ALL MY R(el)ATIONS
Aanmitaagzi Story Makers
August 13th @ 8 pm
Green Space beside the Dionne Quints Museum
181 Oak St W, North Bay, ON
For this year’s Duality program, Aanmitaagzi will be presenting a live multi-arts performance from their current multi-year project ALL MY R(el)ATIONS. The presentation will include dancing, storytelling/spoken word, singing, drumming, and art installations, and will take place on the green space beside the Dionne Quints Museum on Oak St. W. The performance is about 40 minutes long and will begin around 8 pm. There is no admission fee and all are welcome.
NOTE: This is an outdoor performance so be sure to dress appropriately for the weather and to bring a chair or blanket to sit on.
Artist Statement:
This is a presentation of the Aanmitaagzi Summer Arts Program 2024 and our multi-year project ALL MY R(el)ATIONS. It is collaboratively created and performed by the Aanmitaagzi company artists and the program participants. It is an investigation and expression of indigenous dance and our myths. We have spent weeks singing, dancing, regalia making, story-telling, and travelling to pow wows. This performance has grown out of these activities and what lies in our hearts and minds.
The Aanmitaagzi Summer Arts Program (ASAP) is an 8-week intensive in indigenous performing and visual arts. Now in its seventeenth year, the program faculty is led by award winning and renowned professional indigenous artists and educators. Participants learn, share, express and create alongside our professional multi-arts team.
ALL MY R(el)ATIONS, our latest work-in-progress, explores our historic abundance in opposition to systemic oppression and poverty. How much of what we have now, is a ration; a small shadow of what we once had? What are we entitled to? What dances, stories, songs and language is our birthright?
ALL MY R(el)ATIONS explores historically rooted ways in which we make a return to abundance by connecting to ourselves and all of Creation.
Show Credits:
Aanmitagzi Summer Arts Program 2024:
Artist Leads/Facilitators: Penny Couchie (Choreography/Direction), Sid Bobb (Theatre), Sherry Guppy (Visual Arts, Installation/Set), and Darren Nakogee (Singing)
Youth Arts Interns: Albany Benson, Ouske Couchie-Bobb, Autumn Hookimaw, Skyler Hookimaw, William McGrath, Malia Mizzi, Finn Rice, and Shania Splane
Special Guest(s): Waseskwan Linklater, Mya Katt & Niganii Dokis
About the Company:
Aanmitaagzi is a professional Indigenous inter-arts company from Nipissing First Nation, Ontario, linked to provincial, national and international networks. Aanmitaagzi combines art making, education, professional development & social activism. We investigate and create contemporary arts in relationship to historic indigenous arts and worldview. Our activities incorporate the Indigenous legacy of intergenerational art-making which engages both artists and community. Aanmitaagzi provides educational, land-based, and community-focused arts activities by producing arts festivals, dance theatre productions, and projects which activate these historic practices in meaningful ways.
With seventeen years of successful artistic experience, we have become recognized as a leader in community and land-focused, rooted art-making.
Aanmitaagzi, Anishinaabemowin for he/she speaks, lies at the center of our shared goals. Aanmitaagzi artists bring together their expertise of indigenous knowledge and performance practice to activate this principal. Aanmitaagzi carries forward the practice of a familial community-based art making and Indigenous knowledge transference practice of their respective nations. Our art, stories, and knowledge were and are created by, for and about individuals, family and community in a multigenerational context. Our artists are active in our historic arts and cultural practices and serve many sectors and institutions as cultural resources/consultants. Aanmitaagzi activities are carried out in a meaningful, land-based, community-focused and culturally relevant manner following their Indigenous laws, customs and practices.
Connect online:
Website: www.aanmitaagzi.net
Facebook: @BigMedicineStudio
Aanmitaagzi wishes to thank the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Government of Canada’s Canada Summer Jobs Program, Mushkegowuk Employment & Training Services, the North Bay Indigenous Friendship Centre’s Apatisiwin Program, and the ON THE EDGE Fringe Festival for generously supporting this project and the 2024 Summer Arts Program.