The Journey

"Dancing with Spirit" was a concept that began shortly after the success of 'Quest', back in 2004 - 2005. I thought, "there has to be more talented aboriginal choreographers within Canada that have powerful dance performances that need to be shown to a larger audience." As I started to research native choreographers/artists I discovered the spirituality theme to be very strong in each dance production. I also realized that each band had a slightly different enlightenment to creation, or rite of passage of the soul. I decided that to get the best performance out of the story, the dance, and the dancers was to film the performance in the place where the story was born. To film on location, wherever it may take me, to tell the story visually. This decision started me on a journey that would take two years to complete. This journey would take to the edge of the Artic Circle to film in Iqaluit, Nunavut. Into the heart of the beautiful city of Montreal. To " Big Sky Country"  in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. To the scenic cottage country and Algonquin Territory on Lake Temagami. To an overgrown quarry in Burlington, Ontario. And finally to the seedy side of "Sin City" a.k.a. Toronto to shoot the final episode in a very urban setting.

"The Hunter's Journey"

James Sainthill, Dave Nardi and I arrived in Iqaluit on Friday, April 20th, 2007. From the air the landscape looked so raw and untouched. We were met by Sylvia, Kakki, Laakkuluk and Claude Roussel at the airport.  It was nice to be greeted by someone in a very unknown place. On Saturday we met Claude & Solomon Awa to takes on a location scout. James & I  ride in box sleds pulled by snow machines across the ice. It was the worst, bumpy ride I ever endured, but we saw some incredible sights! As I constantly reminded everyone, "We didn't come all this way and not show the landscape, as for me it's the main character." We discovered beautiful ice cliffs that are tied to the sea tides. The drop in water level (ice) is 40 ft. every 6 hours two times a day !

On Monday, we had a 9:00 am call time. We had 21 cases for gear. Every morning we had to carry our equipment to the side of the road from our B & B. Load them into several taxis. Driver over to Claude's house, unload the taxis, load them onto the snow machine's sleds and ride along trails on the edge of Iqaluit to get to the ice to travel to our destination. At less a two hour load in, and then repeat the process when we return at the end of the day. It was a beautiful day to start. We traveled as a caravan for a grand total of ten minutes before we broke a runner on one of the sleds! Solomon decide the best thing to do was to fix it on the spot, so we unloaded the camera and decided to shoot something while we were being repaired. We got some beautiful shots of the snow sparkling like jewels, blowing snow, etc. - two hours later we were fixed and continuing on our journey. Our next location was our igloo set that Solomon built the night before. We arrive, the valley is gorgeous but there are snowmobile tracks everywhere. Everyone in Iqaluit has a snow machine and they ride them everywhere! So we brushed them out, by using a carpenter's saw actually.  I've learned not to take mother nature's sense of humour personally. Because we were not able to bring a lot of equipment with us we tried to improvise what we had which was to turn our wooden sled into a dolly sled. We had the camera in place, the shot set up to pull back from inside the igloo to reveal talent when Mother Nature decided to place a giant rock in the middle of our track line buried under the snow. Oh well ?

It's amazing how Solomon builds his igloos. The snow is very different from the south. Like solid blocks of Styrofoam. We actually got to witness for the first time Artic welding (which is Solomon spitting water out of his mouth onto the snow blocks to make them stick). We finished the day with the igloo scenes because we started losing light. We didn't make our day - but we did have a productive day!

The weather report for tomorrow's forecasts was 5 - 10 cm of flurries all day. If we go out I won't see any of the scenery or dancers so we push the day. Wednesday calls for clear and sunny skies. The storm proved beneficial because it covered all the snowmobile tracks and covered everything with sparkling new snow.

Day 2: It took us forever to get started. Because we were running behind in time I had to really simplify our camera set ups and in the end it made for a better program. We shot Super 8mm black & white film and it really adds to the dance scene. We had about twenty sets up and I think about three company moves. By sunset we were rushing to make our day. Our final shot was at magic hour we had this purple hue in the sky for our madness dance scene, it was beautiful.  By 7:00 pm we wrapped and I still hadn't shot the ending for the dance piece. Our return flight was for tomorrow (Friday) to fly out at 8:00 pm. I was in a panic. There was no way we could shoot the ending Friday morning and return back in time to pack and pre-load luggage and equipment before the flight departed. It cost me an additional $2,600 to get us a flight out of Iqaluit on Saturday afternoon!

