Decolonizing space and taking back our agency in Jeanette Kotowich’s Kwê

by Shanny Rann

Jeanette Kotowich’s work reflects Nêhiyaw/Métis cosmology within the context ofcontemporary dance, performance, and Indigenous futurism. Kwê is the current researchproject being held by Jeanette in collaboration with Stéphanie Cyr, Olivia Shaffer, Tamar Taboriand contributing artistic designers. Derived from iskwew (femme spirit) and iskotêw (fire), Kwê provides a fluid container to intentionally define and amplify iskwêwak sovereignty and dismantle dominant colonial and patriarchal narratives with vulnerability, courage and heart. Kwê was livestreamed as part of Dance In Vancouver in November 2021 and performed in person at Scotiabank Dance Centre as part of Matriarchs Uprising in February 2022.

JK: I have articulated Kwê within my work as femme spirit. In the Nêhiyaw/ Cree language, as I understand it, gender characteristics are accessible to everyone. Our teachings say:

These teachings are for everyone. It is not only for men to be manly, similarly, women can have fierce courage and warrior-like strength as well. In a way, these are potential values rather than gender qualities.

JK: I identify as she and also, they because I am animal and spirit too. I am all my relations, and my ancestors are part of me. I want to make my creative spaces inclusive to different gender expressions. Kwê, for me, has been about sovereignty of the femme body and marginalized voices. It is a pushback against patriarchy.

JK: I think of Kwê as an offering of my process, not a performance. So come for the experience, where you are invited to be witness to the journey.

This particular concept of sovereignty translated really well to video because we worked with a very specific camera treatment for the livestream capture. It was also successful for live performance, because in our research process, we created conceptual containers for the material to translate between livestream and live performance.

One technique we worked with was a concept of decolonizing the space and the power dynamic between audience and performance. I worked with the artists to give agency to their bodies by accessing the power within to command the space and audience with their presence. I am addressing the fine line between audience as witnesses to process rather than as consumers of performance.

You can see this within the livestream version of Kwê, specifically when the dancers address viewers back home with their direct gaze into the camera: “I am looking at you. I see you. I am seeing you because I am making the choice to see you, not because I have no choice. I am choosing to see you looking at me, and I am allowing you to see me.”

JK: Exactly. That was the idea. I have to feel empowered.

JK: It is difficult, for sure. Even just having decolonial intentions is already an act of decolonizing. I would say I am pretty new as a person in artistic leadership, so I have been developing my approaches. Decolonial approaches show up in the everyday practice, for example how we enter into the room as a collective for the beginning of rehearsal. I rely on my intuition and past experiences to inform my approaches. This also translates into the theatre space when we were discussing audience orientation.

With the live performance of Kwê, I had the audience seated on two sides of the theatre. There was a string of fairy lights on the ground that made it look like those old school music halls, containing the artists from the audience. Ideally, I would have loved to try it without seating or chairs, so the audience could organize their own bodies in a very fluid way and adjust naturally if they needed to, but we were presented in a festival format. I ended up having chair seating with pillows on the floor in front of them, encouraging the audience to sit on the pillows, which they did.

One of my colleagues sat on the ground, and she allowed her body to sink into gravity at the end of the piece, to breathe and just receive it all. That is what I wanted—for the audience to be able to do what they need authentically with their bodies in the space. For audiences to feel comfortable as witnesses, you need to warm people up because they are not used to that.

JK: I work a lot with social dance that comes from my Métis heritage. All traditional Indigenous dance practices serve a function; there are harvest dances, wedding dances, courting dances, funeral dances etc. I am looking to create meaning from my dance and consider what my intentions are, and what functions they serve. I reference my Nehiyaw and Métis ancestry regularly to source the intentions and find the meaning.

I'm curious about blurring the lines between what's performative and what's not, particularly looking at preparation for performance. How can the preparation be treated as performance protocol and also be shared with the audience, rather than doing all the preparation backstage? I am looking at how we enter into our work. As a way to prime the audience of Kwê, we shared our warm-up, the dancers and I did jigging steps abstracted from my Métis dance practice in a clear spatial orientation. The dancers could tune themselves to the space while beginning to feel the audience in a casual way, to welcome them, make eye contact, and even smile.

