Ice Follies 2014

Aanmitaagzi, Dances of Resistance, 2014

Over the past three years Aanmitaagzi’s “Dances of Resistance” project has taken on hundreds of community engaged workshops and arts performances all working towards this years upcoming large scale dance theatre presentation taking place Labour Day weekend in late summer. Incorporating elements of visual and media art installation centred on the theme of Resistance, this work will be performed for the community of Nipissing First Nation, North Bay and surrounding communities. Stories embedded in residential school, racism, barriers to language and other traumatic or prohibitive experiences from individuals, communities and national identity are being explored all building towards this presentation.

Through this research and development project we aim to explore the nature of resistance including the passive and active forms of resistance that arise from a people with a shared history of trauma from the impacts of colonization and genocide. Aanmitaagzi is proud to announce the inclusion of internationally recognized artists Alejandro Ronceria and Rulan Tangen as they will be contributing to the further development of Dances of Resistance by presenting together with Aanmitaagzi at this years Ice Follies 2014 festival.

Alejandro Ronceria is an internationally acclaimed choreographer/artistic director, renown for pioneering work in indigenous dance. Trained in classical ballet he danced with companies in Colombia, The Soviet Union, USA and Canada before he began his career as a choreographer. As an artist of indigenous heritage from Colombia, he was interested in exploring his cultural identity in his art. This passion grew into an overarching focus as an artist that has spanned two decades and his achievements are prolific and groundbreaking. As well as his own artistic work, he is recognized for his significant mentorship of a new generation of indigenous dancers/choreographers in Canada, and abroad. Ronceria was one of the pioneers of dancefilm as a unique medium in Canada. In 1996, his dancefilm “A Hunter Called Memory” was an official selection at the Toronto International Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Clermont – Ferrand and Sheffield.

Ronceria is the co-founder/founding artistic director of the first Aboriginal Dance Program in North America at The Banff Center for the Arts. The groundbreaking program brought together diverse traditional and contemporary Aboriginal/Inuit dancers from Canada, the USA, Mexico and Greenland. From 1996-2001, he served as the artistic director and developed a unique program that experimented with an indigenous approach to movement and dance performance. This program was the incubator for developing a new generation of choreographers working in Canada and abroad and served as a model for various schools for indigenous dance internationally. One of the productions from the Banff program grew into Bones: The first Aboriginal Dance Opera (2001), a collaboration with Sadie Buck and choreographed by Ronceria.

The greatest honour and culmination of Ronceria’s artistic career was to be selected to be choreographer /artistic advisor for the Official Opening Ceremony (Aboriginal segments) for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games. The spectacular opening ceremony was aired on CTV and 10 other channels in a total of 11 languages with 23 million Canadian viewers. This was the most watched Canadian television event in history. In the USA, NBC reported an average of 32.6 million viewers, making it the second-most watched non-United States Winter Olympics and 3.5 billion viewers worldwide.

Rulan Tangen is an internationally accomplished dance artist and choreographer. She is the Founding Artistic Director and Choreographer DANCING EARTH , noted in Dance Magazine as “One of the Top 25 To Watch”, and winner of the National Dance Project Production and Touring Grant, as well as the National Museum of American Indian’s Expressive Arts award. She is also recipient of the Costo Medal for Education , Research and Service by UC Riverside’s Chair of Native Affairs and is a fellow of the Global Centre for Cultural Entrepreneurship, as well as honoree by the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation for their first dance Fellowship, for Artistic Innovation..As performer and choreographer, she has worked in ballet, modern dance, circus, tv, film, theater , opera and Native contemporary productions in the USA, Canada, France, Norway, Mexico, Brasil and Argentina.

Her work values movement as an expression of indigenous worldview, including the honoring of matriarchal leadership, dance as functional ritual for transformation and healing, the process of decolonizing the body, and the animistic energetic connection with all forms of life on earth. She has recruited and nurtured a new generation of Indigenous contemporary dancers and holds the belief that ” to dance is to live, to live is to dance”.

Learn more about Dance of Resistance HERE

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