A Conversation with Raven Spirit Dance and Angela Conquet

by Shanny Rann

Angela Conquet (AC) from Melbourne, Australia has been appointed the guest curator for Dance in Vancouver (DIV) this year. A dance curator with 20 years of experience in Europe and Australia, she will be working closely with Raven Spirit Dance Society with Starr Muranko (SM) and Michelle Olson (MO) as part of IndigeDIV. I had the joy of speaking to them to kickstart the first issue of Dance Central in 2021 with an offering of space to engage in conversations around Indigenous Dance.

SR: Starr, can you tell me about IndigeDIV?

SM: It started as a play on words before it became official. This will be our third IndigeDIV since Raven Spirit produced it in partnership with The Dance Centre in 2017. It has always been our main focus to create a space for conversations around Indigeneity, more specifically around Indigenous process and sharing of work. We felt that in the past, not only through Dance in Vancouver but other platforms as well, that there was not enough context given to presenters or to audience members on what they were seeing or how artists’ works were being shared. So we wanted to create an environment that supported the Indigenous artists’ voice and work. This has translated into a sharing of new works by Indigenous artists whom we curated and programmed. We specifically chose new works or excerpts of them and offered that place in between the dance studio and the performance. It is not necessarily a full-length, polished piece with all the production elements on a main stage, but that in-between-space where artists can try on different ideas. We also purposefully give artists funding support or tech time support to try out lights and sound or bring in a mentor. The idea is such that they have more than just an hour of tech time to get something up and ready for a show. We have been noticing, particularly for Indigenous artists, when they are sharing their work at festivals, they do not get a lot of tech time, so they rush to put something on. Let us give them time and space.

Key to IndigeDIV has been the conversation circles that happen before and after the showing, where we put out ideas or provocations to a panel of guests artists. In the past, we had Indigenous artists and non-Indigenous presenters who have been strong allies, talk about what worked and what did not around the work before the presenters come and see the works-in-progress. The last two DIVs we intentionally had an Indigenous keynote speaker to give it a larger context of the location and space. This year, we are stepping into a more active role in terms of being a part of the conversations earlier on in the process, such as now being engaged with Angela as the international curator. I will be the Indigenous curator this year, which we have not had before. This is something that we see happening in the future as well.

We are looking to bring DIV into the Indigenous circles, and vice versa. One of the issues that came up during our initial conversation with the Dance Centre several years ago was how Indigenous dance tends to be separate from the mainstream programming, but thankfully that has changed over the years. It is a part of the larger conversations that are happening. All of the heavy lifting and hard work is not just the responsibility of the Indigenous artists. Sometimes we just want to go and show our work. We do not want to be the one who also has to teach all the cultural stuff. We talk about protocol and share that responsibility collectively in the arts world; we can do our part.

The other thing to share is that we are the producers and we are curating the program for the Indigenous arts. We are drawing on all of our different contacts and resources. Michelle's home community is Tr'ondëk Hwëchin in the Yukon; my mom's home community is Moose Cree First Nation up in Northern Ontario. We are both tier two in Vancouver. We make sure that our traditional welcomes are done by elders or cultural leaders here that are from the host nations. In 2019, we had our keynote speaker, Sierra Tasi Baker, from Squamish. We see ourselves as connectors as opposed to having all the answers.

Starr Muranko in IndigeDIV 2019

Photo credit: Erik Zennstrom

All of the heavy lifting and hard work is not just the responsibility of the Indigenous artists. Sometimes we just want to go and show our work. We do not want to be the one who also has to teach all the cultural stuff. We talk about protocol and share that responsibility collectively in the arts world; we can do our part.

Australia and Canada

SR: Angela, I know it might be a little early on but would you like to share how you are planning to engage with Raven Spirit as the curator for Dance in Vancouver this year?

AC: I feel lucky that I now live in Australia, because I think there are many similarities in between Canada and Australia. I completely agree with Starr that it is not the responsibility of the Indigenous artists to educate us and to invite us to find out about protocols, dramaturgies or the importance of self-determined initiatives. It is our work to do, presenters living in settler contexts such as Australia and Canada. I think this work is beyond urgent. White people are often in places of power, running organizations or being curators; it is a position of power insofar as we make choices of what audiences will get to see. In our processes, we often perpetuate or we are complicit of systems that are embedded in our own methodologies of thinking or acting because we work within systems that are very white, oppressive and Eurocentric. Whether we do it consciously or sometimes unconsciously, we should have absolutely no excuse for not being aware and for not paying attention to how things should be different. In the last few years, I have been very inspired in my work by my relationships with Indigenous colleagues and artists and I realized how much we should be preoccupied with not so much how we stand (i.e. choreographically and aesthetically) in contemporary dance, but where we stand. I wonder if this is a question that is perhaps more central here [in Vancouver/ Canada]? The fact that most settler dancers in Australia do not ponder much on that we actually have our feet dancing or walking on stolen land, is problematic. As such, I see it as a perpetuation of white blindness and institutionalized racism, which is very prevalent in Australia.

