International dance star brings production north

Page 7

No Home But The Heart, a contemporary dance-drama production of Indian America is coming to the stage of the Yukon Arts Centre Nov. 24.

Daystar Dance Company produced the show and premiered it in Santa Fe, N.M. in April 1999.

"In this dance-drama, the daughter, living in the present, relives significant scenes from the past that teach her about her ancestors and lend insight into herself, her legacy and her future," Daystar's Web site states.

Rosalie M. Jones, who is the founder and artistic director of the company, is best known professionally as Daystar. Hers was the first dance company in the United States specializing in the portrayal of the personal and tribal stories of Indian America. The company -dancers, actors, artists, musicians and teachers-are all Native performers from tribes across North America, including Blackfoot, Chippewa, Navaho, Pueblo, Creek, Mohawk, Apache, Lakota, and Metis. The company has toured in the United States, Canada, Germany, Bulgaria, and Turkey.

Jones, is a "65-year-old dancer from Brockport, N.Y. who is internationally renowned. She was one of the first North American First Nations ballerinas, she does storytelling through contemporary dance, she's taught many workshops as well as performed all over the world...so she does have an incredible amount of expertise to offer here," said Linda Polyck, the arts administrator at the Society of Yukon Artists of Native Ancestry (SYANA).

Jones was born on the Blackfoot reservation in Montana. She has studied at the Juilliard School in New York City and holds a master's degree in dance from the University of Utah.

"She has two options that she's offered us-one's fairly elaborate, and requires performers from her Daystar company, which was too expensive to bring here because they all charge quite a bit of money. So we invited her alone. She did perform it on her own when she was in Banff," said Polyck.

The second option accepted by SYANA is a mini dance-drama about an hour long, which will include a combination of live performance and videotaped scenes as well as possible voice-over commentary by Jones.

"It depends on the ability of the local dancers and they are going to sort of develop the program while they are here," Polyck explained. They will select one or few of the scenes from the original No Home But The Heart for the Yukon performance.

One of the local dancers, Andrameda Lutchman, 27, will be performing with Daystar in the Yukon show. Lutchman, who comes from Carcross-Tagish First Nation, has been dancing for 15 years. She started with local dance classes for children, then advanced to professional dance workshops as well as the Aboriginal dance workshop in Banff, Alta. She holds a modern dance diploma from Grant MacEwan College in Edmonton, Alta.

"Aside from school recitals with the dance school, I've been performing since about 17."

She said she is excited. "It would be an honor to perform in her (Daystar's) choreography."

Lutchman met Jones at the Aboriginal choreographers' symposium in Banff in 2001, where Jones performed an excerpt from No Home But The Heart for the first time in Canada.

"She is now an Elder and she is still dancing-that in itself is a role model-and the fact that she is a First Nations dancer and performer, you don't see that very often." Said Lutchman.

Research for No Home But The Heart began in 1995, when Jones visited tribal areas in Canada and the United States to find the origins of her great-grandmother Susan Bigknife Houseman, who was known for her herbal medicine knowledge and her defined French-Cree dialect in the early 1900s.

The dance-drama follows Jones' family history as it parallels American and Canadian governmental practices.

"Daystar has drawn from selected events in the lives of her great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother and tied them to historical events affecting the resettlement of Native peoples in the late 19th century," states the Web site.

Polyck added that ones will be rehearsing and doing workshops with the local community at the Northern Lights school of dance the week of Nov. 18. "There could be two or three locals who are going to perform with her on stage Sunday. She is also going to have sort of an advisory workshop for other dancers or artistic directors to talk about cross-cultural training."