September 5, 2024
Started in 2018, the Indigenous Artist Spotlight series is intended to foster greater awareness and understanding of the strength and diversity of Indigenous art available in Ontario and beyond.
Find all of our past Spotlight interviews here. This month, we spoke with Jeanette Kotowich.
Originally from Treaty 4 territory Saskatchewan, Jeanette creates work that reflects Nêhiyaw/Métis cosmology within the context of contemporary dance, Indigenous performance, and Indigenous futurism. Jeanette has self-presented and been programmed at theatres and festivals across Turtle Island and internationally. Her solo Kisiskâciwan premiered in Vancouver 2022, and has since toured to 11 cities nationally, and to Germany and Australia. Her ensemble work Kwê was presented at Matriarchs Uprising and Dance in Vancouver 2021/22. She is now working on a new ensemble called BOLT, a work for 4 performing artists. Jeanette is the Artistic Associate at Raven Spirit Dance, and co-founder of aka collective. She facilitates movement workshops with Indigenous worldview, workshops on de-colonial perspectives in the arts, and is a Métis dance and cultural knowledge carrier. She resides as a guest on the Ancestral and unceded Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ/, and Xʷməθkʷəy̓əm territories, colonially known as Vancouver.
Please take a moment to introduce yourself to our audience for those who may not know you.
My name is Jeanette. I am originally from Treaty 4 territory Saskatchewan. I create work that reflects Nêhiyaw/Métis cosmology within the context of contemporary dance, Indigenous performance, and Indigenous futurism. Fusing interdisciplinary collaboration, de-colonial practices and embodied research methodologies; my work references protocol, ritual, relationship to the natural/spirit world and Ancestral knowledge. My practice is intergenerational and vocational; it’s a living and lived experience. I reside as a guest on the Ancestral and unceded Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ/, and Xʷməθkʷəy̓əm territories, colonially known as Vancouver.
Could you expand upon your research and creation process? Are there any themes or elements of your practice that you find yourself returning to?
I am interested in creating space for contemporary performance work held within Indigenous world-view, and is inclusive to inter-cultural exchange. I aim to host spaces that are experiential for public to engage with my ideas of embodied expression. I often return to the themes of; artistic sovereignty, humility, vulnerability, compassion, courage, and joy. Part of my practice also involves DIY creation values and self-producing my projects, which allows me to have agency in all aspects of my processes.
In 2020, you created the piece Kisiskâciwan based on land-based research conducted in your home-province of Saskatchewan. Could you describe this work to our audience and tell us a bit more about that journey?
I premiered Kisiskâciwan in 2020, but the creation of the work spanned 7 years of development and research. I have since toured the work to 11 different festivals across Turtle Island, and to Australia and Germany.
This work is deeply personal; it is about my homelands in Saskatchewan, my ancestry, and my evolving identity. I have learned a lot about my personal performance aesthetic through the research and development of this work. I refer to it as my signature work as it intimately exposes my rawness and humanity, in a sensitive and mindful way.
“Memories of my childhood summer, embraced by the Kah-tep-was valley, the vast prairie and gently rolling landscape has echoed its lasting impression and whispered a language of inspiration. It is an untamed remembering of ancestral homeland and lineage”
For more information visit Kisiskâciwan
Your piece BOLT will be shown this November at Dance in Vancouver. Could you tell us about this work and what motivated you to create this piece.
After focusing on touring my solo work the past few years, I wanted to expand into an ensemble process, and to collaborate with other performers. I am always trying to challenge myself with each new work I conceive, and BOLT is no exception. I am the artistic lead of the work, and I am also performing in the work, along side fellow collaborators/performers. It is no easy feat to both perform in and direct an ensemble work, and I am learning a lot! BOLT is still in development, and we are having fun working together in live responsive movement and music scores.
BOLT aims to amplifies artistic sovereignty, creating space for exploration that is for us, by us! We are embracing playfulness via physical and mental stamina games, to explore ideas of inter-culturalism and diversity through conceptual frameworks of ‘folk dance.’
Combining choreographic research with the multifaceted concepts evoked by the word ‘bolt’, BOLT embodies speed, the discharge of positive electricity, and is a connecting tool guiding the creative process within a rich tapestry of imagery, from horses to the elements of nature.
For more information visit BOLT
Is there anything else that you would like to share? Do you have any upcoming work that we should look out for?
I will be sharing an excerpt of Kisiskâciwan at Fall for Dance North in Toronto October 2024. I am also performing a solo work called Gorgeous Tongue led by Lara Kramer in Brussels in October, and in Chicago in November, 2024. BOLT will be shared at Dance in Vancouver, as a work in progress in November. I will also be part of the EDAM choreographic performance series next Spring, in Vancouver. Check out my website at movementhealing.ca for more information on my projects past and present. Or follow my instagram @movement.healing
Keep up with Jeanette Kotowich
Official Website: https://movementhealing.ca
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jeanette.kotowich
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/movement.healing