges throughout Canada and the US, including the Centre for Indigenous Theatre, where she has been a faculty member since 1998. From 1998 to 2003 she participated in the Aboriginal Dance Project at the Banff Centre for the Arts as a student, choreographer and teacher. Her most recent choreography includes the premiere of Dances of Resistance, a three year community engaged dance theatre work produced by her company Aanmitaagzi in Nipissing First Nation, a full-length dance theatre work, When Will You Rage? at the Capitol Centre, North Bay, The Port Key and You Promised, I Lied, directed by Muriel Miguel for the Centre for Indigenous Theatre, Like An Old Tale for Jumblies Theatre, Toronto, Outta The Woods, directed by Muriel Miguel for the Centre For Indigenous Theatre performed at Factory Theatre, Toronto Ontario, Manaabekwe, a co-choreography with Christine Friday O’Leary performed for the Temagami Gathering in Bear Island, Ontario, Red Romance, directed by Muriel Miguel for the Centre For Indigenous Theatre performed at Factory Theatre, Toronto Ontario and A Bridge of One Hair for Jumblies Theatre performed at Harbourfront Centre. In 2001, she co-founded Earth in Motion World Indigenous Dance with Alejandro Ronceria, a Toronto-based collective committed to the creation of compelling and innovative new dance works. In 2007 she co-founded Aanmitaagzi, in her home of Nipissing First Nation.

Sid Bobb / Co-AD – Story-telling, direction, performer and installation.

Sid Bobb is a Gemini award-winning actor from Salish territory in British Columbia. Combining his cultural knowledge and experience as an actor and teacher, Sid has been committed to helping bring Aboriginal stories and culture to the forefront. He firmly believes that this necessary endeavor will strengthen our Aboriginal communities and help create a healthier relationship with our Canadian neighbours. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto’s sociology and drama programs, attended the Second City school of training, the Banff Centre for the Art’s Aboriginal Dance Project and the Native Theatre School (presently known as the Centre for Indigenous Theatre. He has been a professional actor since 1993. He is trained in traditional performance, including storytelling, song and dance, contemporary and classical theatre, and comedic improvisation. Sid has performed in Canada’s largest theatres across the country; story-telling, in plays, and dancing. For 3 seasons, he was co- host of the internationally broadcast, Canadian Geographic Kids and is in his 6th season as host for Kid’s CBC’s nationally broadcast Kid’s Canada. He has also been an acting instructor and teacher for the past nine years. He was a Teaching Assistant at the University of Toronto, has been an instructor for the Centre for Indigenous Theatre as well as having facilitated workshops in numerous community and professional environments. He currently resides on Nipissing First Nation, in northern Ontario. While Sid continues to work nationally in television and on stage, he is actively contributing to the arts in the Nipissing community. For the past seven years, as a founding member and one of the current Co-Artistic Directors of Aanmitaagzi, he has been working with Nipissing First Nation’s youth, elders and community; engaging the youth within the arts and assisting in carrying forward the traditional and life stories of Nipissing.

Cristina Lella – Installation, performer.

Cristina Lella’s art practice is focused in process-oriented movement with developing interests in installation, sound and textiles. She has danced and choreographed in Montreal and San Francisco with independent groups and individuals, including the site-specific improvisational group The Body Cartography Project. She particularly loves dancing spontaneous choreography in an ensemble for its lessons in openness and humility. She’s earned a certificate in dance and choreography from Les ateliers de danse moderne de Montreal (now Ecole de danse contemporaine de Montreal), a bachelor of arts in social and cultural anthropology and film studies from the University of Western Ontario, and a master of arts in dance ethnology from York University. Cristina co-owns Vinyasa Yoga Studio in North Bay with her husband Rob Joanisse, and works with the multi-disciplinary community-engaged arts company Aanmitaagzi Storymakers in Nipissing First Nation.

Meg Paulin – Installation, and performer.

Megan Lozicki Paulin is a Visual Artist and performer.  She was born in North Bay and is from Micmac, French, and Polish descent. She works predominantly in the medium of sculpture, but also incorporates mixed medium collage with printmaking, painting and drawing.  She has currently been experimenting with site-specific art and community based performance art.  She is completing her final term towards a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts and Native Studies at Nipissing University.  She has apprenticed with Master Tsimshian Carver Victor Reece and Anishinabek fabric artist, filmmaker, and writer Sharon Jinkerson-Brass, previously working under their theater company Big Sky Multi-Media Storytelling Society. She has been a part of many community arts projects and performances such as ‘Copper Woman’, ‘Ice Follies’, a biennial site-specific exhibition, and Aanmitaagzi’s ‘Dances of Resistance’.  She has also travelled extensively engaging youth in visual art workshops in First Nation Communities among the Nishnawbe-Aski Nations, as well as in South Asia.  She is currently focusing on themes surrounding ‘Landscape as Identity’ and ways in which storytelling can mend a broken history.

