WINDIGO
12/06/2019 - 15/06/2019
Production Details
Fierce and visceral, Windigo resonates like a scream, the vibrant echo of a long history of human ransacking and destruction, a violation of a land and its culture.
Returning to her grandmother’s home in the Lac Seul Reserve in northwestern Ontario, Canadian choreographer of mixed Oji-Cree and settler heritage, Lara Kramer confronts a latent war lurking under the surface.
A northern epic with the air of a post-apocalyptic ballad, Windigo exorcises the demons and undercurrents of the violence perpetrated against Indigenous peoples.
Windigo has been co-produced by Festival TransAmériques, CanDance Creation Fund, National Arts Center (Ottawa), Centre de Création O Vertigo (Montréal), Dancing on the Edge (Vancouver) and Usine C (Montreal). With the support of The Cole Foundation, Canada Council for the Arts and Conseil des arts et des letter du Quebec and technical residencies with Usine C and Centre de Création O Vertigo. Presented in association with MAI, Espace Libre. Premiered at Festival TransAmériques, Montreal, on May 31, 2018.
Solo , Performance installation , Multi-discipline , Dance , Contemporary dance ,
1 hour
Difficult to forget
Review by Deirdre Tarrant 16th Jun 2019
A Wellington dance audience filled Bats for this headlined act at the Kia Mau Festival that has given us much to think about over the past week.
A dark space with mattresses and piles of clothing lying about takes us out into the street, the alleys, the underbridges of the homeless. Gradually two figures become outlined by lighting but the stillness of night persists – there are sounds to taunt us and while waiting, watching, the mind and eye finds detail and minutiae in this dark place. Samuel Becket and Nikolai Grozini resonate.
For the audience, there is time to think and a steady provocation as clicking sounds become knives, ropes, rags and “stuff” disembowelled from the sturdy rectangular mattresses. The challenges for indigenous women and for social order in our volatile world are cited as instigators of this experience.
Hassan Hindi and Peter James are mesmerising performers and creators of Windigo, a work conceived and with set sound and costume design by Lara Kramer. A Canadian choreographer, Kramer returns to her grandmother’s home on a reserve in northwest Ontario and confronts undercurrents of violence in her land and culture. Violation, despair, disorientation, an eerie calm and resignation challenge us to both engage in and react to a space that embodies a global disgrace that we all need to personally relate to.
Time slows to imperceptible speed and the stage is changed, creating shadowy shapes, divulging and burying, ransacking and wrangling, the strewn detritus that is home to these men. A haunting soundscape is particularly distressing as voices of children and snatches of songs ebb and flow alongside us.
Hard to watch — and a day later, difficult to forget, Windigo is a theatre work that brings another indigenous story to Kia Mau – the Festival that stands upon whenua known as Te Upoko o Te Ika a Māui – the head of the fish of Māui. A sharing of stories with an indigenous worldview and an important gathering of works we need to watch. Thank you and travel safe in Aotearoa.
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