Day 3: We made our day - got my ending plus more and returned back to our B & B by 5:30 pm. IT'S A WRAP! I learned a lot on this trip. Shipping equipment by airline, shooting in cold weather, travel on snow, filming in a white environment, plus so much more it would take forever to explain, but in the end it was all worth it !

"Manitowapan"

Monday, June 11, 2007 - Dave Nardi and I load up my mini van with camera gear and travel to Montreal. We arrived in Montreal around 9:00 pm. Once again we struggled to move all of our camera package and James's steadicam gear out of the van and into Dave's room, memories of Iqaluit!

On Tuesday, June 12th we had our tech survey. The survey went well and in the end I decided our four locations would be 1) City Hall     2) Expo Site       3) Fort Senneville      4) the Beach

Wednesday, June 13th - Call time is 7:00 am. Today is the first time Gaetan has built the platform on location. It was very difficult. One of the many problems is leveling the stage which is very labour intensive. No sign of our Jimmy Jig crane. We finish building the stage by 10:30 am. The crane arrives but the owner forgets the tracks! Everything is ready, finally by 11:00 am! Camera goes up on the Jimmy Jig and the hot head doesn't working!!! Ahhhhhhhh! I decide to build the dolly track and shoot something before our day is completely ruined. Our two days has just turned into three days. We make arrangements to return to City Hall on Friday, book a giraffe crane for the Thursday & the Friday. We shoot what we can and have a company move to the 1967 Expo Site at Jean Drapeau Park. When you walk inside the site it reminds you immediately of an ancient ceremonial theatre - like the Mayan ruins, or the coliseums of ancient Rome or Greece. Standing at the top you felt and saw this "bowl-like" theatre effect. That's why I wanted to shoot it from so far back, because once you placed the camera low and close you lost this great effect. Watching the dance scene the cutting back and forth with the music gives the audience a wonderful feel for the dance.

The weather was great! Hot and sunny. I have to tell everyone via this web page that I admire Sophie Lavigne very much! She is a true professional. She gave a 110% every shot, every take in 30 degree Celsius heat. She danced on top of black plastic that was heated by the sun. You could have cooked an egg on it! Not a peep, no complaints, a true PROFESSIONAL!

In the end it was a good shoot. Fate was with us. The screw up on the first day with the Jimmy Jig turned out to be a blessing in disguise, even if we did go over on our schedule by one day, because that giraffe crane was just the camera movement we need for the show!

"Dancers from the Great Plains"

To avoid the anxiety and the cost I experience shipping equipment to Iqaluit I decided that I would transport our production equipment to Saskatoon myself. I quickly discovered that there wasn't a dolly to be found in Saskatoon and that most productions rent gear from Regina. So, I rented a U-Haul trailer and loaded it with a peewee dolly, sound gear, a gas generator, location gear, along with our camera gear into the trailer and my mini van. William F. Whites didn't have any dolly track in Toronto but said I could pick some up in Winnipeg on my way through if I wanted. Okay?! I left Camera Dept. building at 4:00 pm on Friday afternoon on June 29th (Canada Day weekend). It took me 5 hrs to get to Parry Sound from Toronto! On Saturday morning near Sault Sainte Marie, as I'm still trying to get out of Ontario, I almost hit a moose! Actually, a cow and it's calf. I  blew my horn as I was traveling at about 110 km/hr bracing myself for the accident as they strolled across the roadway, fortunately the sound of the horn scared the mother moose and she picked up her pace as did the calf. I swerved to miss them nearly flipping the trailer as I watch them jump over the guard rail to safety. It was a very close call. 

On my arrival in Saskatoon I once again had to load the camera gear into the motel rooms. I was getting pretty good at by now. Back in early June, Tyrone Tootoosis took me to Wanuskewin Heritage Park to scout out locations. It was his idea and suggestion to shoot the entire piece in the park. After we scouted the park by golf cart I had to agree with him that it was economical for us to shoot everything in the park. I so discovered why they call Saskatchewan "Big Sky Country" ~ because the land is so flat that the horizon is so low everywhere you look you see sky. It's incredible! Without the strong support of Sheila Gamble, Wanuskewin Heritage Park and Hugh Tait I know I won't have accomplished what we did in three days. Linda Davis and Doug Cuthand from Blue Hill Productions helped crew up the show and I couldn't have done it without their help too. The park is BIG and we traveled by golf cart and gators around the entire park, it bought back visions or nightmares of Iqaluit only hotter weather and bumpier trails. Once again we were able to have mother nature's support by providing us with beautiful, hot sunny weather for the shoot.

