Combination of training, talent keeps artist performing

Page 10

".....all I knew was the only way for me to survive was to train and use that talent, that's all I knew...."

Margo Kane's name somehow never evoked images of a despairing, aimless young adult or an artist shaped by life's struggles.

That was before I interviewed her recently by phone from her home in Vancouver. I am ashamed to say that Kane had always struck me as someone who had "made it" with privileged ease. The ever-present role model posters and her "sugar and spice" movie and television roles were what had shaped my opinion.

But during our conversation, she said he teen years in Edmonton were a struggle to find a purpose for her life and her personal identity. Her natural abilities to sing and dance "saved" her and helped her through a period of her life. That explains why Kane

has devoted much of her time to working with Native youth as a member of the National Native Role Model Program.

"....I had a lot of turmoil in my life and in my family, and finally when I needed them around the issue of my identity, they were totally at a loss," she said of the white family who raised her.

But what "saved" her was her sense of self-worth, which she derived from her

gifts of singing and dancing.

"There was some reason I was on earth....it certainly wasn't any fun up to this point, but I was given this wonderful gift. I could dance - I'm just a natural. I could sing, everyone always recognized that talent through school."

She "worked with that raw talent" and "worked really hard."

Her formal training in Edmonton was with what was then the Alberta Contemporary Dance Theatre and a variety of dance schools, including the Nancy Hayes School of Dance. She was also in the first graduating class of the Grant MacEwan Community College Dance Program. And 12 years ago, in 1981, she acted in The Ecstasy of Rita Joe when the first professional production that used Native actors was staged in Winnipeg. Rita Joe ended up touring Vancouver, which is where Kane settled.

Kane's combination of training and talent meant she had no problem getting work. In her one-woman show Moonlodge, which was recently staged at Northern Light Theatre in Edmonton, Kane illustrated her versatility by singing, dancing and playing a dozen characters.

"....I can do a one-woman show and I can use all the skills that I learned in the dominant world to tell that story...it's not that I can't fit in your world, it's that I choose not to.

"...I can sing, I can dance, I act, I'm not just up here crying my heart out and sharing my autobiographical story. This is not just storytelling, this is art."

Kane is a performance artist who uses all her training from mainstream, conventional theatre to create and express a theatrical form which serves and reflects the experiences of the Native community. She chooses this rather than serving and reflecting the dominant culture and conventional, privileged forms of contemporary theatre which, for the most part, alienates the Native public.

"I can still use all those skills but I use them to my end..."