How did the piece’s evocative title emerge for you?

It is a question within a poem I wrote called Ndawenjigewag Waawaashkeshwag / Hunting With The Deer. At the end of the pandemic, I learned trapping with my cousin . My family has a trapline in treaty 3 territory and it was really special to learn this land-based practice. Even though I didn't get the chance to talk to my grandmother or great-grandparents and learn the practice from them, the words “remember that time we met in the future?” evoke a desire and connection I felt to them, the connection of my body to the land and memory. It sparked this kind of ancestral travel. It's also how dreams work: I'm encountering someone in this very spiritual realm, knowing that maybe I will not see them in my waking life, but maybe in my future.

What is Mno Ode and how has it guided your process?

Mno Ode is interpreted as “good heart” in Anishinaabemowin. The initial seed of this work is the heart pulse. We spent a lot of time in the studio, listening to that interior landscape, that pulse, and realizing how vast it is. It’s connected to Mother Earth, to that vitality of life. It’s in nature, the land, water, trees, and animals. There's something highly spiritual about the heart pulse. It feels connected to the idea of an ancestral being at once past, present, and future. Where there is a pulse, there is a future, right? We are creating future memories at every moment. Each artist embodies Mno Ode differently, the way the pulse moves through their bodies, how it is expressed and carried, with tenderness towards the heartstrings and care of their hearts. They are weaving together a collective purpose and intentions, sharing the vibrancy of the group and the thriving of their presence. Mno Ode reaches in our past, connects to multiplicity, stretches time and unfolds to our futures.

As they pulsate, the dancers accumulate and shed layers of everyday objects. What interests you in these objects?

I collect objects and materials I feel inspired by them and I kind of trust they are going to find their way and create some kind of rhythmical score. Or, I have an image in a dream, like these black gloves in the piece, and I don't question how they fit, but they just do. It makes sense to me somehow. Because it's not worldly, it's this borderline abstract, poetic dreamlike universe Slowness, presence, and trust are core to how the work unfolds. To our interior landscape, to each other, and to the deeper rhythms of our bodies. It is an act of intergenerational knowledge sharing, deep listening, and recalibrating how we carry knowledge through our senses, our spirits, and our movements and in relationality to the materials and objects - they become extensions of the performers story, ritual, and resonance. They carry a voice of their own.

How do you find the arc of the piece?

There's such a big level of vulnerability at the beginning of a project, when you don't know what it's going to look like. I know this little fire that I have and my responsibility as an artist is to ask: Where am I situated? What is this moment and opportunity that I have? I am thinking about using this performance as a form of deliverance that comes with taking, claiming space, with volume and resistance. I’m working with four Indigenous artists from different nations and territories and yes, I want to create something beautiful, but I also want them to demand attention, like a form of disobedience, a refusal to be polite performers so that we can feel that thread of urgency. Heartbeats carried forward with a sense of agency and dignity.

Interview by Julie Burelle

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