Mohawk choreographer and performer Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo will perform the Ontario premiere of her solo dance work What We Carry from February 6 to 9. The performances will take place at Native Earth Performing Arts at Aki Studio.
The multimedia performance work includes five scenes connected by video interstitials. It tells a personal story that begins with language lessons, and travels through motherhood and honouring ancestors. Through her personal story, she considers the universal life journeys of Indigenous women.
We spoke to the award-winning Kanienkeha:ka artist about the piece, and the story of how it came together.
Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo
Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo is Kanienkeha:ka (Mohawk) of mixed heritage. She grew up in Kahnawake, and is currently based in Montreal.
Diabo studied many dance forms and genres, and graduated with a BFA in theatre from Concordia University, and from the Native Theatre School. Her dance practice as a choreographer and dancer for more than 25 years specializes in pieces that illuminate Indigenous themes/stories/perspectives. She combines varied dance idioms, including Haudenosaunee dance, powwow, and mainstream contemporary Eurocentric styles in her work.
Diabo has performed across North America, Europe and beyond, including most recently at the Banff Centre, the National Arts Centre, the Confederation Centre for the Arts PEI, Harbourfront Centre Toronto, Place des Arts, among others. Barbara was chosen as one of only eight dancers in North America to perform at the inaugural hoop dance competition at the Gathering of Nations in New Mexico, the world’s largest powwow, in 2015.
She is currently the Artistic Director and Choreographer of A’nó:wara Dance Theatre, and works to support and educate Indigenous artists in the dance world through organizations like La Danse sur les routes du Quebec and Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance.
The Interview
What We Carry began with the desire to learn the Kanien’keha language.
“Yes, I think, language is a really big part of this piece, because to me, language always opens up a whole world of how you think,” Diabo says. It’s a window into how a people and culture view and experience the world.
“My grandmother was a speaker, my father was a speaker, but unfortunately I didn’t learn.” Over the years, however, particularly during her time working as a teacher, she started to learn Mohawk names and words. “I started to develop an ear for it.”
The COVID pandemic and lockdowns left her time to delve into language study more deeply. As the pandemic progressed, however, it added another impetus to her education. “It was taking our elders, COVID,” she says. “Knowledge was being lost; I haven’t learned it enough yet.”
As a point of fact, according to the Endangered Languages Project, only about 3,800 Kanien’keha language speakers remain, and among them, only about 200 for whom it is a first language.
Barbara prevailed on a cousin, a former ironworker who’d once worked with her dad. Gilbert, the cousin, was more than enthusiastic.
“Every Friday evening, we’d meet on Zoom,” she recalls. They’d work on specific words and phrases each time. “I used clips of that, with his permission.” Those clips form the video excerpts that screen between the dance scenes.
Connecting those lessons to dance came naturally. “My first language […] is dance, moving through the body,” she says. It’s a lifelong practice. “I remember feeling like dance is when words aren’t enough.”
Connecting language with her own language of movement added to the sense of wholeness in the work.
“I’m very comfortable in dance. I’ve been a dancer all my life.” That includes study of classical ballet, contemporary Eurocentric dance, hip-hop and even more. “I also learned our cultural dances.” She adds the traditional dances of the Haudenasaunee to her palette.
“All those dances, for me, is a vocabulary.” Barbara stresses that she’s learning new dances and adding to that vocabulary all the time.
What We Carry includes a number of different elements. “This piece has a few different styles fused together in parts,” she explains. Towards the end, Diabo even sings along with the score.
Final Thoughts
“What We Carry, to me, the title, is all these experiences, life experiences and influences in our body, mind, and spirit,” Diabo says. She notes that carrying also has connotations of responsibility when it’s used in conjunction with carrying culture and language forward to the next generation.
“There are five scenes.” Barbara is on stage for the entirety, even as the video segments play between scenes. “Between each scene is a language lesson,” she laughs.
The story incorporates many personal details and elements, like the century old buckskin dress used in the piece, crafted by Barbara’s great-grandmother and given to her by her grandmother. In another scene, she uses a cradleboard (a traditional protective baby carrier) to talk about motherhood.
Other references are less direct. “Being an artist, I don’t want to be always completely literal.” The goal is to explore around the experiences and issues of her own life, connecting to the audience through sincerity of expression.
“I’m hoping they’re conversation starters,” she says. “I hope to communicate a variety of emotions […] without judgment,” she adds.
“I want everyone to be able to find an experience or connections in it.”
- Find more details about the show, and tickets, [HERE].
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