A North Vancouver resident’s dance performance is set to take the stage next week at Matriarchs Uprising, a Vancouver-based dance festival celebrating female Indigenous dance.
Starr Muranko choreographed the 20-minute duet Tracing Bones, kicking off the festival performance’s Feb. 19, to reflect questions about what memories we hold onto, what gets forgotten or transformed over time, and what memories we hold within our bones.
“It is one of the overarching themes, a larger perspective,” Muranko said. “So our bones, our breath, our DNA – they all have memories – not only of past generations for our ancestors, but also we’re carrying them in present day and looking ahead to the future.”
Muranko is a choreographer and co-artistic director at Raven Spirit Dance in Vancouver, a dance company elevating Indigenous creators and voices, where she has been for 16 years. She carries mixed ancestry of Moose Cree First Nation, French and German. While the piece doesn’t directly tie into Muranko’s heritage, her work is always connected to her heritage, and she encourages dancers to bring their full self to the room.
The duet performance will feature multidisciplinary dance artist Marisa Gold and emerging artist Ysadora Dias on stage, who both played a vital role in the opening piece. Just over a year ago, Muranko and Gold bounced ideas off each other during a residency at Ballet BC. They kept coming back with the idea of the stories people carry.
But Tracing Bones will also feature the voices of the dancers, elevating the performance.
“Throughout the piece itself it’s like we are searching for that memory, searching for that song gathering those stories, gathering those roots and then the song is brought to its fullness by the end of the piece,” Muranko said.
“It’s one of those pieces that it asks the audience member to breathe with the artist, in the sense of just slowing down and receiving what is being offered,” she said. “I feel like the artists take the viewer on a journey.”
Muranko began pirouetting at only three years old. She moved to the Lower Mainland with her family when she was a child, and has lived in North Vancouver for the last 15 years.
Adding to the live performances, the festival offers educational workshops and circle conversations led by local and international Indigenous artists.
Olivia C. Davies is the curator for Matriarchs Uprising, and launched the annual dance festival on National Indigenous Peoples Day in 2019 to highlight Indigenous women in the contemporary dance scene.
Davies said she reached out to Muranko to share a work in this year’s festival as she’s been a colleague and mentor for a long time, and was thrilled to have the chance to showcase her work alongside the other artists.
Now in the festival’s sixth year running, Davies has seen it grow, giving her and optimistic view moving forward about Indigenous arts and contemporary dance.
“What it means for our women to have spaces and platforms like this festival, for the work to be highlighted and presented on main stages, a tide that is turning, so that’s really good,” Davies said.
The night will also have a performance from Friday Creeations called Bawaajgun: Visions IN Dreams, a transformative dance moving through dimensional realms of existence such as ancestors, dreams, blood memory and the land connected to Anishinaakbek way of living, according to the festival’s website.
As the days count down to the festival, Muranko hopes people can take a moment to relax, and connect their own stories with the performance.
“We’re so busy in this world right now, and just have a place to come breathe with the dancers, see the images that they’re offering, and then maybe have a chance to reflect on their own stories that they carry within their bodies and their bones.”
Tracing Bones will take the stage at the Scotiabank Dance Centre on Feb. 19 at 7 p.m., with tickets on Eventbrite. Other performances and workshops can be found on Matriarchs Uprising’s website.
Abby Luciano is the Indigenous and civic affairs reporter for the North Shore News. This reporting beat is made possible by the Local Journalism Initiative.
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