This is what I feel inside when I allow my spirit to tell a story about this land.
I feel the darkness, the secrets and the sickness in the earth. Trauma embeds itself in our bodies’ tissue and deep into the earth when we don’t nurture it back to health. This film and dance offering is an exploration of that dark energy and truth. The energy that resides in some territories is seeping to the surface, screaming to be heard.
As a dancer and storyteller I want to open the conversation a little bit more about what we can truly carry inside.
This scene, Earth, is a segment of the larger film project to be released later this year, The Sickness.
Film Maker and director: Matt Lemay
Artistic director, choreographer and dancer: Josée Bourgeois
Music: Rise Ashen
The Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nations
Born in Ottawa, Josée Bourgeois is an Algonquin First Nations from Pikwakanagan, ON. She is an accomplished dancer, actor and model, who began her training as a gymnast and contemporary dancer. At the age of 16, she was signed to the Ford International modelling agency and began a lengthy journey as one of Canada’s only First Nations high fashion models. It was during her teenage years that she learned about her father’s Algonquin heritage. Her father was a Sixties Scoop baby adopted into an Irish family, and her grandmother was a residential school survivor from the Ottawa Valley area. At 23, she made the commitment to become emersed in her culture. Using skills she had developed as a contemporary dancer to connect with others, she self-trained to become a pow wow dancer specializing in “fancy shawl.”
Over the past 12 years, she has travelled the Eastern Pow wow Trail as a Fancy Shawl and Jingle dress dancer, making roots with her son Little Thunder, creating a positive impact through dance arts on her ancestral Algonquin territory and through collaborations with artist like DJ Shub, DJ Classic Roots, and DJ Rise Ashen. She has studied with the multidisciplinary Australian-based Indigenous artist Victoria Hunt at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, has performed in the National Arts Centre’s Wild West Show- Gabriel Dumont Story, and as Kina Nimiwag (Contemporary pow wow dance troupe) in the opening act for the Backstreet Boys at Ottawa’s Bluesfest 2019. A generous leader with a strong vision for change, she has employed her dance skills in a variety of environments and institutions to facilitate healing journeys for others. She is committed to reclaiming space as an Algonquin Artist all over Turtle Island and across the world.
Josée’s residency as a Visiting Dance Artist with NAC Dance will be an opportunity for her to work towards realizing her first mid-scale production entitled The Sickness. You can read more about Josée and her project in this interview.
Rise Ashen has devoted his life to the study of sound and movement. From his early years as a B-Boy in Montreal in the 80s to his studies at Fanshawe College (North America's Oldest Recording School) and the Banff Centre for the Arts, his focus has been on applying hi-fi knowhow to global dance music. His record collection spans the four corners of the world with club music of all tempos as his primary focus. As a DJ, he blends it all in a worldy mash and is always the sweaty and dynamic life of the party. He has played in clubs and festivals across the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia. His study of Yoga has led him to combine his musical journey with his Yogi journey and he has been DJing extensively for yoga classes, festivals and events since 2012.
With his partner Tangent, he founded Capital Sessions Community House Dance Practices in 2010 to share the couple’s love for house dance music and culture.
His first album with Algonquin singer Flying Down Thunder received a Juno nomination in 2012, and the duo’s second album received a Native American Music Awards nomination in 2014. Since 2015 he has been collaborating with Silla, the Nunavut-based Inuit throat-singing ensemble, with whom he was long-listed for the Polaris Prize in 2016, nominated for a Juno Award in 2017 and for a Juno in 2019 as well as winning the Stingray award at Mundial in 2019 and Inuit Group of the Year and Artistic Video of the year at the SSSIMAs in 2021.
He believes music and dance are essential to human culture and that united, artists can lead humanity towards a more enlightened way of living. He aspires to embody the wise words of Fela Kuti: "when the higher forces give you the gift of musicianship… it must be well used for the good of humanity"