Caribou Song a big success with Toronto audiences

Page 3

On Feb. 23 Tomson Highway's children's book Caribou Song was joined with music performed by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and premiered as a staged theatrical production at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto.

Caribou Song was 18 minutes long, and comprised the middle part of the one-hour Toronto Symphony Orchestra performance of Kids Klassics Oh Canada, a production of orchestral music and comedic opera aimed at families and especially children aged five and up.

This performance of Caribou Song was performed by Sandra Laronde (artistic director for Red Sky Performance) as the narrator and actor in the production, as well as her partner Carlos Rivera as the other dancer/actor.

The orchestra members were the caribou, using their instruments and feet to make the caribou come to life.

Imagine the sound of 10,000 caribou stampeding around you while you watch two people perform a mythical dance. The music and the dance sequence blended so well that you were transported to the tundra where you shared in the joyous laughter of two children as they danced to call the caribou.

Sandra Laronde hails from the Temagami First Nation. She is an award-winning performer, dancer, writer, publisher, founder and artistic producer of Native Women in the Arts and past co-artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts Inc. of Toronto.

Laronde first started work on bringing Caribou Song to the stage in 2000. The production began as a chamber piece when the Scarborough Philharmonic commissioned composer Barbara Croall to write a new work for "Ancestral Voices," a concert performed in February of that year.

Since that time, Croall and Red Sky Performance have collaborated in the creation of a new version for large orchestra and another version for touring chamber ensembles.

"The touring chamber version is written for two flutists and a percussionist and is the version that we performed in Winnipeg and Switzerland. It is very powerful," said Laronde. "We are hoping to tour this version to remote communities so that they can experience the blending of Aboriginal performers and orchestral musicians, who have come together to tell a story about a Cree family and their ties to the caribou," she said.

Barbara Croall, Eagle hails from M'Chigeeng First Nation on Manitoulin Island. Croall is a former affiliate composer (1998-2000) of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and a graduate of the Musikhochschule in Munich, Germany and holds a Bachelor of Music in Composition from the University of Toronto (1991) where she was the recipient of the Glenn Gould Award in Composition (1989). Her works have been performed across Canada, in Britain and several other European countries.

Carlos Rivera is of Mixteco Indigenous descent and hails from Mexico. He is a dancer, teacher and choreographer of traditional Mexican and contemporary dance. Currently he is a member of the Minotauro Contemporary Greek Dance Company, as well as director and choreographer of the Yumare Company of traditional Mexican dance. He has worked on projects in Mexico, Costa Rica, Argentina, Switzerland and Canada.

The production of Caribou Song blends the storytelling of world-renowned playwright Tomson Highway with the theatrical talent of Indigenous dancers/actors Laronde and Rivera along with the musical composition by Croall performed by the musicians of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Hearing the orchestra perform a portion of the traditional round dance song Only She Looks Beautiful"by the Red Bull Singers gave the round dance a full, melodic quality.

Both the 1:30 p.m. and the 3:30 p.m. performances saw an 85 per cent or better attendance, with the majority of the audience being by far from the non-Native community.

Forty-nine people traveled more than five hours by bus from Bear Island, Temagami First Nation to attend the first performance, and several others, including Sandra's brother Tommy, also made the drive to attend the second show.

Michelle Twain and her four-yea-old daughter, Raven Turner, were part of the Bear Island, Temagami group.

"I thought it was good. I liked the way the music intertwined with the performance, with the dance. You could feel when the music was the caribou", said Michelle.

"I liked it," Raven said. "The best part was the Anishinabe part. I want to dance on stage when I grow up."

Delma Pishabo of the Temagami First Nation said the show was very dramatic.

"Sandra is a very good actress. I would like to see it tour the First Nation communities."

Thirteen-year-old Jayne Paul from Bear Island said that she didn't really like the lady who sang opera but "Caribou Song was cool. I liked it. The music sounded like the caribou and I liked the story."

Brad Paul of Bear Island who is 8 said, "I'm not used to this kind of music, but I liked the story and seeing Anishinabae people on the stage was good."

Barbara Laronde, Sandra's mother was beaming from ear to ear as she said, "That's my daughter and I'm very proud of her."

Although seeing a performance of this type is not the norm for many of the people from Bear Island and Temagami, they were pleasantly surprised and all of them enjoyed the show. The only criticism was that Caribou Song was too short.

With a tour of Caribou Song being planned and other pieces being developed, Red Sky Performance is hoping to bring more Aboriginal productions of this calibre to the world stage.

"What Red Sky Performance is trying to do is bring together north and south American Indigenous people. We have other pieces too that also bring north and south America together. We want to explore what the imaginative possibilities are within Aboriginal performance, because often we see something that is predictable and cliche and this is something that is really outside of that box and it moves into a whole other world that I think a lot of people don't get a lot of exposure to," said Laronde.

"To see our work in houses like Roy Thomson Hall, we deserve to be here too at RoyThomson Hall. We should be taking up space all over the place in many other places like this. I think that this is a really important step in Aboriginal performance in Canada as a whole because it hasn't happened before. So it is like a step for all of us, not just for Red Sky Performance, not just for Caribou Song, but for everyone. It opens the door. It opens a big, big door that has been shut to us for many, many, many, many years. It is very exciting."