Weather didn’t dampen spirits

The Dancers of Damelahamid is an Indigenous dance company from the Northwest Coast of British Columbia with a rich history of masked dance that inspires a compelling performance. Picture supplied

The inaugural visit and performance by Indigenous dance company the Dancers of Damelahamid may have been stopped in its tracks due to weather conditions, but the artistic director Margaret Grenier says they will make Tairāwhiti a priority on their next visit to Aotearoa.

“We were quite heartbroken that we were not able to make it to Gisborne,” Grenier said.

“Kapa haka artists of Turanga Ararau from Gisborne were hosted at a festival organised by the Dancers of Damelahamid in 2010.

“The Dancers of Damelahamid, in addition to being a performing arts company also produce the annual Coastal Dance Festival. This long-standing relationship with Gisborne remains.”

She says their company has been trying to organise a New Zealand tour for many years and in particular to reconnect with the Gisborne community.

This is the company’s second tour to New Zealand, the first being undertaken back in 2008.

For the current tour, the Dancers of Damelahamid were invited by the Kia Mau festival in Wellington to perform their production Mînowin.

This was originally planned for 2021, but because of the Covid pandemic the tour was postponed to 2023, she said.

“We were able to build upon this invitation to expand the tour to share our production Spirit and Tradition in Tauranga and Gisborne.”

Grenier said they were not able to make it to Gisborne because of flooding and had to turn back when they were just an hour away.

“We will most certainly continue to make it a priority to try to bring our company to Gisborne. At this time, however, we don’t have another tour in place.”

On the group’s origins, the director said it had emerged in the 1960s out of an urgency to ensure Indigenous artistic practices were not lost.

The Dancers of Damelahamid was founded by her parents, Chief Kenneth Harris and Margaret Harris.

“It followed the lifting of the Potlatch Ban which was a federal law that made song and dance illegal for Indigenous peoples on the Northwest Coast of Canada for almost 70 years. Because of the dedicated work of our parents and their generation we have song and dance today.”

Grenier grew up with cultural song and dance from her earliest memory and her generation was the first to have the opportunity after the lifting of the Potlatch Ban.

“Dance has defined me as an Indigenous person, it has connected me to my oral histories, ancestral teachings, language and land,” she said.

“I wanted to ensure that the work of our parents was passed forward so I took over leadership of the company as executive and artistic director in 2003 and began taking contemporary approaches within our dance form as of 2010.”

To her credit, she has choreographed  Setting the Path (2004), Sharing the Spirit (2007), Spirit and Tradition (2009), as well as the multimedia contemporary dance productions Spirit Transforming (2012), Flicker (2016), and Mînowin (2019).

Grenier has directed and produced the Coastal Dance Festival since 2008. She holds a Masters of Arts in Arts Education at Simon Fraser University and a Bachelor of Science from McGill University.

She was a sessional instructor at Simon Fraser University for Foundations in Aboriginal Education, Language, and Culture in 2007 and was also a faculty member for the Banff Centre Indigenous Dance Residency 2013.

“This final week of our tour our company is engaged in a collaborative residency with Atamira Dance in Auckland.

“This is part of our process of strengthening our Indigenous art form through dialogue and cross-cultural collaboration,” Grenier said.