[First published in the Two Row Times (18 June 2014), http://www.tworowtimes.com/arts-and-culture/thehonouring-kahawi-dance-theatre-performs-at-chiefswood.

[Index: First Nations]

[Date: June 2014]

The Honouring: Kaha:wi Dance Theatre Performs at

Chiefswood

Michael Keefer

Members of the Six Nations of the Grand River community had the privilege of
witnessing a performance of this extraordinary and ambitious piece at Chiefswood on
Saturday evening.
Santee Smith, the artistic director of Kaha:wi Dance Theatre, explains that The
Honouring is a multi-disciplinary performance honouring First Nations warriors of the
War of 1812, featuring Onkwehonwe families who sacrificed to protect Haudenosaunee
sovereignty, culture and land.
The principal medium of performance was of course dancebut the eight
performers, who included Smith herself, were also called on to pour themselves out as
actors and, in several electrifying sections of the performance, as vocalists as well. Their
work was supplemented by a powerful and evocative musical score, by lighting effects
skilfully adapted to an outdoor performance space, and by video projections on a screen
placed to one side of the space that helped to enhance the audience's sense of the
performance's historical context.
Santee Smith's choreography incorporates traditional dance forms, which in the
opening sections of the performance created a strong sense of the communal life patterns
that would shortly be disrupted by the American invasion. Smith also draws upon the full
range of emotional effects made available by the gestural repertoire of ballet and modern
dance. And her dancersEmily Law, Jesse Dell, Michael Demski, Nimkii Osawanick,

Alex Twin, Garret Smith, and Joshua Deperryrose brilliantly to the demands placed
upon them by Smith's choreography.
The Honouring succeeds triumphantly in re-creating for a contemporary
audience the anguish with which Haudenosaunee people faced the coming of war in
1812, the determination with which they responded to the demands of war, the pride they
felt for their warriors' victories, and the agonies of grief they experienced at the lives lost
in the Battles of Beaver Dams and Chippewa.
Although most Canadians may have forgotten the fact, it was very largely thanks
to the courage of these ancestors of present-day Haudenosaunee that Canada was not
overrun and conquered in 1812.
This artistic work indeed does honour to those ancestors: the grace and athleticism
of the Kaha:wi Dance Theatre's dancers give us strong images of those ancestors' dignity,
their strength, and their beauty.