by JACK DANYLCHUK
Northern Journal
Tue, Jun 19, 2012
Spilling anecdotes and spouting tall tales, with plenty of body language for emphasis, a busload of Northern storytellers took to the road last week with the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre’s annual festival.
The theme this year is “Transitions,” Ben Nind, NACC director, told the opening night audience Friday at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre. “We challenge the tellers and the listeners to reveal themselves in the light, life and laughter of the stories.”
Opening the week-long festival in Yellowknife, Dawn Lacey riffed on buns; her own, “still firm at 60,” she joked, and the “overnight buns” she loves to bake: whole wheat and white, sweetened with honey, and her favourite, cinnamon, sticky with icing.
Buns were the perfect metaphor, creating an audience of hungry listeners by the time Paul Seesequasis took the stage.
Seesequasis, until recently a desk-bound arts bureaucrat, remarked on his own transition from writer to storyteller, and the difference between words on and off the page.
“I’m not really a storyteller,” he confessed, and read excerpts from his book, The Tobacco Wars, a faux history of Pocahontas, that takes Powhatan’s daughter from the forests of the New World to the fetid streets of 17th century London.
Anthony Foliot, introduced as “bard of the barge on the bay,” told stories drawn from his adventures with Skipper Dave as a deckhand with the East Arm Freighting Company. His delivery channeled the rhyming style of Robert Service and the good natured bombast of the Snow-King, the central character in Foliot’s annual winter performance piece on Yellowknife Bay.
Fort Smith raconteur Jim Green related an almost believable tale of a misplaced body, a bootlegger, a Yellowknife tow truck driver (who was an undertaker when opportunity dictated) and baffled police.
The story was lifted from a collection of stories that started as a novel but never made it to print. The book cover, a tapestry of Gold Range characters drawn by Walt Humphries, now decorates a CD that Green merrily sold at the end of his performance.
Michael Kusugak, Moira Cameron, Pat Braden, Judy Sharp, Scott McQueen and John B Zoe appeared Saturday afternoon and evening at the Heritage Centre café before the festival took to the road.
The tour passed through Behchoko on Monday, stopped in Fort Providence on Tuesday and then headed for Kakisa. The show closes in Fort Smith this Saturday after appearances in Hay River on Thursday and Enterprise on Friday.
“This is an exciting event both for the communities and the tellers from here at home and beyond,” said Nind. “Each concert is different and each story significant.”