Outdoor site, Émilie-Gamelin
Park
St. Catherine East/Berri/De Maisonneuve/Saint-Hubert
June 19-22 2003
12 noon - 10 p.m. on Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
and noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday.
Manikashuna
Our outdoor site becomes the setting
for multiple transformations according to the whims
of the spirits enchanting it. Festivalgoers, artists,
craftspeople and hosts will move through a place where
all possibilities come to life. Without angles, the
site evokes the circle principle so dear to aboriginal
peoples for whom the circle represents a holistic way
of understanding life and living beings. A borderless
arena with the four directions as a horizon! A space
bearing witness to the many facets of Aboriginal material
and spiritual cultures. It weaves together ritualised
performances coming from tradition and innovative performance
art from the contemporary imagination.
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Manikashuna is a celebration, a gathering of
artists and craftspeople with many ways of passing along First
Nations' material and spiritual cultures. These techniques
and their contemporary survival are closely bound to the history
of the land. Some of them were practised at the time the Europeans
arrived and the way they have developed as new materials became
available reads like a history book.
From Mohawk beadwork, inspired by the traditional
designs of the Iroquois Five Nations, to Algonquin musical
instruments, or richly decorated baby carriers, many facets
of the First Nations heritage are on display here. Mohawk,
Algonquin and Abenaki craftspeople will create tikinagan according
to their own traditions. Carved wood, woven gut and birchbark
all go into making everyday objects, still in use in some
communities, with a meaning far beyond their practical use.
Storytellers' gestures, cries, murmurs and
sign language, dancers' steps, songs echoing from another
age, displays of form and colour, an offering of smiles and
the joy of reunions; everything needed for a celebration comes
together in a timeless space for four days of peace and understanding.
It is time to make acquaintances, when the sun is at its apex,
in the fullness of light.
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Storytellers and singers
from several Aboriginal nations will deploy their canvases and their
traps for our emotions in the four directions of the outdoor site.
Tales and legends, Émilie-Gamelin
Park
St. Catherine East/Berri/De Maisonneuve/Saint-Hubert
June 19-22, eight performances in the evening
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Tales and legends
Chants, poetry and the drum will all play their
parts in the art of telling tales. Storytellers, tricksters
and other talebearers from distant places have come to huddle
with small groups of listeners, returning the art of storytelling
to its roots. Traditionally, people gathered round word-bearers.
Seeing non-verbal expressions and gestures up close as part
of narratives from oral tradition takes us back to the human
dimensions of these tales. Once evening has come, four large
tepees will fill with light and spectators who haven't found
a place within can follow the tale from outside the tent.
Against the white canvas, the storyteller will become a ghostly
shadow-spirit.
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Adresses
Montreal's First Peoples' Festival 2003
Émilie-Gamelin park, corner
of Sainte-Catherine Street and Berri Street
NFB Cinema, 1564, Saint-Denis Street
Cinémathèque québécoise,
355, de Maisonneuve blvd East
Kateri Hall, Kahnawake
Usine C, 1345, Lalonde Street
Bibliothèque nationale, Saint-Sulpice
building, 1700, Saint-Denis Street
Belvédère Kondiaronk,
mount Royal
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Partners :
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