Artists of the St. Croix

It's Always Going Somewhere, but Always Also Still Here

2023

“It is always going somewhere…” is a selection from a series of dances referred to as Niimikaage, borrowed from the Ojibwe word meaning “she dances for people (for a purpose).” This word was chosen for the project out of reverence for the tribal lands traversed in gathering these stories and to emphasize that there is creative power in putting someone else’s story into another body. 

Re-telling these rich stories through the body is not just about moving the body but about how we can move community and culture by listening to stories the body tells us. We can discover new things through speaking others’ words and moving through their gestures. There is always loss in a reproduction, but you can gain new knowledge from another perspective. These Niimikaage address loss and creation through the use of primary footage, re-tellings, and generative movement, originally presented as a multimedia performance series for Relay of Voices. Through the use of systems, objects, visual codes, language, considerations of rigor, time and repetition, Styrbicki transforms the body into a material. Together with the collage of materials in these videos, the document of story is formed, and the retelling is performed.

In the process of Niimikaage, Styrbicki realized something interesting about how her body held the stories, then and now. While she was doing the relay, she responded with presence and stored the memory of her interactions in her body. As she returned to individual moments to remember through dance, she responded to the bodies, the environment, the music with embodied movement. She also used those stored memories to write the choreography of the website, to continue the dialogue with contacts from the River and others, and to just grow as a person.


Date

July 25 – Dec 5, 2023

Place

Washington County Heritage Center
Stillwater, MN

Lead Artist

Victoria Bradford Styrbicki

Photo

© ArtReach St. Croix