Niimikaage

(2022)

These “Niimikaage,” a series of movement-based retellings of feature stories from the Relay of Voices archive, include a collage of original footage, staged retelling, and generative movement and are meant to address loss and creation of meaning in storytelling. By using movement to emphasize and expand the story like music in a film, Victoria Bradford Styrbicki is extracting a deeper story than is available on the surface, tapping into the movement vocabulary as well as the spoken vocabulary of the subject. Each piece is entitled “Niimikaage” after the Ojibwe word meaning “she dances for people/for a purpose” out of reverence for the tribal lands traversed while gathering these stories and to emphasize that there is a creative power in putting someone else’s story into another body. 

DATE

November 1, 2022 – July 1, 2023

PLACE

relayofvoices.com

CHOREOGRAPHER

Victoria Bradford Styrbicki

VIDEO

© A House Unbuilt