On Oct. 9, the Atlantic Ballet of Canada delighted a local audience with the Pisuwin Wolastoqiyik story-ballet at the Fredericton Playhouse.
Pisuwin is the first Wolastoqiyik story-ballet directed by the artistic director of the Atlantic Ballet of Canada, Igor Dobrovolskiy.
The performance was accompanied by the music of Polaris Prize winner Jeremy Dutcher and musician Dawson Sacobie, which featured the Wolastoqey language and storytelling.
Along with Dobrovolskiy, Nipahtuwet Naka Wespahtuwet Possesom, a Wolastoqiyik multi-disciplinary artist, directed Pisuwin intending to inspire the audience to take a path of connection with nature and community that brings a sense of union to everyone.
The Wolastoqiyik artist shared the story of how the first ever Indigenous story-ballet was created among people who dreamt of sharing their culture.
“There’s a lot of hard stuff happening right now in our country, in our land and with our people”, Possesom said.
The performance features eight ballet dancers, where electronic sounds, industrial landscapes and digital projection set the scene for the Indigenous world in which Pisuwin takes place.
“It’s about relationships,” he said. “ It’s about taking time to understand each other even during the hard parts and being able to be comfortable enough to come back together after some of the very hard parts.”
Possesom shared how bringing Pisuwin to reality has been a beautiful journey for everyone who collaborated and got to see the hard work resulting in a moving ballet performance.
“It’s so integral to us because as we grew up these places weren’t for us,” he said. “I remember, we were fighting our hardest to get any performance opportunity and people were just starting out, trying to figure out how any of these systems work?”
Possesom said that these opportunities to share his culture and language, with the collaboration of Atlantic Ballet of Canada, have become a healing experience for his people.
“We’re sharing this medicine with this performance to heal the pain and hardship our people have gone through.”
He also shared that the middle school students from the Kehkimin Wolastoqey language immersion school attended the performance.
“We had all those Indigenous middle school students here,” he said. “They screamed and were excited all the time and that’s what this healing journey is about.”
Possesom said that everything they do to preserve the Indigenous culture is for those who have not been born yet and will have better opportunities to enjoy their culture.
Susan Chalmers-Gauvin, CEO of Atlantic Ballet of Canada, shared her gratitude for being able to collaborate with Possesom.
“It’s an Indigenous space tonight, which means you can laugh, you can cry, you can scream and it’s okay,” said Chalmers-Gauvin.