I am extremely delighted to be working from the beginning with Raven Spirit, with Starr and Michelle, because I cannot see any other way, but one of collaboration. For me, the challenge-and I take it as a very creative challenge-is to see how we can cocreate that space where Indigenous methodologies, and worldviews are central to the full program. Whether it is by co-conceiving together different ways of talking to artists, debating or entering into a conversation about a specific work, I'm interested in bringing an awareness that we open up ourselves to understanding differently our relationship to time and use Indigenous dramaturgies with their emphasis on horizontality, intersectionality, commonality and cross pollination as a way of resisting our transactional ways of dealing with art making. I am very concerned now that we are in these pandemic times where, yet again our body and its precarity or vulnerability has been exposed. We are discovering that we are not the everpowerful creatures that build this beautiful, neoliberalist economy where everything is solid but actually that we are all fragile. Indigenous peoples have been dealing with this instability for quite a long time. Now, it is really the opportunity to pause and reset the potential dramaturgies for future societal mind shifting, which would benefit us greatly if they were inspired by Indigenous knowledges.

I also think that we are in a moment in time where the quality of our imagination will define what the future will be. Who does this work of imagination? It is the artist, of course. Yvonne Rainer says, “The mind is a muscle”. Well, I think imagination if it is not a muscle, it is a practice. How do we collectively use these present times as an emancipatory terrain to really change how we operate, deeply, profoundly? Because it is not working. Our society is not working. Our dance ecologies are not working. Look at what bodies get shown and why! Look at what our relationships with the artists have become! We are all marketeers in a way, we do not listen, we do not understand. We are pushing the artists to work and operate within systems that are crushing them, instead of supporting them.

Michelle says it beautifully in her article, “Heart of the Telling" (Olson, 2017):

Nothing occurs if it is not witnessed. How can we collectively provoke change?

This is what I want to do. I am more interested in building the environment that allows us to ponder and use the artists’ invitation and specific works to delve deeper into this. I cannot see this happening without centering this whole program on Indigenous artists’ thinking.

Catch 22

SR: To pick up on what Starr was mentioning about how IndigeDIV was like a separate entity from DIV; Angela, do you see the possibility of bringing them together?

SM: I will just share that with IndigeDIV, there is the hope that it will be a bigger part of Dance in Vancouver. At the same time, we, as Indigenous artists, are also not wanting to be absorbed by something without having carved out that space for our ourselves, for our voices, for the conversation. It is a catch-22— wanting to be a part of things and yet wanting to still retain sovereignty and being able to say this is how we actually want to present our work, the conversations we want to have and that we are interested in. We are all trying to figure out what that could look like because it is not as if that has been done before. I feel this could be an opportunity.

For me, it is so much about relationships, and not only relationships, but relationality—how we are in relation to one another, as artists, as presenters as Indigenous, non-Indigenous. We talk a lot about relationships like networking, but we are talking about going into a deeper space of acknowledging the relationality that is already there. It is inherent because we are all in this together, this circle or this community. How do we then work together? What are the different values that we bring into the space with one another? What are the blind spots? All those kinds of questions are so much more than having a networking event and talking about what we are up to.

In the past, during one of the networking events hosted by The Dance Centre, after we had shown our work, the presenters would be carted or rushed off to the next event. We wished we could have more time to just sit and have a cup of tea together or a meal. It would be our way to feast together and to talk and learn from one another. We are looking at the different venues that we could host, even down to the type of food that will be served and so forth to create an Indigenous experience of what it means to be welcomed to Coast Salish territory and to come together for a period of time.

Surviving Discomfort

AC: I could not agree more with Starr, it is about how you orchestrate hospitality which is very important in building relationships. It is not only about networking. I am more interested in long-term relationships, or even friendships between presenters and artists that might eventuate, or not, into concrete opportunities. What I would love, together with Raven Spirit, is to enable this space. We do not have to operate according to the timeline of a delegate’s program. I would really like to just kick that off the table and invite them to function differently. If it is about spending nine hours in a room with Indigenous artists, where it is about sharing food, or whatever Michelle and Starrwant to dream about and to challenge us about, I would be up for it.

I have this idea that we can all survive discomfort which is always a great methodology to understand better or more profoundly. Sometimes you need to be slapped or punched in the gut to really see things differently. It can be because you are watching the work that has an amazing impact on you or because somebody says something in the middle of other things, and it just stays with you—one of those epiphany moments. What I would like to do is really take a step back and hear what dramaturgies or environment that Raven Spirit wants to build, from the vision to the nitty gritty details of choice of space and set up etc. From there, I will see how I can contribute or lead my colleagues by the hand and bring them in, inviting them to open themselves up to the experience.

I have this idea that we can all survive discomfort which is always a great methodology to understand better.

I see this collaboration with Raven Spirit more of a sensorial invitation, one that is inviting all the senses to engage in, not just watching a work-inprogress by an Indigenous artist. That is my invitation that I would like to extend to Raven Spirit: to really go there and I will follow. I will try to best support this and do the work of preparing my colleagues in inviting them to be open, focused and to pay attention. If they do not know how to pay attention, they can learn it right there, right now with Raven Spirit’s guidance.

