Dancing With Our Ancestors
Dancing With Our Ancestors

Author: Sara Florence Davidson

Publisher: Portage & Main Press

Published: 2022-10-06

Total Pages: 40

ISBN-13: 1774920255

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In this tender picture book, Sara Florence Davidson transports readers to the excitement of a potlatch in Hydaburg, Alaska—her last memory of dancing with her late brother. It feels like my brother and I have always known how to sing the songs and dance the dances of our Haida ancestors. Unlike our father, we were born after the laws that banned our cultural practices were changed. The potlatch ban did not exist during our time, so we grew up dancing and singing side by side. The invitations have been sent. The food has been prepared. The decorations have been hung. And now the day of the potlatch has finally arrived! Guests from all over come to witness this bittersweet but joyful celebration of Haida culture and community. Written by the creators of Potlatch as Pedagogy, this book brings the Sk'ad'a Principles to life through the art of Janine Gibbons.

Dances with Ancestors
Dances with Ancestors

Author: David Kowalewski PhD

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2019-11-29

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13: 1532088965

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Ancestry is big business these days, but mere biological genealogy fails to tap into our spiritual roots. The shamans of indigenous cultures have known for millennia how to do this. In this comprehensive cross-cultural survey, Dr. David Kowalewski, scholar and practicing shaman, offers several techniques for engaging the Old Ones the old-fashioned way. Although modern people have largely lost this tradition, the ancestors are coming back strong, along with the shamans—a welcome happening that may reverse our ancestor-deficit disorder. Drawing on a global survey of ethnographic reports, direct teachings from shamans of many continents, and experiences from his own shamanic practice, the author presents a wealth of useful ways that shamans have developed, around the world and across the ages, to connect with ancestors in both our realm and theirs. These include spirit-plates; effigies; pilgrimages; walkabouts; and trips with plant-spirits. Using these ancient techniques, indigenous peoples receive a variety of gifts from their Old Ones, including destiny guidance, healing, protection, and wisdom teachings. Yet some ancestors may behave like hooligans, causing psychological distress and physical woes, and even curses against a whole lineage. But these maladies are both prevented and countered by shamanic methods such as home cleansing, disposal of the deceased’s property, severance ceremonies, and the like. The author ends with practical takeaways—lessons from the lineages so to speak—showing how you and your ancestors, through concerted spiritual action, can co-evolve to higher spiritual planes. As a team.

Making Dances That Matter
Making Dances That Matter

Author: Anna Halprin

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press

Published: 2019-02-08

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0819575666

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Anna Halprin, vanguard postmodern dancer turned community artist and healer, has created ground-breaking dances with communities all over the world. Here, she presents her philosophy and experience, as well as step-by-step processes for bringing people together to create dances that foster individual and group well-being. At the heart of this book are accounts of two dances: the Planetary Dance, which continues to be performed throughout the world, and Circle the Earth. The Circle the Earth workshop for people living with AIDS has generated dozens of "scores" for others to adapt. In addition, the book provides a concrete guide to Halprin's celebrated Planetary Dance. Now more than 35 years old, Planetary Dance promotes peace among people and peace with the Earth. Open to everyone, it has been performed in more than 50 countries. In 1995 more than 400 participants joined her in a Planetary Dance in Berlin commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Potsdam Agreements, at the end of World War II. More recently, she took the Planetary Dance to Israel, bringing together Israelis and Palestinians as well as other nationalities. Throughout this book Halprin shows how dance can be a powerful tool for healing, learning and mobilizing change, and she offers insight and advice on facilitating groups. If we are to survive, Halprin argues, we must learn, experientially, how our individual stories weave together and strengthen the fabric of our collective body. Generously illustrated with photographs, charts and scores, this book will be a boon to dance therapists, educators and community artists of all types.

Returning to the Yakoun River
Returning to the Yakoun River

Author: Sara Florence Davidson

Publisher: Portage & Main Press

Published: 2022-10-06

Total Pages: 40

ISBN-13: 1774920220

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Based on author Sara Florence Davidson’s childhood memories, this illustrated story captures the joy and adventure of a Haida fish camp. Every summer, a Haida girl and her family travel up the Yakoun River on Haida Gwaii, following the salmon. While their father fishes, the girl and her brother spend their time on the land playing and learning from Tsinii (Grandfather).

Dancing in Shadows
Dancing in Shadows

Author: Anna Haebich

Publisher: Apollo Books

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 430

ISBN-13: 9781742589718

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Dancing in Shadows explores the power of Indigenous performance pitted against the forces of settler colonisation. Historian Anna Haebich documents how the Nyungar people of Western Australia strategically and courageously adapted their rich performance culture to survive the catastrophe that engulfed them, and continue to generously share their culture, history, and language in theatre. In public corroborees, they performed their sovereignty to the colonists, and in community-only gatherings they danced and sang to bring forth resilience and spiritual healing. Pushed away by the colonists and denied their culture and lands, they continued to live and perform in the shadows over the years in combinations of the old and the new, including indigenised settler songs and dances. Nyungar people survived, and they now number around 40,000 people and constitute the largest Aboriginal nation in the Australian settler state. The ancient family lineages live in city suburbs and country towns, and they continue to perform to celebrate their ancestors and to strengthen community well-being by being together. Dancing in Shadows sheds light on the little-known history of Nyungar performance. [Subject: Theatre Studies, Sociology, History, Australian History, Aboriginal Studies]

