Gathering the Fire / Home: Our Way

Project Description

Gathering the Fire invites community members from all walks of life into creation, development and performance of their own stories of Home. Contemporary Indigenous dance artist, Olivia C. Davies (Anishinaabe) facilitates this collective creation process with Coast Salish Sahtu-Dene storyteller, Rosemary Georgeson and Canadian interdisciplinary artist, Emily Long, to guide community members through explorations in Contemporary Indigenous dance, movement improvisation and creative writing and story-telling to develop short dance-story solos that center their individual experiences of home, blood memory, refuge and resistance. The collective facilitates these "Home: Our Way" creative sessions with community members to produce individual solos, and one ensemble performance - this residency can be produced over various lengths of time ranging from 1-3 three-hour sessions or longer, depending on the desire of the community - contact Olivia to learn more. "Gathering the Fire" is a performance devised collectively by community members with input from facilitators sharing the community's stories of Home. "Gathering the Fire" builds a platform for sharing community stories with dignity, respect, and collaborative artistic expression. In addition to the collective creation performance, we share a site-adaptive trio performance that features Rosemary's live storytelling with dances by Olivia and Emily.Danny and Shay are both artists who have dedicated themselves to their training and the proper education of the art forms the perform and create. This work and this duet looks to honour the traditions of the art forms we’ve grown from, in doing so, we look to demonstrate our immense respect and appreciation of the art forms, cultural backgrounds and artists that support them. With our history of touring, creating and performing, we also recognize the immense privilege we’ve had as artists. We work, share and educate with our art forms with this complete sense of honour and gratitude. We offer this to the communities we enter and we have always recognized the importance of honouring and educating around the traditions and origins of our art forms.

Company Profile

O.Dela Arts creates across choreography, installation and community-engaged projects, exploring the emotional and political relationships between people and places, often investigating the body’s dynamic ability to transmit narrative. O.Dela Arts produces works that traverse boundaries and challenge social prejudice, conveying concepts and narratives with creations and conceptual platforms that open different ways to see and experience the world. Artistic Director, Olivia C. Davies creates spaces where movers are empowered to be the authors of their own stories. Davies honours her mixed Anishinaabe, French-Canadian, Welsh heritage in her practise. The mandate of O.Dela Arts Society is to support Olivia C. Davies in the creation and production of choreography, community-engaged projects, creative collaboration projects and commissions. O.Dela Arts is currently based in Vancouver, BC.

www.oliviacdavies.ca/home-our-way
www.facebook.com/odelaarts/