TANYA TAGAQ AND
LAAKKULUK WILLIAMSON BATHORY
MA R 16 -18 20 18 / 7:30 PM CHAN CENTRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS AT UBC
“Through music, I am able to represent life as the whole
of what it is, with all of the love and all of the laughter, and all the fear, all the anger and all the hatred.� - Tanya Tagaq (Globe and Mail, 2016)
Tanya Tagaq and Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory PRESENTED BY THE CHAN CENTRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS
Tanya Tagaq vocals Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory mask dance (uaajeerneq) Jean Martin percussion Jesse Zubot violin Tonight’s performance will be approximately 60 minutes with no intermission. Please remember to turn off your phones, and note that photography and recording is not permitted. Thank you!
The Beyond Words series is presented by the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, and explores the power of storytelling through performance both as an agent of change and as a means of igniting conversation. The Chan Centre gratefully acknowledges the generous support of The Chan Endowment Fund, the UBC Faculty of Arts, The Government of Canada, The Georgia Straight, Fairmont Hotels and Resorts and Ethical Bean Coffee.
Tanya Tagaq Tanya Tagaq’s music is like nothing you’ve heard before. The Arctic-born artist is an improvisational performer, avant-garde composer, and an experimental recording artist. She won the 2014 Polaris Music Prize for her album Animism, a work that disrupted the music world of Canada and beyond with its powerfully original vision. Retribution, her Polaris-nominated follow-up, is even more musically aggressive – a political, challenging, spine-tingling, powerful masterpiece. Recently appointed as a Member of the Order of Canada, Tanya Tagaq challenges static ideas of genre and culture, and contends with themes of environmentalism, human rights, and post-colonial issues. Her music and performance are a complex, exhilarating, howling protest that link lack of respect for women’s rights, lack of respect for the planet, and lack of respect for Indigenous rights. Tanya contorts elements of punk, metal, and electronica into a complex and contemporary sound that begins in breath – a communal and fundamental phenomenon. As leader of her project, she uses the power of her voice, her commitment to her performance, and her informed and uncompromising artistic standards to draw other similarly devoted and talented people to her mission. Her recent work has pulled her in vastly different directions, from improvised live collaborations with the band Fucked Up, to the premiere of a composition written for Kronos Quartet’s Fifty for the Future collection.
“My voice is as strong as anyone else’s voice. My right to be here, standing here, right here on this ground, is as much as anyone else’s.” – Tanya Tagaq (CBC, 2016) 4
Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory is a Greenlandic mask dancer and contemporary performance artist based in Iqaluit. She is a rising star in contemporary Indigenous theatre and Inuit performance, interested in the bodily effects of feminism, the physical aspects of using her political voice, and the artistic value of playing with each of these concepts. Laakkuluk uses uaajeerneq – Greenlandic mask dancing – as the praxis for live performance, an eyehole for writing, and a foundation for her ways of thinking about human beings. Well-recognized in both Canada and Greenland, Laakkuluk travels the world to collaborate and perform with other artists. Notable recent projects include starring in the music video for the song “Retribution” with Tanya Tagaq and #CallResponse, a nationally touring gallery and performance project. In October 2017, Laakkuluk performed Kiinalik - These Sharp Tools at Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, co-starring with artistic director and co-writer, Evalyn Parry. In November 2017, Laakkuluk performed a new solo work in Berlin, Germany. Laakkuluk is a published academic, a poet known for how her word holds sway, a dancer who creeps through the beastly and mischievous, and an outspoken advocate for creative spaces, gender equality, and Indigenous political voice. She lives in Iqaluit with her family and is a founding member and organizer of Nunavut’s Qaggiavuut! Arts Society, where she currently works as program manager.
