Dreaming the Fourth Hill

Nitsitapiw Aakii, the Alone Woman at the center of the story has a vivid dream of Ksiistsikomm, Thunder. The power of Thunder lets loose the mythic figure of Old Man, who can change himself into any form he wishes. In the course of her wanderings, Nitsitapiw Aakii meets Old Man. He gives two gifts: one beautiful and another not anticipated and not beautiful, resulting in decisions that plunge the woman into a dark world. Is the dark world real or imagined? How will she find her way through it? Within Indigenous thought, gifts are given for many reasons, depending on the relationship of the giver to the receiver but always they carry with them responsibilities and reciprocities. Allegory of the Cranes is in the end, the story of one human being in a struggle to achieve maturity and finally to “find her face.”

This is the opening paragraph of the program Allegory of the Cranes as performed in 2012 at the Nazareth College Arts Center, Rochester, NY, for its Third Annual National Dance Festival. The work had premiered at Nozhem: First People’s Performance Space, Trent University (Peterborough, Ontario) in collaboration with the Department of Indigenous Studies and its Indigenous Performance Initiatives. A second performance took place at Hartwell Hall, Department of Dance at The College at Brockport in upstate New York. It was not until its third performance at the Arts Center that I, as the choreographer, was able to articulate, at long last, an understandable and true synopsis of the dance-drama. My previous uncertainties had centered on fears that perhaps the work had tried to encompass too many ideas; perhaps I was running aground among the irreconcilable characters, tensions, and plotlines. But, on the other hand, I considered this work to be an artistic effort to harness the straining forces at work in any life as we experience the life passages that are taking us to final destinations.

Having lived my life primarily as a dancer and teacher of dance, a tradition of the “modern dance” was very much ingrained in my psyche: one celebrated life with dance and with special choreography and performance, to mark the passing from one life stage to the next. Barry Lynn, my lifelong mentor, teacher, and friend, always celebrated ten-year life passages with a dance concert. Last year, at one hundred years of age, he celebrated as usual, with dance, performing a new “story dance.”

Photo 1.

“Napi Old Man.” Dancer: Keith MacFarlane. Nazareth College Arts Center, 2012. Photo by Jim Dusen.

Photo 2.

“Rose of Lima Comforts Alone Woman.” Dancers: Nancy Hughes and Rosalie Jones. Nazareth College Arts Center, 2012. Photo by Jim Dusen.

Four years ago, upon turning seventy years of age, it seemed natural, even essential, to perform “a personal ceremony of remembrance and revelation.” That “ceremony” would ultimately involve the juxtaposition of multiple personal experiences: memories and stories from the Blackfoot peoples where I was born and my ancestry as Little Shell Chippewa, of Rose of Lima the patron saint, in teachings given by Elders of Anishinaabe and other Nations, my interest in right/left brain function with myths both Indigenous and Western, and to celebrate my skills as a mask-maker-mime and contemporary modern and intertribal dancer.

The first workshop and performance of the concepts took place at ChaliceStream (dance studio) in northern Wisconsin in 2010, under the title “As I Looked Up.” It was there that I was able to investigate the underlying premise of the work. Napi Old Man, the half-mortal half-spirit helpmate sent by the Creator to the Blackfoot peoples, had been with me for many years, being personified in my first story dance, Tales of Old Man. Now he became the antagonist of the woman seeking self-knowledge. Finally, the image of the Crane came forward as the embodiment of the innate power of women. In some cultures the Crane is seen as long life; the Anishinaabe clan system places Crane as representing leadership. In courtship rituals the Crane dances...