The Medicine Bear comes to Sioux Lookout

Sioux Mountain Public School was host to a workshop put on by the Kahawi Dance Theatre.
The workshop and a performance at the Queen Elizabeth High School in the evening by the troupe were part of the Kids Kaleidoscope Series which promotes the performing arts in northern Ontario and was organised by Michelle Diston, the school secretary who is also programmer for the series and Dorothy Broderick, marketing manager for the project.
Held in the school gymnasium three Kawahi performers , Jessie Dell, Aria Evans and Alex Twin captivated a young and appreciative audience for one and a half hours by teaching them some of the movements of the show, which are a fusion of traditional powwow steps and contemporary ballet to which the children avidly responded by joining in the movements presented by the dancers.
Kahawi (Ga-Ha Wee) means “to carry” in the Mohawk language and is the traditional name for the family of artistic director Santee Smith who founded the group over 10 years ago.
Smith is Haudenosaunee from the Mohawk nation and she put together the troupe with a vision to combine both contemporary and indigenous dance fusing the two styles and retelling traditional stories most of which originate around Mohawk culture.
Since then they have travelled all over Ontario they have also performed in other parts of Canada including Vancouver, Saskatchewan and Calgary.
They have also performed in Alburqueque New Mexico for the Gathering of Nations and New York and Washington and worked with other indigenous communities around the world such as the Ainu (Japan), Maori (New Zealand) and Australian Aboriginies.
Rheanne Chartrand, community outreach coordinator for Kawahi spoke of the productions the group has been performing.
“Some are geared for audiences of all ages, while some are specifically geared for children” she said.
“The children have a ton of energy, they are always very enthusiastic about learning, everyone seems eager to learn and to express themselves and I think that’s’ what is most important.”
Dell said the children are often unsure about dance, unsure about their body and movement.
“We try to make a safe place for them to explore although we can see sometimes they are hesitant about dancing, but eventually they loosen up and you can see that they love to dance, everybody wants and loves to dance and they just need to have a safe place to do it” Dell said.
“When the stories are told in this way in the form of dancing and involving funny little characters, I think it creates a handle for the youth they see stories on television, however the stories we do have underlying messages that I think they can relate to and learn from them.”
At the end of each session the children are encouraged to ask questions and judging by the delighted response the workshop was a resounding success.
The evening performance at Queen Elizabeth High School was attended by more than 50 people consisting of young toddlers and their parents.
It was a “ Longhouse “story based on the beliefs of the Six Nations (Iroquois) and conveyed how the Creator gave the gift of medicine to the bear clan as a reward for showing compassion to an old man.
The three dancers representing the characters of the medicine bear, a flower and the hunter performed in a background of Norval Morriseau motifs and used televised characters of their show as a background which they blended into two stories were presented the first being comical representing the hunter and the bear and the second one with the bear as the keeper of the medicines.
The underlying message was about respecting the earth, the plants and the animals and how you should offer tobacco whenever you pick medicine to give thanks to Mother Earth.
At the end of the show the audience was encouraged to ask questions and the evening ended on a very positive note.