Show sets stage for performing arts centre
Powerful performances in Kiviuq Returns make ideal calling card to enlist help from the south
Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services
Saturday, July 8, 2017
IQALUIT
The formidable, fantastical theatrical piece Kiviuq Returns brings to life the adventures of the legendary wandering hero Kiviuq, as told to the Qaggiq Collective by four elders.
Christine Tootoo performs as Sea Woman in Kiviuq Returns, a multi-media theatre performance by the Qaggiq Collective presented in Iqaluit at the Alianait Festival July 3. - photo courtesy Vincent Desrosiers/Alianait Festival
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Staged at the Nakasuk School gymnasium as the four-day Alianait Festival's finale on July 3, Kiviuq Returns is the professional calling card that will help spread the message: Nunavut needs help to build a home for Inuit performing arts.
"Kiviuq was a lover ... but he was always sad and melancholy where he was never able to stay," said Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory during the question and answer period after the show. "But through sheer perseverance as a normal human being, full of mistakes and getting angry . he has become this supernatural immortal that we have throughout the Arctic,"
Nunavut is the only Canadian jurisdiction without its own dedicated performance arts centre. With the same sheer perseverance demonstrated by Kiviuq, Qaggiavuut intends to see that change.
Kiviuq's next stops, after shows in Nunavut, are the National Arts Centre in Ottawa July 21 and 22 and the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto on July 26. And as Qaggiavuut's Executive Director Ellen Hamilton notes, the territorial performing arts group has enlisted the support of centres across the nation.
"We are establishing partnerships with many different groups. Importantly, we are connecting and receiving support and advice from other performing arts centres throughout Canada," said Hamilton.
The launch of the fundraising campaign took place July 1 at the Francophone Centre in Iqaluit.
"Our goal this year is $500,000 and we believe we are looking at a $25 million construction but won't know until we are able to conduct a comprehensive feasibility study. This would be our first step," said Hamilton.
The study itself will take about six months, and cost around $200,000.
Qaggiavuut means "come into the large iglu we have built together," said Hamilton. The feasibility study would gather together partners and stakeholders from the private sectors, foundations, all levels of government, Inuit organizations, non-profits and visual, film and performing artists to identify how such an iglu would be used and maintained.
Williamson Bathory introduced the mostly-Inuktitut show with an affecting poem by spoken word artist Taqralik Partridge, who shares Kivuiq writing credit with Looee Arreak, Vinnie Karetak and Hamilton.
Karetak co-directed with Martha Burns and also performs, while several cast members have contributed original songs. Arreak created the costumes.
The elders who shared their stories - Miriam Aglukark of Gjoa Haven, Susan Avingaq and Madeline Ivalu of Iglulik and Qaunaq Mikkigak of Cape Dorset - are present via videos of them telling excerpts of the tales. These act as the connective sinew of the show.
A cast of six, Karetak, Natashia Allakariallak, Pakak Innuksuk, Kurri Panika, Lois Suluk and Christine Tootoo, fully embody the characters - an otherworldly collection of animals, humans and Kiviuq himself. Projections and soundscapes create the shadowy mystical world in which they live - similar to the powerful and haunting experience between wakefulness and sleep.
"I don't know whether to laugh or cry, or both," said audience member Joanna Awa after the performance.
"As an Inuk, to see something like this in 2017 is very emotional for me. My late dad used to tell us parts of the Kiviuq story as we were going to bed at night in our camp near Iglulik. But we would fall asleep before his story ended so we never knew what the ending was."
"We unshamefully made sure that this story was done for Inuit because it's an Inuk story, and we weren't going to be shy about it," Karetak said.
"Those are the stories that had been banned for so many years. They were hidden away in these gems of people and now they're starting to feel comfortable in re-telling those stories. And we are comfortable listening and re-enacting those stories."
There is no doubt this production, with its exceptional cast and production quality, will wow any audience on any stage anywhere in Canada - and hopefully, someday at a performance arts centre right here in Nunavut.
