Banff sparkles with creativity, quality instruction

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This resort town, nestled snugly in the mountains about an hour's drive west of Calgary, is often described as a jewel in the crown of Alberta.

One of the gem's sparkles, however, lies up a mountain road, away from the swarming of Banff's visiting population. There you'll find a quiet retreat that encourages clear thinking and creativity, self-discovery and self-expression.

It's the Banff Centre, Canada's only learning centre that is dedicated to the arts and leadership development.

A facet of the centre that gives the gem a special shimmer is the Aboriginal Arts Program. Each summer, the centre is the gathering place of a number of Aboriginal artists who determine to mine the riches of quality instruction and enthusiasm for the art of Indigenous peoples.

A number of events were planned this year to share that enthusiasm with the larger world. One was a theatrical dance performance called Miinigooweziwin...The Gift. It is an interpretation of an old Anishnaabe story from the Lake of the Woods, brought to the Banff Centre by Don Kavanaugh, who was told the story in the sweatlodge in the 1980s.

"The story always stayed with me and I always wanted to tell it," he said. He had to get permission from the Elder who first told him the story before the performance could go forward, but that wasn't a difficulty.

"What the Elder said to me at the time was that it was a way to, the reason why he was so open, was that it's a way to start to teach our youth our culture, because they are so receptive to the arts. And the storytelling."

In fact, Miinigooweziwin tells the story of the gift of culture, how that gift is passed along from generation to generation and how it stays in the fabric of a person, even if he is removed from the environment in which the culture is strong.

Kavanaugh hopes that the story will help others realize it's never too late to revisit their roots.

"Go back and retrieve a lot of our teachings that we think that we don't know, but we do. I always thought that I lacked knowledge, in terms of my culture, but when you start to think about it and you work with this dance piece and the performers and all the knowledge that they have that came out to expand the story of the dance piece... The audience members know that they have something. Hopefully, the performance helps them go back and get what they've always known."

The Aboriginal Arts Program helps artists ground themselves in Indigenous culture and spirituality.

"Culturally we need those roots to stay close and connected to mother earth, otherwise we're bouncing all over the place," said Jeremy Proulx, the performer who dances the part of Trickster in Miinigooweziwin.

"Everyone comes from different nations and we all have our own teachings, our own stories. And that's what I had a chance to do, bring my perspective being an Ojibway man. I come from Ontario. It's so important that that cultural awareness really puts our feet on the ground."

This is Proulx's third summer in the program. He was in the very successful Bones: An Aboriginal Dance Opera produced last summer.

He was excited to be a part of the student group that was involved in this year's program because of the Gift's choreographer and dance program instructor Georgina Martinez (Zapotec/Mexican).

"I had heard a lot about how she approaches the work and how the emphasis is on the creation within the rehearsal process, not necessarily the end product," Proulx said. "She is really focused on when we're in rehearsals to explore. We're encouraged to explore and bring our own gifts.

"Like, I'm an actor and so I bring that sort of talent to my performance as a dancer. So she really encouraged that in me and to explore other characteristics that necessarily didn't come out in Bones. So that really came out this summer for me. So letting out that joy and happiness of being alive."

His performance as Trickster was a highlight of Miinigooweziwin, just as Trickster should be.

"The way mycharacter comes in the piece, the trickster is the spirit of the West, and comes in after the people have suffered a great loss, and they've gone through great pain. And for Native people today, how we've survived is through our humor. It's the gift that he brings, this particular spirit, is for people to laugh at themselves. To laugh at their own pain too, 'cause that's how we survived. Just not to take things too seriously."

Proulx was encouraged to be crazy and outrageous in his performance.

"Nothing was out of bounds. I was encouraged to explore with different movements, and character and voice, to make people laugh. That was my main purpose."

Trickster, in his different forms, is a familiar character in Aboriginal culture, an old character interpreted in a contemporary way.

"We're blending the two, contemporary and traditional. We're mixing them together. Some of these dancers here, they've gone to ballet school, they have modern dance technique, jazz technique and all that, but they haven't necessarily gotten the chance to blend the two, which we do here. We blend the contemporary movement with our own traditional movement, and that makes them very unique for the audience to see."

And a very unique learning experience for the students in the six-week program; a program that has had a huge impact on the Aboriginal community at large, as the students take what they learn in Banff back to the people.