Darren Nakogee – Singer, performer, and installation.

Darren Nakogee is a James Bay Cree multi-award winning Powwow singer, drummer, and songwriter from Attawapiskat First Nation. Since 1995, he has been an active community member of the North Bay and Nipissing First Nation area. Although a young singer, Darren credits his level of artistry to a strong dedication to his craft as well as from a community of accomplished singers who continued to support and nurtured his craft. Locally, nationally, and internationally, he has sung with a number of renowned drum groups including White Tail Cree, Crazy Spirit, andPoplar.  In 2014, Darren produced a 13 songround dance compilation album entitledBoys From Bay featuring singers from the Nipissing region. As an emerging community engaged arts practitioner, Darren has had the opportunity to train and participate in many community-engaged projects over the past three years includingArts 4 All Esssentials, several Composing Communities Workshops with Jumblies Theatre, and as a youth mentor and member of the core ensemble of Aanmitaagzi’s Dances of Resistance which premiered in August of 2014. Throughsinging and theatre arts, Darren has been taught a sense of maturity, discipline, and respect, and has been able to learn his culture. Darren wants to help provide youth with this same opportunity as he facilitates weekly theatre arts and singing and drumming workshops for

Tasheena Sarazin – Singer / Performer

Tasheena Sarazingrew up singing and dancing in Pow Wows and very active in her native community: a low income neighbourhood of North Bay. Her mother did her best to instill traditional values and teach her how to be resourceful and to succeed at anything she wanted. During high school, Tasheena did modeling and participated actively in the student council for youth groups across Ontario. Now a single mother of 3 young boys, Tasheena works as a dance and cultural teacher within the Nipissing public school system and as an artist at Big Medicine Studio. Between business and mothering life, she is also working on beadwork, sewing and a couple of music albums. Looking to help set an example for her peers as unstoppable, she is a woman of many talents and ambitions.

Clayton Windatt – Multi-media, performer and installation.

Born in St. Catherines, Clayton Windatthas lived in the Northeastern region of Ontario for most of his life and is a Métis Multi-artist. After previously working as Director of the White Water Gallery Artist-Run for 7 years he now works as Interim Director of the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective and as an independent curator. Clayton holds a BA in Fine Art from Nipissing University and received his Graphic Design certification from Canadore College. He works actively with several arts organizations locally, provincially and nationally on committees and boards of directors including working with the National Arts Service Organization planning committee, Visual Arts Alliance and CARFAC Ontario. Clayton maintains contracted positions with various theatre programs and works as a writer for North Bay Nipissing News, Muskrat magazine and Dispatch magazine. He works with the ON THE EDGE fringe festival, is a founding member of Zakide Artist-Run, is a mentor member of the Future In Safe Hands Collective and currently works with Business for the Arts as a Mentor for their ArtsVest program. Clayton aids Aanmitaagzi with their different community arts events and contributes actively as a writer, designer, curator, performer, theatre technician, consultant and is an active visual and media artist.

Learn more about Serpent People HERE

The Trappers Cabin

Lead by Meg Paulin, The Trapper’s Cabin is an interactive installation consisting of a collection of local stories, both old and new, of land use, local knowledge, and Nipissing creation stories regarding both the changing landscape and cultural identity as Western ideologies and pressures often create tension, conflict, and division between land use practices. A trapper lives intimately with the land and the animals, they speak their language, and are keepers of traditional ecological knowledge. Historical maps and articles regarding the area can be viewed in collaboration with audio recordings of oral history. This is a work in progress and viewers will have the chance to contribute written, drawn, and audio stories while exploring concepts of personal land use, consumption, transformation, the supernatural, and familial memories. Megan has gathered much of the historical data while performing archeological projects in the area with Kinnickinick Consulting and the Nipissing First Nation Band, as well as community engaged workshops in response to Aanmitaagzi’s The Serpent People.

Opening Night Performance: February 13th at 6:00pm

During the Ice Follies Festival Opening, (5:30-7:30pm) at the Waterfront Marina, Memorial Drive, Components from weekly community engaged workshops lead by Aanmitaagzi artists will feed into the performance. In a collaborative creation process, Aanmitaagzi artists and community will perform these works together. Serpent / Black Sturgeon Puppets. Aanmitaagzi will be creating two giant puppets. Installation will also be created in collaboration with Aanmitaagzi artists and community.

Performance Gallery

Video Gallery: