Native Earth's Niimi’iwe opens tonight! Spotlight on Brian Solomon

Native Earth's production Niimi'iwe, which opens tonight, is a three-night dance series featuring powerful contemporary Indigenous dance works - and a world premiere - from Thursday March 30 to Saturday April 1 in Toronto's Aki Studio.

light breaking broken, a creative collaboration between Vancouver-based artists Margaret Grenier (Gitxsan/Cree) and Karen Jamieson comes to Toronto directly from its world premiere at the Vancouver International Dance Festival.


The world premiere of the NDN way, a Brian Solomon Electric Moose production is based on a 1974 radio documentary for the CBC program Ideas, which features an interview with a Metis-Cree man from Northern Saskatchewan, Ron Evans.

Starting each night at 7:00 pm is light breaking broken followed by the NDN way at 9:00 pm. For tickets and info:  http://www.nativeearth.ca/niimiiwe/


Between our very crammed schedules, creator-performer Brian Solomon and I managed to squeeze out a few questions and answers about his work the NDN way, premiering at Niimi'iwe TONIGHT!


LR: So....your work is inspired by a CBC radio program from 40 some years ago. How did you come across this show? What made it a  launching point for you artistically?
   
BS: My friend Cindy Bisaillion had a 40 year career with CBC IDEAS as a radio doc maker.  She mentioned to me several times over the years that I may be interested in the first doc she ever made, THE INDIAN WAY, an hour long interview with a Cree man named Ron Evans.  As she was cleaning her house one day she discovered an old tape recording of the doc, we listened. it was amazing.  I’d never heard someone so succinctly speak on the vast indigenous concepts and beliefs he was speaking about in just one hour.  I said to myself, "I must recover this from the radio-time-vault. I must do something with this".

photo of The NDN Way by David Meinke

LR: And then, how do you translate a radio program into a dance or an embodied performance? 

BS: Listening.
A lot of listening.
And eventually moving forward with the confidence to provide a visual scape (and an altered soundscape) to his brilliant words.  

I don't think I've translated words into movement. I think I've created something that can accompany the words and teachings on a journey.

photo of The NDN Way by David Meinke

LR: I know so many people who've worked with Native Earth and rave about the company and I'm a big fan too, though I've never had the chance to work with them. How did you become involved in Native Earth? and what is that collaboration like for you? 

BS: Native Earth has a vast history of presenting every type of indigenous art, from emerging creators to artists we now might consider pioneers of the forms.  Whether we know it or not, as indigenous performing artists on this land, we are all connected to the work and people that have moved through Native Earth.  I presented a workshop version of THE NDN WAY at Native Earth a year and a half ago.  Fostering the creation of new work is a priority for them. 
photo of The NDN Way by David Meinke

LR: I'm so glad they have helped foster your creation process. In 2010 we shared a production through my company in which you created and performed in a crazy-good and slightly subversive Rite of Spring. I've missed your voice in Toronto since then. Where have you been? What have you been doing? 

BS: I'm now (loosely) based back in Toronto.  Over the past 6 or so years I've lived and worked abroad, mostly in the UK and Germany, as well as working and living in the west coast [of Canada].  

My work has morphed from concert dance back to my roots in visual art and theatre -- I now work regularly between the three forms. I don't really like to think of them as all that different though.  They are all connected. They are all moving through me.  We should all feed the various interests we have in our lives.  I think you can see the influence of them all in my work.

LR: What are your dreams and hopes for future projects?

BS: To let them have their own lives.  

I'll just keep following them wherever they take me. I hope I can honour the path of being an artist and a storyteller.




photos courtesy of Native Earth and Brian Solomon.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

experimenting, sifting through memory and bravely: Allison Cummings at Summerworks 2016

Image
Allison Cummings' work album  -- a collaboration with actor and sound designer Lyon Smith -- is a compare and contrast visit through the memories of Allison's and Lyon's lives. Just writing those words creates a vibrating potency. An album contains captured moments of life, often visual and visceral triggers, for something bigger than the paper or the 0s and 1s that make them up. There's a trend in the dance contributions of the Summerworks festival this year, undoubtedly shaped by curator Jenn Goodwin, of simple, strong ideas guiding creations. They lead to deeper things, by way of the body not a philosophical, conceptual or technical approach. Below is a short interview with Allison Cummings, a wry, passionate, uncompromising woman who surprises with each performance work she makes. Her show opens THIS AFTERNOON at 2pm. Go see it and be moved. photo of Allison Cummings by Jan Blythe LR: OK, so the obvious but important question is what triggered the creati
Read more

John Brumell: the light and the space to figure things out

Image
This is the first thing I see when I reach the Cell Biology Lab at the Hospital for Sick Children. After fumbling my way through security and fobs and confusing elevators, I meet the director of the lab in this beautiful lounge. This is actually what we spend the first 15 minutes talking about: the architecture, the way this vista and lounge area connects three floors of research in a communal space of air and light. Dr. John Brumell speaks about watching the Nobel awards, FIFA World Cup and the action of city in this space. How all of this space and light induces collaboration, new ideas, and quick problem solving. Dr. Brumell is Co-director at the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Centre at the Hospital for Sick Children, Head and Senior Scientist at the Research Institute for Cell Biology, a Professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto, and the Pitblado Chair in Cell Biology at the Hospital for Sick Children He is also the father of one of my
Read more
Image
MY BATTERY IS PURE LOVE part one by Lucy Rupert for D and P, always. for Badie, David, Edan, Esperanza, Josh, Jovia, June, Patrice, and Yuki, with whom I shared time and space at the Ucross Artist Residency program in April 2023. And for Tawni, who understood the song. ** I fly through utter blackness. On one of those small planes that seats 50 people, the depth of the blackness is vivid. I am passing through a portal. Who knows what is on the other side? Well, most of the other people on the plane know. This is their daily commute. But for me it is flying into a myth. ** I am nervous. I am running. I am obsolete. I am stumbling. I am a calculator. I am a bird watcher. I am perpetual motion. I am an elevated heart rate. I am scared that I am not enough. I am full of love. ** I am sitting in the lobby of the hotel waiting for Tawni, the Ucross Artists’ Residency  Manager. I am allowing the almost nothing that is happening to be profoundly something. I eat scrambled eggs, toast, and coff
Read more