Can the warrior wear toe shoes?

Page 15

Albert David comes from a long line of head-hunters. That fact seems hard to square as he sits, raises his foot above his head, points his toe toward the ceiling and complains about the pitiable arch he managed to develop in ballet class during five years of hard slog at a dance school in Sydney, Australia.

David's distant grandfather was the king of Tudu, or Warrior Island in the Torres Strait as it has come to be known since the days of William Bligh, a seaman made famous by a mutiny on a ship called Bounty. Written accounts of first contact with the islanders say that the Tudu king pointed his bow at an English vessel and shot an arrow with such fury it went straight through the thick wood of the craft, much to the consternation of the newcomers. With a grandfather like that, David, the charming 34-year-old dancer with the self-described big flat feet, knows a thing or two about what it takes to be a warrior.

"Warrior is someone who will take care of a community," he told Windspeaker during a chat in the lobby of the Professional Development Centre in Banff after an exuberant performance at the Margaret Greenham Theatre on July 15. "And to not be afraid to speak of our beliefs, or what is rightfully ours as guardians that we've been placed upon this earth to take care of."

David travelled to Canada to work with Red Sky, a dance company based in Toronto, to explore, in a production called Shimmer, the concept of warriorship.

"I was very interested in the notion of warrior and what that means to Indigenous cultures," said Sandra Laronde, Red Sky's artistic director. When the Ojibway talk about warriorship, she said, it is more about service to the people or helping mankind than it is about aggression, the modern connotation of the word.

Laronde invited David, as well as choreographer Michael Greyeyes, a graduate of the National Ballet School in Canada, to flesh out a "warrior's" other dimensions through a unique creation that was built from the foundation of the traditional dances of the First Nations of Canada and first peoples of Australia and the Torres Strait Islands. The result of that collaboration is a contemporary expression of the tradition of warriorship, the relation of man to the land on which he lives and relies, of the light that springs from the spirit of the warrior.

Since the first television came to his island community in the 1980s, David had yearned to travel to North America to meet the Indigenous people here.

"I've always loved the Indigenous people of this land," he said. "I was always like in love with your culture and I only see it in black and white... when TV first came to my bush...I was seeing all these cowboy western movies, but seeing Indians get hurt... and I was thinking 'Hey, why are people treating people [badly], and I was crying growing up and crying and thinking about all these things, and I just wanted to come over here and be in the community and help whatever way I can."

The chance was to come as Laronde developed the idea of Shimmer, but it was the preparation for that chance that David had focused on for years before. It was Native musician Robbie Robertson that kept the dancer motivated.

"This brother, man, I have his CD from a long time ago and every morning when I wake up I play [his songs]... and that really inspired me to really push and to wait for that moment that I have a chance to work with the First Nations."

David was in Grade 12, his last year of study, when a dance education group called the National Aboriginal Islander Skills Development Association showed up in his community to perform at his school. The teacher pointed at him and asked him to relocate to Sydney to take part in their five-year course.

"And I said 'yeah.' But it wasn't ambition to be a dancer that prompted that decision. David was missing his older brother who had been living in Sydney for a number of years.

"I was wondering how he be."

His brother tried to warn him away fromthe big city with millions of people living there.

"I'm saying 'I'm coming down' and he's saying 'It's not like the bush. You cannot just go wandering all over the place.' I didn't grow up like the kids nowadays with all these toys. Just me and my slingshot and my bow, hunting birds and animals."

David struggled the first three years at the school. He jokes about being unable to do the ballet point.

"I did every movement. I was the best student and could pick up every movement just like that, but these big feet... real flat. That's from stamping on rocks and everything back home."

But worse than flat feet, David said he wasn't "feeling it."

"I deferred. I went back home and I started talking to the spirits at home, and go to Lonely Island and talk to all my grandfathers and spirits and just praying to Creator. 'I've done three years. I don't like doing three years for nothing... I just don't feel it. I can do all the moves, but I don't feel it.'"

David took up work on a fishing boat. He set out to sea for two months to dive for lobsters.

Then "the ocean started moving. All the things that I did in class started to make sense. One movement just led to another. You know your heart kind of feels beautiful and you're happy in your head and your mind and you're open and you can hear things talking to you. Sometimes you say 'Oh, I'm crazy,' but it's a good thing if you just let it be. It's so good."

After months with the ocean, David got back to the island and told his boss he needed to go back to Sydney to dance. His employer paid for his trip and David completed his final two years, and when he was done he had two Indigenous dance companies fighting over who would employ him. He joined Bangarra Dance Theatre in 1995. Bangarra means to create fire, David said. He's since performed with the Australian Ballet and a variety of other companies that have taken him to perform around the world.

Albert David's trip to Canada though was a realization of a dream he'd hadsince he was a child.

"It was a dream come true coming here and being involved. I've always wanted to go to reservations and I've done about four...I went to a big powwow in Morley...I got to dance."

David said the dances he creates are to wake up the spirit in the people, "cause people are too scared of standing up and speaking up, but I like to wake them up and make them feel proud of their culture. They've been stampeded on for such a long time. So it's just to build that confidence again, build that strength and build that unity."

His collaboration with Red Sky contributed to his mission to wake up the spirit, he said.

"What I brought here is all about waking up the spirits of the land. And waking up the spirits of our land, so they may join us to bring in us songs and dance that we can give or share with people to open their eyes to our culture and see how we really, truly are. I was asked to bring all my dancing equipment and Sandra went, 'Well, Shimmer is about a warrior ...and the light inside of people."

Laronde said that she had heard the old people talk about the natural radiance of the warrior.

"They are connected up to the forces of the world, inherent radiance, the dignity, the gentleness, the grace, these are the things that [the old ones] subscribe to being a warrior.

"Then I thought an extension of that would be the natural radiance in the natural world, which is in the star world, in the sky world, in the earth world, in the water world, in the dream world; the shininess that lives in the dream world, when you have special dreams, how it sparkles. And spirit world and things that shine and are alive and precious and are saying 'yes,' are saying 'life force is here, life is glorious.'"

When David, Laronde and Greyeyes got down to developing the stage show around the poetic theme, it was decided to go with an all Indigenous male cast, something Laronde said she had never seen before. What resulted was surely a very powerful, testosterone-filed hour of dance, but one that was balanced with moments of humor and softness.

That's the extremes of being a warrior, David contends.

"I think a good warrior is a good leader, one that could go to all the extremes and be soft and if in time it needs we do not hold back the tears and let the tears out because it shows that you are feeling what people are suffering from."

It was also decided that the drum and the didgeridoo, considered by most as male-only instruments in their respective cultures, would feature large in Shimmer. Didgeridoo player Arthur "Turtle" Tamwoy captivated those of us in the audience unaware of the wide range of emotions the instrument could evoke. He is also one of the world's leading traditional dancers and his performance was engrossing.

On drum was the Eya-Hey Nakoda singers, made up of members of Bearspaw, Chiniki and Wesley First Nations in Alberta. They represented the traditional Canadian First Nation music to perfection.

Shimmer is now done and there is no further plan to show the work in Canada. Laronde wants it to travel to Australia, but that is still one of her shiny dreams. Albert David is heading home, he said, with his head full of new ideas, inspired by his work here in Canada, and his heart full of hope that Shimmer was but a beginning of what the two Indigenous peoples can accomplish together.

"It's only a taste, what we are doing here with Shimmer. It's only a taste. It will grow, and if it grows it will grow more."

David's said he's going home to think about when it can be done again. "When can we come together as people from two ends of the world and create stories that will make healing for the world? "