Winter Moons brings Mi’kmaq ancestors to life

When artist shalan joudry started writing the new dance theatre show Winter Moons, she wanted it both teach and entertain. 

joudry is an L’nu (Mi’kmaw) storyteller, poet, playwright and ecologist. She uses lower case letters in her name in keeping with Indigenous teachings that discourage emphasizing the self in relation to the collective. 

She wrote Winter Moons to create a piece of art that brings L’nu stories to life. 

She said that it’s important to continue the oral storytelling tradition in a modern context.

The show follows four firekeepers who set up camp in a forest and are tasked with keeping an ember alive through the three moons of a harsh winter. It fuses various performance elements to tell the story, using dance, song, drumming and light projections to animate Mi’kmaw legends and star stories. 

A storyteller who the characters do not see but the audience does acts as a narrator.

“They are funny and sweet and caring and they’re trying to survive a blizzard, and they’re searching for identity,” said joudry of the characters in Winter Moons.  

The story is set roughly 1,000 years ago, and joudry hopes that the performers’ embodiment of these characters will allow the audience to realize the realness and complexities of the ancestral L’nu people. 

“I just feel like we’re constantly still working against this notion that some people have of before colonization — that our people weren’t as multi-faceted or weren’t as multi-dimensional. But they were,” said joudry.

“And so, by having real performers doing dance theatre and singing these songs, I feel like we can identify with them immediately in this way that’s really important to me.” 

Performers find connection

To the five Mi’kmaw performers involved in the piece, it has not only been the story that they have found meaningful, but also their participation in the project. 

Charlotte Bernard is a Mi’kmaw elder and plays the character of Nukumij in the show. “Everything we do is immersed in culture,” she said about the practices and preparation they did for Winter Moons. 

“We start off our day with a smudge in a circle. We end our day with a circle. And we are — we’re family.” 

Some performers found their involvement with Winter Moons has brought them closer to their cultural background. 

“It’s kind of a way for me, as someone that has been more disconnected from this cultural background of mine, to learn and experience these things that I never got a chance to experience before,” said performer I’thandi Munro. 

Actor Lara Lewis, who plays the storyteller, agreed, saying, “You’re really embodying connection and engagement with the past.” 

The actors and dancers involved in the show come from diverse performance backgrounds, some with experience largely in acting, or largely in dance. Some had no history of performance before beginning to work on Winter Moons. 

Desna (Dez) Michael Thomas has an acting background and has been involved in dance performances outside of the theatre — both in powwows and as a drag artist, under the name Cicero Crow. 

Thomas said they are glad for the growth they’ve experienced through working with joudry on Winter Moons. “To be involved in projects like this, it’s very powerful.” 

Winter Moons premiered at Neptune Theatre on Tuesday night and has one or two performances every day until Nov. 24. 

Maia Nuun attended Wednesday night’s show and has her own background in theatre. She said she thought the show was amazing. 

“As a theatre person, it’s really cool to see the way they mixed the lighting and movement and the language into a show that’s accessible to everybody,” said Nuun.

“I could tell that this was a very technical show and there’s a lot of moving pieces, and I feel like they did that really, really well.”