We started with the spatial priming, upbeat music came on, people clapped and hooted. The dancers were getting the adrenaline rush because they were doing something that was task-oriented, but also very joyful in a fluid, liminal way between non-performativity and performativity. I feel that allowed for the authentic performance to come through because they did not have to perform “performing”. They had already just shared an expression that was not performative but it was at the same time.

When we completed the jigging, there was the blurring of sections, and the dancers gathered around me, we had a group hug, and then I left the space to sit in the audience. The dancers settled and began the “performance” part of it, but the performance had already begun, right?

In a way, that liminal phase was our protocol. It was established right from the beginning our agency over the space, holding the audience's attention, and allowing the audience to know that they can engage. The dancers, having already broken the fourth wall, were able to look out into the audience and receive from those giving good energy, and reciprocate. For the livestream, we had a slightly different approach. The broadcast link went live 30 mins before beginning to open and share our workspace. If you were there, you would have seen our circle gathering of all artist, collaborators, and technical crew. I am researching authentic protocol for my process and opening those expressions up to be shared with the audience.

JK: Joy is what is being transferred over from my Métis dance practices. It is celebratory and so uplifting. With Kwê and most of my pieces, there is a focus on celebrating. For me, that is where I find agency—to celebrate resilience. I identify my work as futurism or Indigenous futurism because I see the strength of where we are, how far we have come through all the loss to project that we will be there in the future. This is what we have to offer.

There are a lot of Indigenous artists who create work that speaks to trauma and the loss. Those works are significant and important. My way of contributing is through sharing optimism. But that doesn’t mean it's easy. There is still struggle within the process and in my personal life, but I work it out in my practice, so that I can receive the healing.

Honestly, to land where I have landed in my artistic practice and in different times throughout my life, the circles that I found myself in, dance has really saved me in so many ways. Whenever I have challenges, I have a circle to go to where I am with the community and with my colleagues. I am so grateful because many times in my life, it has been the reason why I got out of bed, and I am so fortunate to be able to have that.

JK: Joy is an overarching value in my workand in my expressions, but I was focusing onbravery and courage, in particular with Kwê.I try to access that through vulnerability,which is an interesting dynamic. It is an actof bravery to be truly authentic.

JK: Exactly! I have been working with these four Creators Laws according to the Nêhiyawak, which were shared with me by Darlene Auger (passed down from Elder Carl Quinn), and I got permission to quote here:

The first two letters of these words combined, make up SâwîmiSô which means to remember where you come from.

About a year and a half ago, I started to be drawn to these four laws. We were in a pandemic, and there were all these things happening around us: the missing and murdered Indigenous women, Black Lives Matter, Every Child Matters and now we are in another experience of war happening on the other side of the world. It has been a relentless time, even down to our interpersonal relationships, families being divided because of different politics, communities being divided because of different beliefs.

I was looking at the laws and thinking they are what we need! We need to be kind to other people. We do not know what is happening in someone else's life. The more you can be kind, the more that you can have compassion, the more that you can love and be joyful, courageous, and strong. Those are things that we really need to cultivate, not only towards others, but we also need these values for ourselves. Self compassion and love, which is something I really need to work at. That is basically why I started working with the laws and I'm continuing to work with them. There are forty-four laws in total.

I have not even been able to move past those first four laws because I feel especially in our traditional ways, you have to really learn something before it becomes knowledge. I have been given this information, but in order to know it as knowledge, I have to really learn it. And that takes time.

JK: That is a brilliant comparison. It is the same thing as you can only become a master after committing your whole self to it. I describe my practice as a vocational practice, it is not a temporary thing, it is a constant reinvesting into the practice that extends beyond just the creative process. It is literally every day. You have to be patient and keep coming back to it.

