REDTalks Ziindaamaget brings community together to celebrate summer solstice
By Rick Garrick
THUNDER BAY — Thunder Bay recently hosted a REDTalks Ziindaamagat (“a confined space”) webinar with Red Sky Performance executive and artistic director Sandra Laronde and performers Jinny Jacinto and Samantha Halas on National Indigenous Peoples Day.
“Amongst our Indigenous residents here, we’ve heard a positive response that they were able to participate online,” says Regina Mandamin, manager, Indigenous Relations and Inclusion, City of Thunder Bay and a Wiikwemkoong citizen. “For us as Indigenous people, gathering as a community especially around the summer solstice is important to our culture so with these [coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic] protocols in place today, although they are for our general public health, it is difficult and it is a challenge for us to celebrate as we usually do. But I’m really happy everyone came together.”
The Ziindaamagat webinar, held on the afternoon of June 21, featured a performance video on Youtube and a panel discussion by Laronde, Jacinto and Halas on the Zoom platform.
“We had technical difficulties because we were using two different platforms from Youtube to Zoom,” Laronde says. “So we had the talk first and once we got into that that was really good. It was really interesting to hear about how people think about using space and how they relate to audiences and even when do they recognize they perhaps have another ability than the average person.”
Jacinto began the discussion by speaking about how she came to realize she had greater flexibility than most people.
“I didn’t even know the word contortionist existed — it was for me like lifting up an arm to bend that way,” Jacinto says during the panel discussion. “It was weird because other kids of my age or older kids would tell me it was weird and it wasn’t normal but to me it was never, ‘Oh, I’m really flexible.’ It was just I was made that way, and later I did discover it was a gift.”
Jacinto says she joined Cirque du Soleil when she was 13-years-old and travelled around the world for 10 years.
“So that was really my school of life,” Jacinto says. “I was really lucky to start off in what at that time was a tiny company, but it was like a five-star circus.”
Halas says she did not have much success in sports or gym class because of her greater flexibility.
“Our muscles don’t contract very quickly so we are very slow runners,” Halas says during the panel discussion. “There are things that are really hard for us because our muscles are so long. But when my sister taught me some yoga moves, I just fell in love with it. I was like, ‘I can do this’ and I was so proud. It was just really finding my way that worked with my body type.”
Laronde says the performance video on Youtube featured “really beautiful, breathtaking excerpts” of Jacinto and Halas performing with Red Sky Performance as well as performing their own work.
“That was really nice to get on to Zoom with them and to ask them questions related to performance and how they perform and how they move as highly trained and highly flexible artists,” Laronde says.
Thunder Bay also held the Red Sky Performance Mistatim Gallops Across Canada webinar on June 19 and the Red Sky Performance Wisdom Keeper Series “Watch Party” on June 20 through a partnership with Red Sky Performance.
“It’s really great to work with Red Sky Performance to bring these offerings up to the north,” Mandamin says. “We don’t always have this opportunity to experience some of the performance offerings from southern Ontario, so it’s nice to bring that to our neck of the woods.”