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Beate Hein Bennett
Close
to the Earth
Jan. 10-12 & Jan. 17-19, 2025
Before the influx of Dutch 17th century proto-Capitalist traders and the arrival of peg-legged pirate Pieter Stuyvesant, the island of Manhattan was the home of the Lenape Native American tribe (and the Manahattans), a part of the Iroquois Federation. Theater for the New City, located on Lenape land, has honored this Native American heritage by providing for many years a performance space for The Thunderbird American Indian Dancers, a group of Native Americans from various tribes and based in Brooklyn. They have performed traditional dances, songs and stories from various parts of the Americas, including not only various tribal traditions from the US but also from the Caribbean and Mexican native cultures.
An ensemble of musicians in costume drumming and singing a type of ritual invocation as the audience enters and is being seated, some near the stage on cushions, mostly children during the matinee. Artistic Director and Elder Louis Mofsie, the lead drummer/stage manager/narrator steps forward to introduce and briefly explain the diverse tribal cultures represented in the program—from the (originally) mid-Atlantic Cherokee and mid-western Choctaw, the southwestern Hopi and Yaki-Pueblo, the northeastern Winnebago, the Caribbean Taino and Mexican Maya traditions. A company of four women and five men enters circling the stage singing and stomp-dancing adorned in colorful costumes with traditional bells on the ankles and jingles as well as an assortment of feathers, predominantly eagle feathers, and fringed animal skins on the dresses with delicate beaded moccasins and leggings. For the next ninety minutes, in a kind of indoor Pow-Wow, they perform a series of songs, dances, and stories on the plain stage of the Johnson Theater at TNC. The only décor is a gorgeous large quilt with a dominant 8-pointed star in shades of rose suspended high above the stage. Alexander Bartenieff designed the lighting.
The program is a rich kaleidoscope of tribal art that celebrates the gifts of Nature on which all traditional culture is built. Nature writ large encompasses the universe from the stars to the soil and all the animals. The boundaries between mankind and animal world are dissolved in a kind of common eco-system—this is the core spirit of Native American cultures. In contrast to the European Judeo-Christian biblical ur-traditions where the human being has been ordained dominance over the natural world, in Native American traditions humans must equally share with and respect all the creatures inhabiting the Earth. This core tradition is movingly illustrated by the Deer Dance (Yaki-Arizona) accompanied by a flute and vocals intoning the sounds of nature. In this dance a Hunter stalks/pursues a Deer, killing him with his arrow after a lengthy pas-de-deux with the deer dancer wearing an actual deer head who tries to get a drink of water indicated by a small strip of blue cloth. The deer is pierced fatally, his life slowly fading as his body gently settles by the water’s edge. The Hunter kneels by the dead deer and offers first a prayer of thanks to the Deer for giving his life so the Hunter’s family can eat, and then he thanks the Creator for providing him with the deer. Other songs and dances and stories illustrate human foibles with humor, such as warriors boasting about their bravery, or some trying to hoard food from others, as told by a Taino fable about the original Tree of Life (i.e. Food) discovered by a fat Tapir hoarding food from all other animals until a hurricane brings down the Tree but the Creator finds a solution…(you need to come to know what happens) —that story is told by Marie Ponce, and she involves the audience in calling out the mocking refrain.
The women’s dances involve delicate and intricate footwork while the men’s feet augment the drum rhythms. Most dances are circular, at times more earth-bound and other times imitating flight with arms adorned with eagle feathers like wings. With the dominant drumming and the dancers’ hand-carried seed rattles and bells around the ankles and jingles on the women’s dresses, the driving one-two rhythm has a pulse suggestive of heartbeats. Two different modern dances were the Rabbit Dance from the Great Plains and the Shawl Dance from Oklahoma; the Rabbit Dance is a couple dance adapted from the popular European settler Square Dance while the Shawl Dance is a women’s dance, adopted after WWII, incorporating faster rhythms and using large shawls. The performance shows the diversity of Native American dance traditions but also what binds the different cultures and traditions into a fundamental rich heritage that was long suppressed and denied its rightful place in American culture. Native American culture and its peoples are an active presence and an integral part of the evolution of American life.
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