I am really keen to suggest Indigenous artists, colleagues, thinkers, leaders from Australia to enter in conversation (or continue those existing). I would like to point out that what is happening in Australia is not isolated from what is happening in Canada. We are in a world where we are disconnected from where we stand, from the people who have been here before and from other systems of knowledge and leadership.We have to collectively listen now.

Leadership for the rest of the world

SM: What is so exciting about what you were saying, Angela, is that Australia and Canada, and to some extent New Zealand, have a lot of artistic relationships and connections. A few meetings have happened between us and artists from there since 2015, back when we could be physically together. We are a tight group now. We keep in touch through Facebook, it is like family. We share a lot about the different challenges and resources that we have. So, in a way, having you as the curator for DIV just makes perfect sense. How wonderful that we are not starting from scratch in terms of conversations, or even the relationship between Australia and Canada, which I think could provide some leadership and guidance for the rest of the world in some ways.

SR: I would like to offer Dance Central as a platform to present the information we are talking about leading up to IndigeDIV and to educate our audience around topics such as decolonizing dance.

AC: Decolonization is becoming more and more of a subject of research. In dance, we have to be careful about how we use this word because I do not think it is a metaphor. The word itself is already claiming a space by white people with the risk of occupying a space for the political movements of Indigenous rights and reparations. I am more interested to talk about decentering dance.We work in white institutions and the whitest art form of all, or at least in the ways it has been theorized. I am interested to invite dialogues or reflections by artists who bring Indigenous perspectives, diasporic voices, principles of Afrofuturism, which are different ways of shaping perception and understanding what we see on stage.The spaces these artists have been given in general, whether on stage or on the page, are by far not enough.We are perpetuating a dynamic of aesthetic taste that is completely constructed by us and for us, white people.

Decentering this perception is the work that we all have to do with ourselves, on ourselves and within ourselves, as audience and ‘orchestrators’ as I call us—the institutions and the curators. As Starr was saying, it is not up to the Indigenous artists to continuously educate us, and to cater for our white fragility and to deal with our discomfort. Let us be discomforted by what we do (or do not do). We just have to acknowledge that we have messed it up, not just dance ecologies, but the ecologies of the earth and the relationships we have with one another. We can use this challenging moment in time with this pandemic to recalibrate. I would like to share a quote from this amazing book that came out very recently in Australia that I had the opportunity to read by Rachel Swain, called "Dancing in Contested Land: New Intercultural Dramaturgies" (Palgrave, 2020):

I challenge settler dance artists to understand that the subjectivity without an attachment to land in Australia should not be accepted as the status quo or something neutral. Instead, this can be understood as an active, brutal stance, deeply informed by the white blinders and institutionalized national racism that sustained colonialism.

This is the premise of the book and the very first question we should start with: where we stand and not how we stand. If we do not start with this question, we are already going in the wrong direction.

Whose land is it?

SM: What I love about this quote is it flips the idea of land attachment around: when we say Dance in Vancouver, it is specific about dance here in Vancouver but what does that even mean to be somewhere and to be on that land? Whose land is it? It has all those layers that can be unpacked.

MO: Living becomes an abstraction. You live on this land but it becomes an abstraction because there is no connection to do it. I remember talking to a graduate student whose professor asked her to make something up and just do something with the material. She said, “I can't! There is a history to it, someone owns that song, someone owns the dance that is connected to a specific place." I think that is the missing piece.

Jessica McMann in IndigeDIV 2019

Photo credit: Erik Zennstrom

AC: You are completely right. In Rachel's book, she mentions Paul Carter who talks about how colonialism is sustained by the creation of subjectivity without an attachment to land. This has a direct translation in the relationship between Western arts of representations and the politics of movement in the colonized ground. There is no wonder that in contemporary dance, Europe is more preoccupied with all this desubjectivation, deterritorialization of the body, abstraction, conceptualism, which is completely disembodied in its relation to where we stand. Detachment from the land is obvious in Australia too. We let it burn, we let it flood. If we are not seeing the arts now through the lenses of climate change and climate catastrophes, and we are not taking into consideration Indigenous eco-knowledges of caring for the land, it's truly the end of our humanity.

MO: Angela, the way you position yourself within the conversation is really useful. In itself, it is part of the practice and the work. That is helpful for us to start piecing things together for ourselves.

SR: Sounds like a great start to what is going to happen in a few months and I look forward to catching up with all of you again.

Angela Conquet is former Artistic Director/ CEO of Dancehouse Melbourne (20112020). She is now an independent dance curator and consultant, a member of Asia Network for Dance AND+, co-editor of Dancehouse Diary and a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne.

The artistic vision of Raven Spirit Dance is to share stories from an Indigenous worldview through the medium of contemporary dance. Raven Spirit Dance reaffirms the vital importance of dance to the expression of human experience and to cultural reclamation.