An engaging conversation featuring prominent Native artists… inspires audience members to reflect on their own artistry.
Transcript
Marie: This is Minnesota Native News, I’m Marie Rock.
Headlines: Coming up…:
An engaging conversation featuring prominent Native artists… inspires audience members to reflect on their own artistry.
Here is reporter Leah Lemm with the story…
STORY #1 - GET REAL: A NATIVE FEMINIST ARTISTS DIALOGUE
REPORTER: The conversation called GET REAL: A NATIVE FEMINIST ARTISTS DIALOGUE, included several well-known Native artists, and drew so much interest… the location had to be moved from a gallery space to an auditorium at Augsburg University.
Choreographer Rosy Simas put the dialogue together…. It sprung from her latest dance project… WEAVE… a performance featured in the Ordway’s Music & Movement Series.
The conversation reflected WEAVE’S Native feminist foundation.
ROSY SIMAS: Weave is a dance project that is a piece… that is many stories woven together of individual people through a Native feminist lens. So the discussion that we had was really centering the voices of Native feminist artists.
REPORTER: The artists speaking on stage, included Rosy Simas, Sharon M. Day, Marcie Rendon, Elizabeth Day, Heid E. Erdrich, and Rhiana Yazzie.
ROSY SIMAS: Those particular artists are really the people who have been involved in Native performing arts in the Twin Cities for the last like 20, 30 years. It just so happens that, they're all women. All have very deep and strong cultural and community backgrounds.
REPORTER: This talk was one of several community engagement events aimed at complementing the WEAVE dance performance… which happens January 12th.
ROSY SIMAS: I hope that people will come to this show, but mostly I hope that they will begin to spend more time with Native women work.
REPORTER: During the talk, many different subjects were brought up, from grant applications to the significance of dreams.
I talked with several audience members who all found relatable and inspiring moments during the conversation. So I’ll let the audience members pick a few highlights.
Jada Brown is a a singer, pianist and spoken word poet. During the discussion the panel was asked about how they define excellence in their own art.
JADA BROWN: Marcy was talking about emotional exchange as a way of thinking about, um, like pushing back against this idea of like, excellent. And it's like this idea of emotional exchange that is really important and valued in that reflection of seeing one owns, seeing one another in ones work.
REPORTER: Here’s Marcy Rendon during the conversation.
MARCIE RENDON: I remember one of the first times that I read my poetry on stage, it was at the O'Shaughnessy and there was a role of Native women sitting in the front row. And I, and I was unsure of my poetic ability and so I would, you know, I was just looking down here, reading my things and I peeked up and the three of the women were crying.
And it was that kind of feedback that said that this, this thing that I was doing was worth continuing to do.
REPORTER: I also spoke with event attendee, Becky Wolf.
BECKY WOLF: The dialogue was very inspiring, just to see so many awesome creative women onstage is really amazing. I really love Heid’s piece at the end about the imagery of women coming together and movements.
REPORTER: Heid had commented on the Women’s March, Idle No More, and the on-going “women’s wall” for gender equality in India - how art and resistance are connected.
Heid E Erdrich: One of the things that strikes me is that, um, the power of imagery. In, you know, the power to create something like an iconic image of women's resistance and how that can be done.
REPORTER: And audience member and stage actor, Oogie, wants to branch out in various forms of artistic mediums.
OOGIE Pushetonequa: I think I'm just seeing them up there is really inspiring and actually sparked ideas for me that I can continue doing as an actor and a storyteller.
I want to transition into film acting, but I also, I don't know, I want to do multimedia productions. I'm just using video content and imagery and just finding different ways to tell stories using multiple mediums.
REPORTER: During introductions, the artists on the panel each listed off many types of artistry that they work in. Rosy added…
ROSY SIMAS: I have actually yet to meet a Native artist that works in one genre. So I think there's something about the like being able to express ourselves in multiple ways that… I don't know, there's just something about that that's just feels more natural.
REPORTER: More information about WEAVE can be found at ROSYSIMASWEAVE DOT COM.
For Minnesota Native News, I’m Leah Lemm.