In bringing a Tla’amin First Nation story to the stage, choreographer Cameron Fraser-Monroe hopes to inspire other artists
Silhouetted against beams of fluorescent light shining from the ceiling of a vast studio, more than two dozen dancers from the Royal Winnipeg Ballet listened closely to choreographer-in-residence Cameron Fraser-Monroe.
Navajo designer Asa Benally, a New York-based alumnus of Yale University, is leading the costume work.– pronounced “tall” and spelled in Ayajuthem with an upside-down and backward “e” – is inspired by the various legends that Mr. Fraser-Monroe, the creative force behind the RWB’s performance, grew up hearing as a member of Tla’amin, years before he found his calling in ballet.The dancers lift each other through the air on poles as they follow Mr. Fraser-Monroe’s choreography.
“It’s simple like most ballet stories, but there’s so many layers,” said Mr. Fraser-Monroe, who has been working on the piece since October last year. HeTalking with elders helped Mr. Fraser-Monroe, 25, to get to the heart of the story he wanted to tell. The English narration is so the tale can be understood by everyone, while the words in Ayajuthem are an homage to the few who know where it comes from.such as this, Mr. Fraser-Monroe said, barely made it through Canada’s assimilation policies and residential schools. They were also made illegal during the potlatch ban, which saw the Canadian government forbid Indigenous peoples to pass along their customs to their descendants from at least 1885 to 1951.
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