Hamilton, Ont.-based choreographer Santee Smith started Kaha:wi Dance Theatre in 2005 so she could tell Indigenous stories.Jalani Morgan/The Globe and Mail
Consider, for a moment, the appeal of dance. A gesture, small but seismic, where under studio lights or in an open-air gathering, a body will sway, arch and spin, translating feeling into form. Certain dances reverberate far beyond the stage, something that is particularly true for a number of Indigenous artists in Canada, for whom dance is both ceremony and invention.
In Six Nations of the Grand River, some of that inheritance moves through Santee Smith. As a choreographer, performer and founder of Kaha:wi Dance Theatre, Smith has spent two decades showing what it means for the body to function as an archive.
“I started dancing at two years old,” Smith recalls. “Looking back, I can see the investment in the physicality, and what we would call the ‘movement language.’ It’s different, and a part of that storytelling, whether it’s a specific gesture or if it’s a very Haudenosaunee-based work.”
She continues, “I was one of those kids who just heard music and got lost in the dream movement world. I was trying to reach back to that free-form nature of being, getting lost in the movement and really tapping into creativity and not censoring myself.”
Though trained in ballet at Canada’s National Ballet School, Smith felt a cultural disconnection that would eventually lead her back to Six Nations in pursuit of a creative path rooted in Indigenous stories.
In the early 2000s, when Indigenous performance was still rarely seen in mainstream venues, Smith returned to choreography from a stint in academics to fill this absence. She founded Kaha:wi Dance Theatre in Six Nations of the Grand River and Toronto in 2005. The company is more than a stage—it’s a sanctuary and a space where Indigenous narratives move, breathe and testify.
Since then, Smith has been choreographing and directing contemporary dance productions for the stage, including Skén:nen, a climate-themed piece that incorporates themes of Indigenous futurism and resilience, and The Mush Hole, a Dora Award-winning work about the Mohawk Institute, the largest and longest-running residential schools in Canada.
Smith, shown here during a recent rehearsal for The Mush Hole, thinks of dance as medicine, and as a way to connect with ancestral knowledge.Jalani Morgan/The Globe and Mail
She names her work “embodied storytelling”—movement that is both athletic and ancestral. For her, dance is medicine, the kind her grandmother once described as easing the ache of rheumatoid arthritis. It’s also defiance, highlighting historical truths often overlooked, such as the Haudenosaunee contributions to the War of 1812.
In addition to her own productions, Smith also occasionally hosts artist residencies for Indigenous creatives who want to explore land-based creative work.
She puts it simply: “When Indigenous artists are creating, they’re not just making work—they’re figuring out how they make it. They’re not following Western methods, but carving their own path in the Indigenous process.”
Smith is one voice in a chorus. Across the country, other Indigenous dancers are combining dance traditions and ancestral knowledge with contemporary modes of movement. Among them is Christine Friday, founder of Friday Creations, a First Nations arts and culture platform based on Bear Island, Lake Temagami. Friday says her choreography is inseparable from land, memory and family—it is a way of marking time and reclaiming presence.
“I brought my mom, my auntie and my uncle to Shingwauk Residential School and I danced around the school in the act of taking back our power,” she says, describing a moment portrayed in her short film, Path Without End (2018). “It was a dark place for our family. We didn’t even go inside the building, and there’s a lot of pain associated with those memories. We were there to help and support each other.”
Choreographer Christine Friday, who creates from her family’s traditional territory of Bear Island, Lake Temagami, prioritizes collaboration in her work.Supplied
Those early encounters with movement became the seeds for Friday Creations, which weaving ceremony, memory and invention into each performance. Friday works in circles, not hierarchies: each dancer and participant brings their own stories, folding them into a collective narrative that honours ancestors while bending toward the new.
“I work that way no matter what I’m doing, whether with kids, youth elders, or dancers in the mainstream,” she says. “It creates challenges because there’s not necessarily a boss. But the dynamics in working without someone being the boss is understanding how to work collectively, collaboratively.”
Friday’s philosophy of collaboration and land-based creation takes shape in a new dance studio lodge on Bear Island, an inspirational, sunlit space with a sprung dance floor, a flooring system designed to be shock-absorbing, which protects dancers from slips, falls and injuries. The design allows for bodies to move without hesitation, and for stories to unfurl freely.
“I feel like I’m just beginning to fulfill my potential, and I might be one of those people who says that when I’m 90,” Friday says. “Now I have the space that I can really own… and [I can] do all the work I had envisioned and dreamed of doing.”
One in a regular series of stories. To read more, visit our Indigenous Enterprises section. If you have suggestions for future stories, reach out to IE@globeandmail.com.
Editor’s note: Santee Smith is based in Six Nations of the Grand River. Kaha:wi Dance Theatre is based in Six Nations of the Grand River and Toronto. A previous version of this story stated that Smith and the the theatre were based in Hamilton, Ont.