By Kristi Alexandra
@kristialexandra

There’s a fire that Margaret Grenier has been holding for 12 years, and this year, the fire is transformative.

“This is a year of change for Coastal Dance Festival,” says Grenier, artistic director of the Coastal Dance Festival.

Grenier, who is of Cree and Gitxsan ancestry, is also the executive director of Dancers of Damelahamid Society, and a choreographer dedicated to reviving Gitxsan dance traditions.

Previously known as the Coastal First Nations Dance Festival, the annual event has been re-named to better represent the festival’s inclusivity of Indigenous cultures on Turtle Island and around the world. Additionally, the festival, normally held at UBC’s Museum of Anthropology (MOA), is moving to New Westminster’s Anvil Centre.

So what does all this change mean?

“When we started in Vancouver in 2008, we really saw that our dances here on the coast weren’t part of other festivals and other events,” Grenier tells Loose Lips Mag. “We had the opportunity to present Indigenous dance artists from other parts of Canada. We wanted to reflect that by not having it just say ‘First Nations,’ but also to reflect what’s already there.”

And there’s plenty where that came from.

Coastal Dance Festival will present artists from British Columbia, the Yukon, Quebec, Alaska, Washington state, and Australia. Artists this year include Montreal-based singer Émilie Monnet and Nahka Bertrand; the Wagana Aboriginal Dancers of Australia’s Blue Mountains and Central New South Wales west country, led by Jo Clancy; Dancers of Damelahamid; Montreal-based dancer and choreographer Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo (who will share a tribute to Mohawk iron-workers); Squamish-based dance company Spakwus Slolem; and Flying Gwitch’in Fiddler Boyd Benjamin and singer-songwriter Kevin Barr.

So, while all the performances will reflect culturally different identities, they share a common thread.

“We have our own influence and our own stories that we need to articulate through dance, but we need to maintain that foundation in our training. We are maintaining our unique traditional dance form and expressing it through a contemporary lens.”

The key production from Dancers of Damelahamid is Mînowin, which integrates narrative, movement, song, performance, and new multimedia design.

Grenier wants attendees to know, however, that the performances and the cultures reflected are not a monolith.

“The festival has always reached Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists. It’s about witnessing opening ourselves up to really allowing the artist to represent their own styles,” she says. “What we struggle with in the broader community is … allowing us to see this Indigenous artist as they are as an individual.”

The artists are coming with the intention of sharing, she says, so the way for audiences to reciprocate that “comes from the place of the heart.”

“Whenever I have an opportunity to dance and to share, one of the ways it has been described to me is: you, as a dancer, are the only person who can make that ancestral connection. You are bringing that into a space. The audience’s only means to access that is through you.”

That’s why the Dancers of Damelahamid founder wants attendees to focus on the experience instead taking photos.

“The most respectful way is not with a gesture, but making it the experience, and not what you’re going to take from it,” Grenier says, noting that many pieces deal with the revitalization of identity and culture.

“We’ve gone through lots in our history. We’ve gone through the potlatch ban here in BC, we’ve gone through periods where my grandmother said, ‘Our culture is asleep.’ As much as those moments are about stories that are destructive, they’re there to eliminate these practices and, even today, we experience them in different ways. Just as the fire is destructive, it’s also an opportunity for regrowth and rebirth,” Grenier says.

So sit back, relax, and watch the fire this weekend.

The Coastal Dance Festival Signature Evening Performances kick off Friday, February 22 at New Westminster’s Anvil Centre. Grab tickets here.

Kristi Alexandra is an unabashed wino and wannabe musician. Her talents include drinking an entire bottle of cabernet sauvignon, singing in the bathtub, and falling asleep.