Bearing, by Michael Greyeyes and Yvette Nolan premieres this week at Luminato

For the last 3 weeks I've been working with Signal Theatre in preparation for a new Dance Opera "Bearing" which hits the stage this Thursday as part of Toronto's Luminato Festival. Co-directors Michael Greyeyes and Yvette Nolan have been working us through some highly emotional content. The piece is about the Residential School system and the effect the system had on Canada's indigenous people and settlers. I feel very grateful to be included in this work, and as the work effects me, I can already see how it is spreading out from me to the people I work with: children.
 
This weekend, the students I teach had their final dance performance event and even in the excitement and joy of the moment I had a chance to sit down with them and share with them a bit about "Bearing" and how it relates to the dance I created for them. We shared our ancestry, and we talked about First Nations People. "I think that's why they are called 'First Nations'..." one student said. Many young students seem to have some understanding of who the First Nations People are, but do they know about the destruction that the Residential Schools caused? 

As a member of this production I am going to keep speaking about this to my students, friends and family. I hope that those who can see this performance see the suffering and shame that the Residential School System caused and become open to a way forward from where it has left us as a nation. 

 

As a young person growing up in a rural, dominantly white town, the difficult issues we tackle in Bearing seemed far from me. My life was focused on my education and since my childhood education did not include the depth and complexity of the devastation Canadian settlers caused to indigenous people, my thoughts weren't taken there. I married my husband at the age of 22 in his family church. His family is a member of a tightly knit Catholic community in a very small northern Ontario town. Through this connection I met the Boydens. Joesph Boyden's novels (of which I have read Through Black Spruce, Three Day Road, The Orenda, and Wenjack)  became important portals into my country's history regarding colonization and the ongoing struggles. Another small town connection I discovered in my young adulthood was through my husband's childhood friend when, at the age of 18, his parents revealed the truth about his adoption and indigenous heritage. He began a journey of self-discovery and has lived in an among the terrors faced in the Attawapiskat crisis and told us his stories first-hand.  As a dance artist I am drawn to express my emotions and ideas through my body. To be invited to take part in the creation process of such an intensely emotional work as "Bearing" has been a rewarding challenge for me. As I enter a new stage in my life (motherhood!) I am coming into a new understanding of love. This process is full of pain and suffering and regret. But through these feelings, I believe, will come love and humanity.