[Mb-hair] Feb: Thunderbird American Indian Dancers' Pow-Wow (TNC, Feb. 10 - 19)

[Jim Burns]

TNC PRESENTS THUNDERBIRD AMERICAN INDIAN DANCERS' 31st ANNUAL DANCE
CONCERT AND POW-WOW FEBRUARY 10 TO 19. 

All proceeds benefit Native American scholarship fund. 

WHEN AND WHERE:
February 10 to 19, 2006 
Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 pm; Saturdays and Sundays at 2:00 pm 

Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue (at Tenth Street). Presented
by Theater for the New City. 

$10 general admission to all evening shows, whose running time is 2:00.
MATINEES ARE KIDS' DAYS: At all 2:00 pm performances, children under
twelve accompanied by a ticket-bearing adult are admitted for $1.00
(adults $10). Running time 1:30. Box office/audience info (212)
254-1109. Online ticketing available at www.theaterforthenewcity.net 
DETAILS: 
                Thunderbird American
Indian Dancers will hold their 31st annual Dance Concert and Pow Wow at
Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue, from February 10 to 19. The
troupe's appearances benefit college funds for needy Native American
students. The company's Pow-Wows have been presented annually as a
two-week event by TNC since 1976, with the box office donated to these
funds. There will be dances, stories and traditional music from the
Iroquois and Native Peoples of the Northwest Coast, the Southwest, the
Plains, and the Arctic regions. Between 25 and 30 dancers will assemble
for the event. 
                Highlights of this
year's celebration will include a Hoop Dance performed by Raymond Two
Feathers (Cherokee) and "Dancing Wolf" Michael Taylor (Choctaw/French).
For the fourth time, the Pow Wow will include a dance from the Inuit
people of Alaska, called The Caribou Dance. Highlights will also include
a Butterfly Dance (a Hopi custom which gives thanks for the beauty of
nature), a Grass Dance and Jingle Dress Dance (from the Northern Plains
people), a Fancy Dance and a Shawl Dance (from the Oklahoma tribes).
Featured performers will also include Joe Cross, a storyteller from the
Caddo Tribe (Oklahome), the Heyna Second Son Singers (various tribes)
and Mitoka Eagle (Santo Domingo/Pueblo). 
                A new outreach component
has been added this year. After matinees, the cast will remain in the
lobby to personally meet the children attending and be photographed with
them. This component of the show was inspired by the troupe's school
residencies. Says Louis Mofsie, the Thunderbirds' artistic director,
"Educators try to suppliment the kids' knowledge of Native Americans and
to teach them about different cultures. But the emphasis is on how we
used to live, in the past tense. The kids are never taught how to relate
to us in the present. Now they can meet us, and be photographed with us,
and it's present tense. It's more than just seeing us on stage." He
adds, "Learning about different cultures is important to enlarging the
kids' perspective, particularly in light of what's going on in the
world. We're in trouble today because we don't understand different
cultures." 
                A Pow-Wow is more than
just a spectator event: it is a joyous reunion for native peoples
nationwide and an opportunity for the non-Indian community to voyage
into the philosophy and beauty of Native culture. Traditionally a
gathering and sharing of events, Pow-Wows have come to include
spectacular dance competitions, exhibitions, and enjoyment of
traditional foods. 
                Pageantry is an
important component of the event, and all participants are elaborately
dressed. Most dances are performed in the traditional Circle, which
represents a unity of peoples. There is a wealth of cultural information
encoded in the movements of each dance. More than ten distinct tribes
will be represented in the performance. 
                In the final section of
the program, the audience is invited to join in the Round Dance, a
friendship dance. Throughout the performance, all elements are explained
in depth through detailed introductions by the troupe's Director and
Emcee Louis Mofsie (Hopi/Winnebago). An educator, Mofsie plays an
important part in the show by his ability to present a comprehensive
view of native culture. The TNC lobby becomes a gallery for Indian
crafts, bathed in the cooking aromas of Native American foods: corn
soup, venison, fry bread and wild rice. 
                The Thunderbird American
Indian Dancers are the oldest resident Native American dance company in
New York. The troupe was founded in 1963 by a group of ten Native
American men and women, all New Yorkers, who were descended from Mohawk,
Hopi, Winnebago and Sanblas tribes. Some were in school at the time; all
were "first generation," meaning that their parents had been born on
reservations. They founded the troupe to keep alive the traditions,
songs and dances they had learned from their parents, and added to their
repertoire from other Native Americans living in New York and some who
were passing through. Within three or four years, they were traveling
throughout the continental U.S., expanding and sharing their repertoire
and gleaning new dances on the reservations. (A number of Thunderbird
members are winners of Fancy Dance contests held on reservations, where
the standard of competition is unmistakably high.) Members of the
Thunderbirds range in professions from teachers to hospital patient
advocates, tree surgeons and computer engineers. 
                The Thunderbird-TNC
collaboration began in 1975, when Crystal Field directed a play called
"The Only Good Indian." For research, Ms. Field lived on a Hopi
reservation for three weeks. In preparation for the project, she met
Louis Mofsie, and they made plans for a Pow Wow to celebrate the Winter
Solstice. The event has continued annually to this day. 
                The Thunderbird American
Indian Dancers Scholarship Fund receives no other source of income, and
has bestowed over 325 scholarships to-date.