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Indigenous-themed ballet a ‘microcosm’ of truth, reconciliation

What: Going Home Star — Truth and Reconciliation Where: Royal Theatre When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday Tickets: Starting at $29 (250-386-6121) Cultural appropriation is a hot-button topic, especially in the arts.
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Dancers Liang Xing and Sophia Lee in Going Home Star — Truth and Reconciliation.

What: Going Home Star — Truth and Reconciliation
Where: Royal Theatre
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday
Tickets: Starting at $29 (250-386-6121)

 

Cultural appropriation is a hot-button topic, especially in the arts. Today, some people demand that certain roles be performed by those of “correct” ethnicity. A black actor for Othello, for instance, or a Japanese singer for Madama Butterfly’s Cio-Cio San.

The issue was much on André Lewis’s mind a few years back. The Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s artistic director was overseeing the creation of a new ballet intended as an artistic response to the findings of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. (The TRC was established to investigate charges of abuse relating to First Nations residential schools.)

The result is the RWB’s ballet Going Home Star — Truth and Reconciliation, playing the Royal Theatre this weekend. A full-length work for 24 dancers, it tells the story of Annie, a hedonistic First Nations hairdresser who encounters Gordon. At first, he seems to be a homeless survivor of the residential-school system. But it transpires that Gordon is also a mystical trickster who educates Annie about her people’s troubled history.

As the leader of a company without aboriginal dancers, Lewis says he would never have embarked on Going Home Star — Truth and Reconciliation had it not been for Mary Richard. A ballet devotee and First Nations elder, Richard was a particular admirer of the RWB’s The Ecstasy of Rita Joe (1971), about the misadventures of a young indigenous woman in the big city.

One day, Richard approached Lewis about commissioning the RWB to create a new ballet with a First Nations theme.

“Mary said: ‘I want to find a way to bring the indigenous and non-indigenous people closer together,’ which was essentially what the TRC [Truth and Reconciliation Commission] was trying to do,” Lewis recalled. “If Mary had not approached me, probably I would have never done this.”

The idea fell fallow after Richard fell ill and died. It was then revived by another First Nations woman, Tina Keeper, a former MP and actor (best known for CBC’s North of 60). The project further heated up when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission stepped forward with seed money for the RWB’s proposal of indigenous-themed ballet.

“They supported us spiritually, if you will, and financially,” Lewis said.

Premièred in Winnipeg in 2014, Going Home Star — Truth and Reconciliation was greeted with critical acclaim. One reviewer deemed it “maybe the most important dance mounted by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet in its illustrious 75-year history.” The storyline was created by novelist Joseph Boyden, with choreography by Mark Godden and music by Christos Hatzis, Steve Wood and the Northern Cree Singers and Unuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq.

In keeping with Richard’s wishes, the dance employs the vocabulary of classical ballet, although there are contemporary touches.

“[Choreographer] Mark [Godden] was not comfortable saying: ‘Let me do pow-wow dances’ because that’s not our culture. It wouldn’t have been appropriate,” Lewis said.

When it came to presenting Going Home Star — Truth and Reconciliation, the RWB walked carefully. At each performance in Winnipeg, there was an “elder corner” in the lobby where audiences could learn about residential schools. The company provided counsellors to talk to anyone upset by the scenarios portrayed in the ballet (Annie is a coke-sniffing wanton; another character is a pedophile and rapist).

Dance Victoria, producing the performances here, is making its own efforts to reach out to the aboriginal community. The Royal Theatre’s lobby will host an exhibit of paintings made by students at the Alberni Indian Residential School in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Local First Nations representative Bradley Dick will offer traditional welcomes before both performances. And Dance Victoria has given away 100 tickets to residential-school survivors, a practice that’s been followed in other cities.

Despite the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s efforts to walk a politically correct path, Lewis acknowledges there has been the odd snipe.

“Non-indigenous people would say: ‘How can you do this? This is cultural appropriation.’ But it’s not,” he said.

“It makes me laugh sometimes when people say it’s an indigenous story. It’s not. It’s a Canadian story.”

Boyden is an award-winning novelist of Irish, Scottish and Ojibawa descent who writes often about First Nations culture. It was his friend Keeper who approached him about writing the 20-page story that provided the narrative for Going Home Star — Truth and Reconciliation.

Phoning from his New Orleans home, Boyden said he knew almost nothing about dance (save for watching his sisters taking ballet classes) before collaborating with the RWB.

“I’d said ‘sure’ to Tina. Then I got off the phone and realized: ‘What am I doing? I don’t know how to write a ballet,” he said.

Boyden also had initial reservations about telling the story of residential-school abuses through a “bourgeois Western art form.”

“But,” he added, “I came to realize: What’s more indigenous than putting human movement to music?”

The novelist was impressed by the dedication and empathy of the RWB’s dancers, who attended sweat-lodge ceremonies during the creation of Going Home Star — Truth and Reconciliation.

Ultimately, Boyden said, he’s come to realize the process of reconciliation must be a joint effort between Canada’s indigenous and non-indigenous peoples.

“This ballet, and the creation of it, is a microcosm of what reconciliation can look like,” he said.

achamberlain@timescolonist.com