Join us from 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM for Caring For All Our Relations*, an open discussion around community, culture, and care in the performing arts with international perspectives from Della Bedford (Australia), Desirée Leverenz (Canada), Yvette Nolan (Canada), and Sara Pillatzki-Warzeha (United States), led by Jesse Wente.
*This event has a limited capacity.
At 7:30 PM, we’ll have our W37 presentations: Son Semilla by Daniela Carmona Sanchez, followed by Flight by Candace Brunette-Debassige.
From 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM, Daniel Carter (Theatre Officer), Erika Iserhoff (Indigenous Arts Officer), and Soraya Peerbaye (Dance Officer) from the Ontario Arts Council will be holding an info session* about the OAC and available grants, with space for any questions you may have as well. Snacks will be provided. Let’s help you get a grant!
Join us from 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM for Caring For All Our Relations*, an open discussion around community, culture, and care in the performing arts with international perspectives from Della Bedford (Australia), Desirée Leverenz (Canada), Yvette Nolan (Canada), and Sara Pillatzki-Warzeha (United States), led by Jesse Wente.
*This event has a limited capacity.
There are no words to express the pain felt by the families of those women whose lives were taken… for those who suffered sexual assaults and survived, and it becomes an eternal path of healing that leads us to a profound act of resilience.
This piece is a prayer in movement, offering them light and honouring their life.
« We fill them with earth and flowers, they are the seeds of those that remain here. »
« Son semilla » also shares the frustration of all women and injustices that are experienced in México, with femicides.
Ojitos negros is a “cardenche song”, a musical genre originally from northern Mexico, a heartbreaking song of the soul some say… “to the little eyes” that we will never see again, I braid my hair to have strength and leave the pain and fear there, with the water I clean my soul and clean everything that I want to let go to continue and support more woman.
Daniela (she/her) graduated from the National School of Classical and Contemporary Dance at the National Institute of Fine Arts (2016, Mexico City). In her fourth year of the program, she received a scholarship from the Limón Institute in New York to attend an Intensive Limón Technique Workshop in Los Angeles, California (2015). She has worked with one of the most important companies in Mexico, Barro Rojo Arte Escénico (2014-2018), performing in national and international dance festivals in Mexico, Colombia, the United States, and Ivory Coast (Africa).
Since 2019, she has been part of A’nó:wara Dance Theatre, directed by Barbara Diabo, originally from Kahnawake, Kanyen’kehà:ka Nation (Montreal). Performing in the « Festival Quartiers Danses » (Montreal), Prismatic Arts Festival 2021 (Halifax), Harbourfront Centre (Toronto), and the “First Peoples Performing Arts Festival of the Thousand Islands ».
In 2021, she participated in the Vanguardia Dance Festival, based in the city of Toronto, presenting a solo titled “Rosa Estela” directed by choreographer and dancer Carlos Rivera.
In January 2023, she joins to Red Sky Performance, based in Toronto, under the direction of Sandra Laronde, Anishinaabe descent. Being part of the production “Migiis: Underwater Panther,” with shows at Canadian Stage (Toronto) and a tour in North America, including Vancouver, Oregon, Washington DC at the Kennedy Center, and Danse Danse, (Montreal).
Daniela offered a masterclass for students and professional dancers at the KOYA 2023 Festival of Contemporary Dance (Chiapas, Mexico), where she also presented her piece “Son semilla,” a choreography created in honor of women who have suffered gender violence and femicide.
For her, dance is an ancestral ritual, a medium where the union between the divine and the earthly happens, where dance transforms stories, injustices and pain into beauty, she considers her body as the bearer of the voice of her ancestors. Her dance has a social commitment especially to feminism, the value of the first nations on Turtle Island (America) and an interest in the search and creation of movement through dance theater.
NORMA PAPALOTL ARAIZA: Mexican of Yoeme/Basque heritage, performer, choreographer, and instructor living in Tkaronto, Norma works in different modalities within the arts blending dance, physical theatre, vocals, percussion, and text with cultural and traditional themes in a contemporary context. Norma has studied with international artists such as Jerzy Grotowski, Eugenio Barba, Natsu Nakajima, Tascabile di Bergamo, Kei Takei, Pol Pelletier, Charles Koroneho, among others. Norma is the co-artistic director of Vanguardia Dance Projects, a collective promoting Latin American and Indigenous of the Americas dance artists. She holds a master’s degree in dance ethnology from York University and she graduated from the Expressive Arts Therapy Program at CREATE Institute. She has a private practice as an Expressive Arts Therapist and supervises students. Her work has been presented at different venues in Tkaronto, throughout Ontario, Montreal, Hungary, California, Rochester, NY, New York City, Colombia and throughout Mexico.
Situated on a fictitious university campus, Flight explores two Indigenous women’s stories as they set out to implement a reconciliation policy and transform the academy through collective and ancestral Indigenous leadership efforts. In the process, the women encounter age-old colonial tropes about Indigenous peoples and women and find themselves caught between university administrative systems and the Indigenous communities they serve. In this paradoxical world, Weesakeechahk (in goose form) shows up to guide the women and have some fun in the process.
Candace Brunette-Debassige is of the Mushkegowuk Cree Nation and member of Peetabeck in Treaty 9 Territory with Cree and French settler lineage. Born and raised in small town Cochrane in northeastern Ontario, Candace now makes the Deshkan zibing (Antler River area in London Ontario) her home where she works as an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at Western University. As a scholar and storyteller, Candace is profoundly shaped by Indigenous stories as theories, and as pedagogical tools for teaching along with doing research with Indigenous communities. She is the author of Tricky Grounds a 2023 book focusing on Indigenous women’s leadership experiences in postsecondary institutions. Tricky Grounds was awarded the 2021 George L. Geis dissertation of the year award by the Canadian Society for Studies in Higher Education, for its groundbreaking approach to restorying the complexly challenging and paradoxical embodied experiences of Indigenous women labouring in Canadian universities post the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. As a contemporary storyteller, Candace is excited to return to Native Earth’s Weesageechak Festival where she first debuted her playwriting as part of NEPA’s Young Voices Program back in 2006 and 2007.
Nicole Joy-Fraser (Tsa’tinée, Nehiyaw, Métis/ Settler) is a Niagara based, Indigi-queer performing artist registered with Horse Lake First Nation in Northern Alberta. For over 20 years she has been storytelling for stage and screen, across Turtle Island and beyond, and has worked with many celebrated companies such as The Stratford Festival, The Shaw, Mirvish, Soulpepper, Theatre Aquarius, CBC, CBS, BBC and Telefilm. As a proud 2Spirit, Bear clan matriarch, Hand drum carrier and 60’s scoop witness, supporting each other through healing and the Indigenous arts continues to be a passion of theirs and they are grateful to the Aniishnaabeg and Haudenosaunee communities that have been guiding their urban Indigenous reclamation. NEPA has been an artistic home for Nicole since 2008, contributing to their artistic journey and livelihood through many Festivals and productions that include the Dora nominated “Canoe” and “Tombs of the Vanishing Indian”. Storytelling and collaborating with Candace on “Flight” marks her official directorial and dramaturgical debut and they are thrilled to be bringing matriarchal and ancestral voices to the stage.