ALL MY R(el)ATIONS
Aanmitaagzi | Nipissing First Nation
Run Time: 20 minutes
WRITTEN BY: 2021 Aanmitaagzi Summer Arts Program (ASAP) participants and arts facilitators
DIRECTED BY: Penny Couchie & Sid Bobb, Collaborative Leads
CHOREOGRAPHED BY: Penny Couchie, Lead Choreographer, in collaboration with the program participants
AANMITAAGZI ARTIST FACILITATORS: Penny Couchie (Dance, Theatre, Making), Sid Bobb (Theatre, Story-telling, Making), Animikiikwe Couchie-Waukey (Yoga, Dance), Sherry Guppy (Visual Arts, Installation), Tasheena Sarazin (Singing , Drumming), Daniel Couchie (Story boarding, Camera, Editing), Eva Couchie (Drum Making, Cultural Teachings), and Perry McLeod-Shabogeesic (Sharing Circles, Cultural Teachings)
ASAP 2021 PARTICIPANTS: Pierre Bourassa, Paige Linklater-Wong, Marjorie Nashkawa, Katya Serré, Shkaabewis Tabobondung, Ouske Couchie-Bobb, Angel McLeod, Georgia Mianskum, Malia Mizzi, and Shania Splane
PRODUCTION SUPPORT: Chris Couchie & Gayle Weston (Catering), Cindy Spence (Site Support)
Description:
This presentation is a documentation of works created by the participants of the 2021 Aanmitaagzi Summer Arts Program, an indigenous multi-arts training program, interwoven with a works in progress presentation of our multi-year project, ALL MY R(el)ATIONS.
The Aanmitaagzi Summer Arts Program (ASAP) is an 8-week intensive in indigenous performing and visual arts. Now in its fourteenth 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? With these students, we have looked at stories of Residential School, the ongoing suppression of our sovereignty and stories of our love, historic world-view and continuity.
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.
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 inter-generational 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.
We have over fourteen 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 centre 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 multi-generational 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.
Website: www.aanmitaagzi.net