Indigenous Dance Excerpts
June 20, 7:30 p.m. · June 21, 2:00 p.m.
Margaret Greenham Theatre · The Banff Centre · Tickets $10
Banff Centre Box Office: 1.800.413.8368 or 402.762.6301
Presented as part of the 2009 Banff Summer Arts Festival
Neil Ieremia, choreographer and artistic director of renowned Maori dance group Black Grace, is in Banff this month for the first-ever Indigenous Choreographers’ Summit. He’s joined by Frances Rings, choreographer for Australia’s Bangarra Dance Theatre, and Canadian choreographers Santee Smith and Gaetan Gingras. Hosted by Aboriginal Arts at The Banff Centre, the Summit will create a fresh, dynamic dialogue between indigenous choreographers from around the world, and will wrap up June 20 and 21 with two performances of new work in contemporary dance, featuring 12 dancers from across Canada.
“There is currently no other programming that exists in Canada to develop the indigenous choreographic voice in contemporary dance, while valuing traditional knowledge and dance vocabulary, and relationship to the land,” says Sandra Laronde, director of Aboriginal Arts at The Banff Centre. “The first of its kind, this summit brings together international dancers and choreographers to imagine the future of Aboriginal dance in Canada.”
The summit has been designed as a collaborative process between choreographers and dancers, bringing together creative and cultural inspiration from across the country and reaching far across the Pacific Rim. The resulting performances this month will put both tradition and innovation into cultural context.
Neil Ieremia
Ieremia is founder and artistic director of Black Grace, an Auckland, New Zealand-based vanguard dance company that mixes Pacific traditions with dynamic contemporary choreography. The company has toured extensively in New Zealand, and recently completed a residency at Jacob’s Pillow and a four-week run at New York’s New Victory Theatre. Ieremia has also choreographed for companies including the Royal New Zealand Ballet, the New Zealand School of Dance, and the Rotterdam Dance Academy.
Frances Rings
Since 1993, dancer and choreographer Frances Rings has been with Australia’s Bangarra Dance Theatre, which creates original work blending Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dance with leading-edge contemporary choreography. Rings made her mainstage choreographic debut in 2002 with Rations, and since then her work has been seen at venues including the Sydney Opera House, the Adelaide Festival of the Arts, and Perth’s Ballet in the Quarry.
Aboriginal Arts at The Banff Centre
Since its inception in 1993, the role of Aboriginal Arts programming at The Banff Centre has been to enhance opportunities for Aboriginal artists — writers, musicians, dancers and choreographers, visual and new media artists, and others — to research, conceive, and produce Aboriginal work with cultural integrity and artistic merit.
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