"Passage"

Passage is a journey of discovering and defining ones true self. It is a portion of a longer piece Christine is currently working on titled "Spirits, Beings and Life Forces". Christine is originally from the Lake Temagami area, north of North Bay ~ land of the deep water and the great white pines. The place where her stories and her inspiration for her dance project originated from ~ Cape Croker First Nation. When Christine first told me the background to her dance piece it was obvious to me that this is the place we need to be filming the dance. Lake Temagami the place of her families traditional territory and the home of Friday's Point. The reserve on Bear Island. It was perfect! It was agreed and Christine made arrangements for my DOP - James Sainthill and I to meet her Aunt and Uncle to show us around by boat.

When we arrived it was a cold windy day in June. Verna and Woody took us out on the water and the view was beautiful. We arrive at one location and landed the boat to walk around the site only to discover heavy brush and dense tree area. We returned to the boat and continued to scout the lake shore and the view was once again beautiful. When we arrived at the next location and walked around on the land it was once again brush. This continued to be the landscape in every location until I soon realized that the only way to shoot the dance piece was from the water so you could see the beauty of the Lake, but the question was how?

A barge. We discover through conversations with Woody that there was a barge company on Bear Island who had a 60 ton barge that we could rent, so we did. It was big enough that we drove our grip/camera truck onto it and laid out our dolly track permanently on the deck of the barge and we just traveled around the lake looking for beautiful places to shoot it was the best summer vacation ever!

"Here on Earth"

Santee Smith is the hardest working choreographer/dancer I know. There could be others but as I said ~ "that I know". Scheduling a time that we could actually shoot the dance piece was very difficult and what the dance piece was going to be was even more difficult! Santee suggested we do "Here on Earth" because the dance troupe was small verses some of her other dances that carry a large cast of dancers. The other part I liked about "Here on Earth" was that it was a true ensemble dance. All four dancers share the stage together and dance solos within the program as well. With Santee's dance I wanted to do something different. As you can see from the other four episodes we covered a variety of looks for nature. Forest, green fields, water, sky what else was left? What I took from the story is that the dance starts from the beginning of time. The first stage of creation. A very raw and primal stage of the beginning of time. I felt we needed to see and feel that period of time. Rock is the foundation of time. Grandfather says "... if only the rocks could speak imagine the stories they could tell." So what better place to film but a rock quarry. And we found that quarry just north of Burlington at the Nelson Aggregate Quarry. Once we arrived it was obvious to me from our first camera set-up that we had to involve the dry, golden colour grass the was everywhere within the story. To use as if the audience was secretly watching the dance unknown to the dancers. A voyeur. Watching the transformation of the sky dwellers transforming into the forms that inhabit this plant. It amazed me throughout this series the endurance, stamina, professional work ethics, and most of all the talent of the dancers. We would be shooting in 30 degree Celsius weather doing take after take with no complaints, comments or questions. True professionals! We had great weather, a wonderful location at Nelson Aggregates that provided a unlimited source of looks for the dance piece and most of all a GREAT dance program. Please enjoy!

"Triptych"

"Triptych" is a strong dance piece that is a perfect ending to the series. It was originally commissioned for  "Dancing with Spirit". I approached Michael Greyeyes to be apart of the series after another choreographer had dropped out. We spoke about an urban type of dance that revolved around aboriginal people who find themselves living in the streets of Toronto. How they got there and why? With Michael's background in film he came back with a very detailed, scripted dance program. Because I hadn't actually seen the dance piece on stage like the other projects it was very hard for me to understand the dance. We talked and walked around different locations in Toronto to get a feel of what he was trying to portray in the dance and we would talk some more... It was very much a collaborative piece of work. But it wasn't until we were actually on set in our first location in Toronto where homeless people actually live under a bridge that it started to make sense. The story revolves around the main character dancer (Michael Greyeyes) who struggles with living the horrors of his past in residential schools in the present day. A very dark, moody and powerful dance performance along with the music of a young and talented York University composer by the name of Miquelon Rodriguez and the beautiful voice of one of the dancers ~ Katelyn Vanier. I know that at the end of the program the first words out of your mouth will be "Wow". Don't miss it !

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