Indigenous artist works with Saskatoon contemporary dancers
- Fraser Needham | February 25, 2016
Indigenous artist Tanya Lukin Linklater says her latest production was inspired by the attempted assassination of Pakistani female education activist Malala Yousafzai in 2012.
Linklater is Alutiiq from the Native Villages of Port Lions and Afognak in southern Alaska and her newest work is called the the.
The the was performed in Saskatoon at La Troupe du Jour on February 20.
It was Remai Modern’s first event of the year as part of its “Turn Out” series.
“So I started to think a little about the steep belief in education I had as a young child, that my family instilled in me,” Linklater says. “Not in any way, shape or form to compare our experiences – because they were worlds apart – but to think about these different experiences globally that were happening with girls. So, I started to investigate memories of growing up and some of the obstacles I faced.”
Hence the the is partially based on Linklater’s memories of growing up in the United States in the 1980’s and examines such topics as the complexities of race, gender and poverty.
The work is split into three separate parts.
The first part is based on two poetic texts Linklater has written and the second includes clips from three different foreign films that look at some of the challenges children face with a special focus on girls and education.
The third part involves contemporary dancers interpreting the previous two parts.
The texts are read simultaneously with the video while the contemporary dance is performed as a separate part.
In Saskatoon, the texts were read in Cree by Randy Boyce while the contemporary dance portion was performed by local dancers Kyle Syverson, Karla Kloeble and Marcus Merasty.
Linklater says she largely leaves it up to the dancers as to how they want to interpret her work.
“When I work with dancers, I try not to set choreography on them,” she says. “I actually work through improvisation, so I give them the text, I give them specific lines from the text to investigate and then to bring forward movement that they find. And then my role, as an outside eye, is to amplify sections or repeat sections and structure that. So, I don’t know what it will look like because the movement vocabulary is based on the choices of the dancers themselves.”
The Saskatoon performance of the the was followed by a conversation with Linklater, local filmmaker Tasha Hubbard and Cree artist Lori Blondeau.
The event was curated by Troy Gronsdahl.
Tanya Lukin Linklater currently resides in northern Ontario.