Dance to the Berdashe

Kent Monkman

Dance to the Berdashe

Opens August 28, 2008  at 8:00pm

Kent Monkman and Urban Shaman Gallery invite audiences to enter into the multi-sensory experience of Urban Shaman’s premier commissioned exhibition; Dance to the Berdashe.

Born in St. Marys, Ontario, Kent Monkman is an artist of Cree ancestry who works with a variety of mediums including painting, film/video, performance and installation. He has had solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Walter Phillips Gallery and the Indian Art Centre and has participated in various international group exhibitions including: We come in peace..., Histories of the Americas at the Musee d'art contemporain deMontreal and The American West at Compton Verney in Warwickshire, England.   Monkman has created site specific performances at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, and at Compton Verney, UK and has also made super 8 mm versions of these performances that he calls Colonial Art Space Interventions.  His award-winning short film and video works have been screened at various national and international festivals, including Sundance, Berlin, and the Toronto International Film Festival. His work is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Museum London, The Mackenzie Art Gallery, the Woodland Cultural Centre, the Indian Art Centre, and the Canada Council Art Bank. A solo exhibition of his work was mounted by the Art Gallery of Hamilton in the summer of 2007 and has toured to museums across Canada including Art Gallery of Victoria, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, and the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

“In my practice, I adopt the idioms of romantic painters (Paul Kane, George Catlin, and Albert Bierstadt among others) early photography, and silent film (such as Edward Curtis) to excavate missing Aboriginal narratives from the canon of art history, and to challenge the subjectivity and authority of a one-sided version of history. Catlin’s glaring homophobia permitted him only one pictorial record of the Berdashe tradition – an oil painting titled “Dance to the Berdashe”.
“The mise en scènes that I have created subverts the commonly held, yet misguided, perceptions and representations of Aboriginal peoples that emerged from the nineteenth century as part of a racist colonial mandate, yet continue to hold sway as documents of ethnological import. By deconstructing these one-dimensional representations I hope to create new points of entry into the depth and complexity of Aboriginal cultures.”- Kent Monkman. 

Dance to the Berdashe takes the form of multi-projections of Aboriginal male dancers on a tipi-like structure.  Each dancer has been filmed and choreographed separately by Michael Greyeyes, Cree dancer, actor and choreographer.  The use of multi-projections on to the exterior skin of the tipi structure in 360 degrees creates the effect that the male dancers are participating in an honor dance to the Berdashe, whose presence is simulated with video projections inside the tipi structure. These dancers move in time to the original new music composition of Phil Strong.

Dance to the Berdashe, Edition of 3 Dimensions of hides:  10 x 8 ft – Kent Monkman

“Based on an oil painting of the same name by painter and pseudo-ethnographer George Catlin, Dance to the Berdashe is a five channel video installation that re-imagines a lost honour dance to the man/woman of the tribe, the Berdashe. The Berdashe was described by Catlin as “one of the most unaccountable and disgusting customs that I have ever met with in the Indian country”, and Catlin was determined that the Berdashe be forever lost from remembrance.  In a sensual interpretation by Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, the Berdashe is a powerful and glamorous icon who resurrects another Aboriginal persona obscured by colonial history - the Aboriginal Dandy.  Stravinsky's exploration of Primitivism through the Rite of Spring is remixed into a stunning sound scape as virile dandies, from the four directions, invigorate The Berdashe with the vitality of their honour dance. Through this reciprocal and performative rite, the Dandies and Berdashe renew each other’s spirits as they refute their obfuscation and Primitivism’s reductive pillaging of indigenous cultures.

The installation features five hanging translucent buffalo hides.  Four of these stretched hides represent the four cardinal points; North, South, East and West, and encircle a fifth hide portraying the Berdashe character, played by Miss Chief.

Appearing on the central hide, the Berdashe traces the outlines of four male figures projected onto surrounding transparent buffalo hides. Animated by line drawings, the male figures are brought to life, becoming four dandies on whose bodies are transcribed in Cree syllabics the four directions and elements: water, earth, fire and air. The dandies then dance in honor of the Berdashe and through this performance they hunt, capture and slay a beast, which is then presented as a ceremonious offering. The energetic dance of the Dandies is imbued with ephemeral qualities evocative of George Catlin’s historic and mythic encounter Aboriginal cultures.  Acknowledging her suitors, the Berdashe sways to the music and, enlivened through their fervent dancing she is charged with energy, culminating a climactic moment where she is endowed with abounding vitality. 

Michael Greyeyes, Cree Dancer, actor, choreographer, and Monkman’s longtime collaborator (A Nation is Coming, 1996; Shooting Geronimo, 2007) choreographs.  Dancers will include other previous collaborators (Shooting Geronimo) Quetzal Guerrero, Alex Meraz, and Anthony Collins.”

George Catlin, “Letter No. 56. Rock Island, Upper Mississippi”, ed. Peter Matthiessen, North American Indians, (Penguin Books: London, 2004), 445.

Project funding provided by The Winnipeg Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts