Mixk'Aax
Mixk'Aax
Premiere Performance at the Vancouver Playhouse 1991
1991
About
“Mixk’ Aax was forerunner to Gawa Gyani. At the time of the premiere of the work, we still had not received permission to name our choreography Gawa Gyani. Permission was required, by Gitxsan law, from the House of G’onou and Edgar Good, who owned this hereditary name and Nox Nox spirit of the same name. The whole piece was focused on this concept of Gawa Gyani, meaning a ceremony whereby two sides come together to resolve important differences in a neutral space. But without permission, we could not use the name.
So Ken Harris found another word, Mixk’Aax, with a similar meaning. This word was not owned and we used that for the performance at the Vancouver Playhouse. After this performance, Ken Harris and I traveled to Kitwancool to visit Edgar Good and his brother Godfrey Good, head of the house of G’onou to further our request and provide assurance of right action and integrity in our use of the name. Soon after this we received permission to use the name and the work Mixk’Aax was further developed to include the Dancers of Damelahamid, and became Gawa Gyani.
This work was the first step in a series of cross-cultural collaborative works undertaken over the next decade.”
- Karen Jamieson
Translation of word Mixk’Aax by Gyologyet (Mary McKenzie), Wilp Gyologyet, Lax Gibou early 1980s
If you send somebody to go and get him, then you have to wait for that person. That chief has to give his answer, whether or not he is coming. If not, well you start without him. But if he is coming you wait. If he comes after the food is served, he is gluk. He has to put on a feast for his embarrassment for being late. That’s why, when the call comes to you, you’ve got to be there. If they take mixk’aax to you, if for some reason you don’t feel right about something, then you have to accept that because the mixk’aax is so valuable. Then, after a time, you have put on a mixk’aax feast and you have to say why you didn’t want to go. If you are in a meeting and you get upset about something and you slam the door, they have to go to you and ask you what the problem is. You have to put on a little smoker like, just so you accept their gratitude to you.
- Addressing Gitxsan language interpreter training class, Gitanmaax Hall (translated by Barbara Sennott, December 5, 2002)
THE PEOPLE
Concept development and consultation: Doreen Jensen Ha’hl Yee, Gitxsan artist and writer, Michael Ames, Director of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia and Karen Jamieson
Choreography: Karen Jamieson in collaboration with Gitxsan artist and consultant Alice Jeffrey and Salish artist and performer Evan Tlesla Adams (Tla'amin Nation, Coast Salish) and Chief Kenneth B. Harris (Gitxsan, Gisgahaast (Fireweed) Clan of Damelahamid and Hereditary Chief (Simoiget) of the House Hagbegwatku)
Performers: Byron Chief-Moon (Káínawa Nation “Blood Tribe” of the Niitsitapi, “The Blackfoot Confederacy”), Denise Lonewalker Nishka-Na-Wee-Wia (Hopi, Apache Mi'kmaq), Maureen Adams (Tla'amin Nation, Coast Salish), Charlene Ts'simtelot Aleck (Tsleil-Waututh Nation), Virginia Corcoran, Allan Dobbs, Catherine Lubinsky, Hiromoto Ida, Kay Huang, Andrew Olewine, and Karen Jamieson
Music: Jeff Corness
Costumes: Susan Berganzi
Songs: Alice Jeffrey (Gitxsan)
Storyteller: Chief Kenneth B. Harris (Gitxsan, Gisgahaast (Fireweed) Clan of Damelahamid and Hereditary Chief (Simoiget) of the House Hagbegwatku)
Reviews
“Jamieson is closer here than she has ever been to a fusion of the multi-stranded cultural threads of this region into a new expressive tool, her long-sought ‘universal language’ of movement.
The first half, Oracles of Innocence, is a loose, whirling phantasmagoria. To a Jeff Corness score that sounds like a clamorous sampling of the world’s airwaves, the dancers swing and sway and swirl, often in tones of parody, through many of the world’s movement styles. Yet, ever-present and always in control is the undulating figure of what might be that old trickster, Raven, and from time to time we see fragments of old ceremony – wherever the movement may take us, we always know where we are.
The sense of place is even more acute in the second section, Sca’Waa, in which Kenneth B. Harris, in hereditary chief’s robes, narrates (in both languages) this Gitskan creation myth. But now we see a startling variation on ancient ceremony in the dancing-out of the tale. Many of the movement seeds that were planted in the first section come to fruition here. Tradition endures, but room is also found for the language of modernity.
And they do not clash. Drama, comedy, emotion and a high, noble beauty emerges from this collision of cultures. For all its variety, there’s no sense of anything phoney, anything grafted on…rather, we’re looking at something organic and whole, something fresh and strange.
This is a work of art that points an eloquent finger in new expressive directions that could be unique to this city – the beginning, perhaps, of a whole new cross-cultural creative impetus. A look into what might be.”
- Max Wyman
“Mixk’aax shows what this city might be”
The Province, June 9, 1991
“Mixk’aax is as complex as the ideas that stream through it. In a sense it is dance, since much of it is imparted through movement; but it is also a kind of communal storytelling, laced with the memories of the people who collected and organized it; it is a storehouse of myth, from the images that flicker in individual dreams to the epic poetry that reflects entire cultures; it is theatre, quickened with singing, chanting and spoken text; it is a gazetteer that leads us back and forth between native culture and the noisy and paradoxical communities that have come afterward; it is a musical document of surprising resonance.”
- Michael Scott
“Tale of two cultures a rich mosaic”
The Vancouver Sun, June 10, 1991
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