Curator: Bridget Cauthery
Location: Room 0028 – Pavilion de la Faculté de l’aménagement – 2940 ch. de la Côte Ste-Catherine – Université de Montréal
(Building 36 on the UdM Map)
In-Person Session
Panelists: Emma Hassencahl-Perley (New Brunswick School of Craft & Design); Amy Hull (York University); Rena Roussin (University of Toronto)
Described as a “the first ballet ever conceived and mounted with the express intent of involving as many artists of native descent as possible” (Rowe 1988), In the Land of the Spirits had its premiere at the National Art Centre in Ottawa in 1988. Based on an Ojibway creation myth, the work was conceived and produced by John Kim Bell (Mohawk) and the Canadian Native Arts Foundation. Bell, the first Indigenous artist to become a symphony orchestra conductor, conceived this project as the first step in establishing a professional company of Indigenous ballet dancers devoted to developing and mounting works by Indigenous artists. Yet, despite the well-received premiere in November 1988 and subsequent four-city Canadian tour in 1992, In the Land of the Spirits faded from cultural records and the proposed company did not materialize.
The three papers in this panel in turn address the narrative, set and costume design, and score for In the Land of the Spirits. Collectively they bring together the ballet’s components in an effort to locate, resituate and preserve a neglected piece of the historical record of Indigenous-settler dance performance on Turtle Island. Together, these papers ask who has the authority to inform and sustain cultural memory, and why certain works achieve longevity while others are overlooked. Furthermore, this inquiry acknowledges ballet’s place on the stage of European imperialism while considering how “alternative or parallel overviews of ballet revise colonial hierarchies and offer networks of humanity” (Akinleye 2021).
Murder We Wrote: Deaths and Resurrections of Indigenous Women in Canadian Ballets
Drawing on the lineage of Canadian ballets in the 20th and 21st centuries that feature Indigenous stories, themes, and characters, Amy Hull considers In the Land of the Spirit’s libretto in light of the necropolitics of fictionalized Indigenous death – particularly of Indigenous women. The creators of Indigenous or Indigenous-themed ballets consistently center on Indigenous female characters created by Indigenous or White men. Why do these ballet artists feel the need to ‘speak’ through ventriloquized women? And how might a ballet that is Indigenous-led reinforce certain tropes while resisting others? Hull will also consider the ways in which the libretto changed from the original script through two subsequent iterations.
Amy Hull, York University
Amy Hull is a Mi’kmaw and Inuk PhD student in Communication and Culture, a joint program between York University and Toronto Metropolitan University. Her research uses non-Indigenous-led artistic representations of Indigenous death as an entrypoint into questions of Canadian identity formation, and the necropolitical relationship between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian state. Her background is in Dance Studies, having received her MA Dance and BFA Hons. Dance, Performance and Choreography, from York University. She is a member of the Golden Key International Honors Society, and a recipient of the Susan Crocker and John Hunkin Award in the Fine Arts, as well as the Dr. Allen T. Lambert Scholars Award. Hull has held multiple positions including Guest Editor of The Dance Current magazine and Research Associate at the Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence, and has worked with dance and circus companies in Canada and abroad, including Balancing on the Edge and AVA Dance company. Amy is also a death doula, having graduated from both Alua Arthur’s Going with Grace End of Life Training Program, and the Institute of Traditional Medicine’s Contemplative End of Life Care program.
A Tale of Two Composers: John Kim Bell, Miklos Massey and the score for In the Land of the Spirits
Rena Roussin will present an historically empathetic understanding of John Kim Bell and Miklos Massey’s score for In the Land of the Spirits and how the music responds to contemporary cultural policies. Though it may not have “aged well,” Roussin considers how the score was received by the public and how it interacts with broader Indigenous musical cultures of the time. Roussin will also discuss the relationship between the ballet’s text and music, how the music responds to and interpolates the narrative, and how the music influences the movement of the piece. Given questions regarding the provenance of the score, such questions will address the difficulties inherent in co-composition between settler and Indigenous artists.
Rena Roussin, University of Toronto
Rena Roussin is a doctoral candidate in Musicology at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation “Positioning Art Music(ology): Histories, Institutions, Narratives” draws on concepts of disability history and justice, anti-coloniality, and EDI models to examine the genre and academic discipline’s historic and contemporary relationships to social justice and activism. Rena’s publications appear in Intersections, Musicological Explorations, and the Bloomsbury Handbook of Music and Art. In addition to her academic work, Rena is committed to public musicology and applied work in arts-based activism. To that end, she serves as musicologist-in-residence for the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, is a member of the Canadian Opera Company’s Indigenous Circle of Artists advisory board, and recently curated an Indigenous-led concert series for Soundstreams Toronto.
A Sign of the Times: Maxine Noel and In the Land of the Spirits
Mary Kerr and Maxine Noel’s set and costume designs for In the Land of the Spirits emerged towards the end of the Indian Women’s Movement of the 1980s and on the cusp the Indigenous Cultural Renaissance of the 1990s. Emma Hassencahl-Perley situates In the Land of the Spirits in the sociopolitical climate of the times, and asks how the 1988 ballet sets the tone for what came after. In addition to creating and expanding on a visual archive for In the Land of the Spirits and for co-designer Noel (Sioux) herself, Hassencahl-Perley contextualizes the ballet’s design in terms of both pan-Indianism and a critique of the American Indian movement. Thinking in particular of Noel, Hassencahl-Perley is curious about why Indigenous women artists are so frequently sidelined in creative histories, and how In the Land of the Spirits is a forgotten hallmark of Indigenous artistic production.
Emma Hassencahl-Perley, Beaverbrook Art Gallery/New Brunswick College of Craft and Design
Emma Hassencahl-Perley is Wolastoqiyik from Neqotkuk (Tobique First Nation), New Brunswick. She is a visual artist whose mediums include beadwork, murals, and digital illustration. Through material and visual culture, Emma considers her identity as an ehpit (woman) and Wolastoqwiw citizen of the Wabanaki (People of the Dawn) Confederacy. Each area of the artist’s work takes inspiration from the Wabanaki double-curve motif, a mirrored, double-c, curvilinear form often found beaded onto 19th-century textiles or etched into birchbark art objects. Her art seeks to build upon an archive of visual storytelling from her nation through water, Wabanaki feminisms, and the double-curve, symbolizing relationships, community, and non-human beings.Emma holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from Mount Allison University (’17) and a Master of Art in Art History (’22) from Concordia University. Emma is the adjunct Curator of Indigenous Art at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton and an instructor in the Wabanaki Visual Art Program at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design. Emma’s research interests lie within Indigenous Art History, Indigenous Feminisms, Craft and Textile History, Wabanaki Iconography, Oral History, and Decolonial Theory.