“[Uaajeerneq] is a political act, it’s a cultural act, it’s an idiosyncratic art form. Inuit— we’re Indigenous people, and the word Indigenous means ‘coming from the land.’ We’re not even half a drop in the immensity. We don’t even know where the edges of the universe are. So how dare we be anything but humble about our humanity.” - Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory (CBC, 2017)
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JEAN MARTIN is a drummer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and a key member of the field of creative music in Canada. Jean is based in Toronto but his network of collaborators extends throughout Canada and internationally. During the 1990s, he played in two legendary Canadian jazz groups: Chelsea Bridge and D.D. Jackson’s Trio. He was nominated for ‘Best Drummer’ at the 2004 National Jazz Awards and received the 2004 Freddy Stone Award for excellence in contemporary music in Canada. As a producer, Jean is best known as the artistic director of Barnyard Records, one of the most vital labels for contemporary music in North America. Barnyard is dedicated primarily to Canada’s diverse field of creative musicians and reflects both the eclecticism and excellence of its best artists, along with Jean’s deft touch as a producer and recording engineer. In addition to his work with Barnyard, Jean has produced and/or engineered over 100 other recording projects in countless musical styles.
JESSE ZUBOT is one of those unique musicians whose practice spans multiple genres. Known mainly as a violinist, he is also a multi-instrumentalist and tends to incorporate electronic manipulation and studio gadgetry into his work. Zubot is a multiple Juno Award-winning musician with avant-rock band Fond of Tigers, Zubot & Dawson, and others. For his work in film, he has been nominated twice for a Canadian Screen Award in the ‘Original Score for Feature Film’ category. In recent years, Zubot has come into high demand as a record producer after producing Tanya Tagaq’s Polaris Music Prize-winning album Animism. He runs the critically acclaimed creative music label Drip Audio and has worked with artists such as Dan Mangan, Mother Mother, Peggy Lee, Evan Parker, Veda Hille, Mats Gustafsson, Eyvind Kang, Nels Cline and many, many others. Since 2006, Zubot has been touring and recording extensively with Tanya Tagaq.
Artist Talk with Tanya Tagaq and Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory On the afternoon of Friday March 16 at the UBC First Nations Longhouse, Tanya Tagaq and Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory spoke about using traditional Indigenous art forms in bold new ways at a talk moderated by Dr. David Gaertner. Special thanks to Deb Martel and the UBC First Nations House of Learning for partnering with us on this event. 6
Q&A with Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory When did you start learning your art form, uaajeerneq (Greenlandic mask dancing)? Was it always your intention to turn it into a profession? Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory: I started learning uaajeerneq when I was thirteen, just as I was starting high school. My mother and Maariu Olsen, one of the original recreators of uaajeerneq in the 1970s Greenlandic folk movement, took me aside to teach me how to perform and brought me to various performances they did to apprentice me. I performed with my mother for a number of years and also started performing without her in those early years. By the time I was leaving my teens, my mother stopped performing and “passed the baton” to me. Uaajeerneq can embody a plethora of emotions, themes, and stories, some of which can be challenging. Are there topics or themes that you are especially committed to tackling through your art form? Why? LWB: Uaajeerneq plays with four main themes: our humility as human beings in the vastness of the universe and our connection to our ancestors, sex, fear, and hilarity. Each uaajeerneq performer adds their own flavour to these themes, their own method of execution. For me, I find it quite important to touch on all these themes in a performance, sometimes all at once, sometimes moving abruptly between them. Sometimes I dwell on one particular subject at a time. For me, it is all about sharing intimate moments with the audience, about creating wonder and unexpectedness with both individuals and groups. People tell me that I become slightly more terrifying as the years pass, which makes me laugh. You and Tanya are tackling themes of reconciliation and retribution with this project. How does that inform the art itself and your creative process? LWB: Tanya and I talk and talk and talk. That’s what informs our creative process together. We talk about our families, our communities, things we’ve seen and felt. We think of solutions. We eat together. That is a powerful thing that we do, and what a lot of Inuit women and other indigenous women do: we build each other up through continuously building relationship. What do you want audience members to take away from your performance with Tanya? What is the end goal for you as an artist? LWB: I have always been taught that the storyteller (or the performers in this case) give the story to the audience and it is up to the audience to take away what they have felt and observed. I am grateful that people feel a lot and want to see what we do – I will keep doing it because of that. I don’t have an end goal as an artist. It’s a process; it’s life.
Read the full Q&A with Laakkuluk at chancentre.com/news.
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CHAN CENTRE AT UBC
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