Sky Woman creation story told through contemporary dance

Jim Adams’ “Sky Woman” performance with Porch View Dances is a fusion of contemporary dance and Indigenous teachings. It blends dance, storytelling, and an on-site creation of a turtle shell to transform performance into an art installation.

Weaving in the creation story of Sky Woman, the piece addresses the damaged relationship between Indigenous peoples and the Earth, conveying a message of reconnection, responsibility and healing.

As the story goes, Sky Woman fell through a hole in the sky. Birds caught her and brought her to rest on a turtle. The turtle’s shell becomes her home. Animals bring mud from the bottom of the ocean to add to the shell, which becomes the land we live on.

Adams is a multi-disciplinary artist with roots in the Swampy Cree, Innu, and Mohawk communities. In this piece he collaborates with Heryka Miranda, a Guatemalan dance artist trained in ecological land dance and expressive arts therapies.

The performance opens with an upside-down turtle, symbolizing the disrupted balance between humans and nature. 

“The turtle then awakens to the realization that there are still people who carry their roles and responsibilities, who are interested in right relations with the world,” said Adams. It emphasizes the need to restore harmony with the Earth.

Adams prepares himself culturally to approach the themes of the dance in a good way.

“One of the most important things that I have found in my practice is that, if I'm not sure about something, I will sit with it. I will put down some tobacco, semaa, and I will just say I need to have some clarity and direction on this,” he said.

“This is a piece about how we can begin to honour our place as part of creation. Not as at the pinnacle, but as part of it as one of many nations.” Adams hopes to share with people some information about how “we can begin to right our relations.”

Having a clear understanding of what stories are not his to tell is important, he explained, this dance in no way approaches the scope of the six-day lodge-telling of the full Sky Woman story.

Adams said he is “really hoping it might awaken something in the people who view it... Hopefully it will spark that curiosity where they will go and they will begin to meet with some Indigenous people and begin to ask them about it.”

By engaging the audience emotionally and intellectually, Adams said he aims to use dance to foster a deeper understanding of Indigenous perspectives.

Healing Through Arts

Adams’ creation and performance of this dance piece are deeply connected to his personal healing journey. Recovering from three years of chemotherapy and radiation, he said he finds solace and strength in his artistic practice and the healing power of his connection to nature.

“With chemo and the drugs and stuff they give,” Adams said, ”it can give you just such a heavy depression.” A few weeks after completing his chemotherapy, he contracted COVID, and “as a byproduct of that, I developed anxiety.”

“People would say, ‘breathe’. People would say, ‘meditate’. Do all these things. But what really helped was me going to a waterfall and just sitting very quietly with it, listening to it. And it talks. People can interpret that whatever way they want. It can say, ‘they said words to me, they sent me feelings, it sent me energy.’ There's so many different ways, so we'll just use the word ‘talks’,” Adams said.

“There was a communication that went on between the two of us. Very sacred communication that basically just calmed me and let me feel that water and let me let it wash through and wash that anxiety away and begin to realize that there's grounding there and to be just grounded in that good medicine of the earth, whether it was the trees, because sometimes they also do that, the grasses, the birds.”

“I didn't talk to it. I didn't tell it what I wanted it to do. I just sat with it, and it knew instinctively what I needed,” he said.

“As things were imposed—religion, politics, you name it—it began to erase that. (People) weren't allowed to feel that connection to nature. But, I believe, that all of us, intrinsically, going back to our deepest blood memory, we all have that connection with what is sacred. The earth, the mother, we all have that.”

As Adams’ body recovers, he thinks he will need another three to four months to get back to his dancing strength, “because I don't have a lot of muscle mass left anymore.” This brought him to collaborating with Miranda, who will be the principal dancer.

She brings her own Indigenous teachings to the piece, which Adams says further enriches the performance. Their combined efforts reflect a collective healing process, he said, mirroring the broader journey of Indigenous communities reclaiming their stories and connections to the land.

“I see dance as a way of really being able to communicate to people powerful messages,” he said. The performance will also be shared at Culture Days in Hamilton. “We really want to grow it into a larger educational piece. At this point in time, we're thinking about taking it as a traveling piece to schools.”

Adams hopes audiences leave with a renewed sense of curiosity and responsibility, with a personal goal to inspire conversations and actions that honour and restore the balance of our world.

Adams' piece will be performed on July 20 and July 21 at the Kaeja d'Dance event in Toronto. See  https://www.kaeja.org/porch-view-dances-2024 for details.

Local Journalism Initiative Reporters are supported by a financial contribution made by the Government of Canada.