JK: Whenever I get asked to do a land acknowledgment, I put it back on the person who asked me because it is everyone's responsibility to do land acknowledgement. Everyone has the skills to do it. Your land acknowledgement does not look like mine. A lot of artists have asked me, and I encouraged them to have it integrated in their daily practice. Every day, I am going to the studio and I am going to acknowledge the land in some way. Maybe it is not verbal, it does not matter, but it is done in one way or another.

JK: The invitation is for all artists, leaders, and space holders to think:

Everyone's relationship to the land is different. Land-based research is another key component to my decolonial practice. Although things happen in the theatre, because we are people who come from the land, we belong to the land; all the elements of place, site, ancestry, and nature come into whatever space we are in, even if I am in a formalized institutional space like a theatre or a studio.

JK: In my solo work, obviously, I am working with an Indigenous body. With Kwê, it worked with three non-Indigenous bodies. I had to think a lot about it, especially when my work represents Indigenous culture. It is important to have an authentic representation, even when I share my knowledge and cosmology in process, so that teachings are shared in a respectful way.

I am very open with artists whom I work with. It goes along with what we have talked about being vulnerable, being authentic, transparent, and having the courage to do that. I struggled at different times, especially when the piece was about to be revealed. I was thinking about what my Indigenous community might say about me working with non-Indigenous artists. At the same time, I wanted to protect the artists I selected for this work. I frequently checked in with them on how they felt about interpreting my cosmology and my intentions.

The understanding that we kept coming back to was that they never felt they were mimicking any part of my culture. They never felt they were pretending to be Indigenous or even to be a native body because my approach is that you honour the body that you have. Working with land-based images, referencing cosmology, and courage, those are values that are accessible to everyone. I worked with each of the artists to express their uniqueness, to have their gifts and their personalities shine through. I focused a lot on each artist's individuality. I did not try to unify their bodies, but I trusted them and gave them permission to play because they needed to earnestly feel that they had agency in their expression, to hone empowerment.

I talked a lot with the artists about what they needed to feel good as performers about beginning to work, because I care so much about our personal wellness. Above all things, we need to be well so that we can be thriving artists. If you are not well, you are not going to be able to show up the way that you want to.

Another layer is that I see my body in there, I see my body as this giant hug around the work. The overarching framework holding the space for the journey to take place. I am holding the larger container of what's being shared. Kind of like having an overarching solo but being expressed in a collective body. It is just one big expression that's coming from me, in generous collaboration and interpreted by others. I was fortunate enough to have my little sister come to my shows for both nights, and she also watched the livestream a number of times. She spoke up during the artist talk back after my show and said, “Jeanette, you keep talking about the artists’ individuality, but all I see is you.” That is the best compliment I get when people see me in my work.

JK: Exactly, the artists have expressed to me that they received deep healing from the space that was created. I know that it did bring each of them healing because it is a different way of working compared to some of our other experiences. It has been a way for me to harmonize some of the experiences I have had as an interpreter, where I did not feel honored as a dancer, interpreter and collaborator or get public credit for my work.

That is part of my decolonial approach as well—to be curious about why we do things the way that we do, and to let go of structures that no longer work for us. I am so grateful to the artists for their contribution and their integrity, and all the ways that they have supported my vision and continue to support the work we have been making together. Together, we have learned so much.

Jeanette Kotowich is a multi-disciplinary iskwew, independent dance artist, creator, choreographer and professional Auntie of Nêhiyaw Métis and mixed settler ancestry. Originally from Treaty 4 territory Saskatchewan, she creates work that reflects Nêhiyaw/Métis cosmology within the context of contemporary dance, Indigenous performance, and Indigenous futurism. Fusing interdisciplinary collaboration, decolonial practices and embodied research methodologies; her work references protocol, ritual, relationship to the natural/spirit world and Ancestral knowledge. Her practice is intergenerational and vocational; it is a living and lived experience. She resides as a guest on the Ancestral and unceded Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh (Squamish) Səl̓ ilw̓ ətaʔɬ/ (Tsleil- Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm (Musqueam) territories, colonially known as Vancouver.