by Leigh Witchel
Native American dance is a rare visitor to the concert stage. As Kenneth Shirley, the young Navajo founder and CEO of Indigenous Enterprise, said onstage, a century ago his people would have been arrested for doing the dances we saw.
There’s an importance and urgency in making this visible, and pride for the community in seeing these dances on a stage. But how to take a form that was not conceived of as being for the stage, and put it on one?
“Indigenous Liberation” was less of a concert performance and more of a lecture-demonstration. Even the program material, which seemed to be taken from their booking package, implied that’s what the company is used to doing.
After a short musical introduction, the dancers came out in a procession, then danced in largely solos and some duets. Projections at the back and narration showed stories about the origin of each dance. The Men’s Grass Dance mostly involved side to side steps; it was done to clear the ground by flattening the grass. The Women’s Short Fringe Traditional Dance made the steps higher; the Men’s Chicken Dance interpreted the movements of the prairie chicken.
What we saw was straightforward in form. The simpler dances were meant to be communal, with most of the work done in stepping and marching patterns. The movement stayed largely in the legs and some simple arm work; the outfits don’t give the torso much play. The more showy dances (there’s a genre for both the men and women termed “Fancy Dance”) were more presentational and complex. But most of these dances would have gained their power by being done by a group. Here, they were mostly being done solo, which made them look threadbare.
An historically pungent bit of information was dropped when the men’s fancy dance, a whirling duet in florid costumes of feathers and fringe, was introduced. The dance changed significantly when it was done for Wild West shows in the late 19th century, and the producers asked for movements to be bigger for the audience.
You could argue that any exchange of your standards for someone else’s is at minimum dilution, or more sinister, oppression. You can also argue it’s a natural part of communicating to a new audience, and Indigenous Enterprise made similar compromises in production values: the projection separating each dance was a flash of lightning, the lighting for one dance was green and purple, a hazer was used often. Production seemed more influenced by rock concerts than concert dance.
The most technically challenging dance was the hoop dance, which involved taking hoops (related to the one familiar from “The Nutcracker”) going from three to five hoops and making complex formations, from birds’ wings, to butterfly wings, to a globe.
Once all the dancers had performed, they all came out again in solos and pairs for a livelier, more interactive segment. A few times, an element of competition was added – the hoop dancer, Jorge Gonzales-Zuniga, is a three-time champion. Shirley’s function as the emcee also felt more connected to lecture-demonstrations and rock concerts: “Make some noise!”
The company was clear in its purpose: preservation, visibility and reclamation of dances. As the evening’s title implied, the tone veered into polemic, and it wasn’t subtle. Most of the time Native Americans were portrayed less like three-dimensional humans and more like Rousseau’s noble savages, except when the narration mentioned that women had to agitate to get included in some dances, which didn’t happen until mid-20th century. But that wasn’t the point here; a more nuanced viewpoint will have to wait.
The performance was informative and valuable. But as a dance evening, it didn’t have much impact. Individual dances didn’t rise beyond demonstration to dance performance. Once you move past lecture-demonstrations to the concert stage, how faithful do you stay to the original idea, what and how much do you change it to make it work as choreography and theater?
In New York, on this same stage, we’ve seen some of the most notable and interesting transpositions – Exhibit A could be Nrityagram’s work with Odissi dance. There is almost no dance form that hasn’t had to ask this question. But it seemed one that Indigenous Enterprise hasn’t fully grappled with.
copyright © 2021 by Leigh Witchel
“Indigenous Liberation” – Indigenous Enterprise
The Joyce Theater, New York, NY
November 9, 2021
Cover: Nathaniel Slik Nez, Acosia Red Elk, Kenneth Shirley and Tyrenn Lodgepole in “Indigenous Liberation.” Photo credit © Steven Pisano.
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