The People Have Never Stopped Dancing
The People Have Never Stopped Dancing

Author: Jacqueline Shea Murphy

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 1452913439

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During the past thirty years, Native American dance has emerged as a visible force on concert stages throughout North America. In this first major study of contemporary Native American dance, Jacqueline Shea Murphy shows how these performances are at once diverse and connected by common influences. Demonstrating the complex relationship between Native and modern dance choreography, Shea Murphy delves first into U.S. and Canadian federal policies toward Native performance from the late nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries, revealing the ways in which government sought to curtail authentic ceremonial dancing while actually encouraging staged spectacles, such as those in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows. She then engages the innovative work of Ted Shawn, Lester Horton, and Martha Graham, highlighting the influence of Native American dance on modern dance in the twentieth century. Shea Murphy moves on to discuss contemporary concert dance initiatives, including Canada’s Aboriginal Dance Program and the American Indian Dance Theatre. Illustrating how Native dance enacts, rather than represents, cultural connections to land, ancestors, and animals, as well as spiritual and political concerns, Shea Murphy challenges stereotypes about American Indian dance and offers new ways of recognizing the agency of bodies on stage. Jacqueline Shea Murphy is associate professor of dance studies at the University of California, Riverside, and coeditor of Bodies of the Text: Dance as Theory, Literature as Dance.

Potlatch as Pedagogy
Potlatch as Pedagogy

Author: Sara Florence Davidson

Publisher: Portage & Main Press

Published: 2018-10-19

Total Pages: 96

ISBN-13: 1553797744

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In 1884, the Canadian government enacted a ban on the potlatch, the foundational ceremony of the Haida people. The tradition, which determined social structure, transmitted cultural knowledge, and redistributed wealth, was seen as a cultural impediment to the government’s aim of assimilation. The tradition did not die, however; the knowledge of the ceremony was kept alive by the Elders through other events until the ban was lifted. In 1969, a potlatch was held. The occasion: the raising of a totem pole carved by Robert Davidson, the first the community had seen in close to 80 years. From then on, the community publicly reclaimed, from the Elders who remained to share it, the knowledge that has almost been lost. Sara Florence Davidson, Robert’s daughter, would become an educator. Over the course of her own education, she came to see how the traditions of the Haida practiced by her father—holistic, built on relationships, practical, and continuous—could be integrated into contemporary educational practices. From this realization came the roots for this book.

Josie Dances
Josie Dances

Author: Denise Lajimodiere

Publisher:

Published: 2021-05-04

Total Pages: 32

ISBN-13: 9781681342078

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An Ojibwe girl practices her dance steps, gets help from her family, and is inspired by the soaring flight of Migizi, the eagle, as she prepares for her first powwow.

Dance We Do
Dance We Do

Author: Ntozake Shange

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2020-10-13

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 080709188X

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In her first posthumous work, the revered poet crafts a personal history of Black dance and captures the careers of legendary dancers along with her own rhythmic beginnings. Many learned of Ntozake Shange’s ability to blend movement with words when her acclaimed choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf made its way to Broadway in 1976, eventually winning an Obie Award the following year. But before she found fame as a writer, poet, performer, dancer, and storyteller, she was an untrained student who found her footing in others’ classrooms. Dance We Do is a tribute to those who taught her and her passion for rhythm, movement, and dance. After 20 years of research, writing, and devotion, Ntozake Shange tells her history of Black dance through a series of portraits of the dancers who trained her, moved with her, and inspired her to share the power of the Black body with her audience. Shange celebrates and honors the contributions of the often unrecognized pioneers who continued the path Katherine Dunham paved through the twentieth century. Dance We Do features a stunning photo insert along with personal interviews with Mickey Davidson, Halifu Osumare, Camille Brown, and Dianne McIntyre. In what is now one of her final works, Ntozake Shange welcomes the reader into the world she loved best.

Dragon Springs Road
Dragon Springs Road

Author: Janie Chang

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2017-01-10

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 0062388975

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From the author of Three Souls comes a vividly imagined and haunting new novel set in early 20th century Shanghai—a story of friendship, heartbreak, and history that follows a young Eurasian orphan’s search for her long-lost mother. That night I dreamed that I had wandered out to Dragon Springs Road all on my own, when a dreadful knowledge seized me that my mother had gone away never to return . . . In 1908, Jialing is only seven years old when she is abandoned in the courtyard of a once-lavish estate near Shanghai. Jialing is zazhong—Eurasian—and faces a lifetime of contempt from both Chinese and Europeans. Without her mother’s protection, she can survive only if the estate’s new owners, the Yang family, agree to take her in. Jialing finds allies in Anjuin, the eldest Yang daughter, and Fox, an animal spirit who has lived in the haunted courtyard for centuries. But Jialing’s life as the Yangs’ bondservant changes unexpectedly when she befriends a young English girl who then mysteriously vanishes. Always hopeful of finding her long-lost mother, Jialing grows into womanhood during the tumultuous early years of the Chinese republic, guided by Fox and by her own strength of spirit, away from the shadows of her past. But she finds herself drawn into a murder at the periphery of political intrigue, a relationship that jeopardizes her friendship with Anjuin and a forbidden affair that brings danger to the man she loves.