Diabo selected for prestigious award
Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo will be heading to Banff to complete two residencies and produce her new piece, I
Dream in Wampum. Credit Damian Siqueiros, Visual Artist
The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity received many applications for its prestigious Clifford E. Lee Choreography Award this year, but roller skating dancers, Indigenous futurism, and dance that imagines what life could look like without colonization is what made them pick Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo as their winner.
“Barbara just came in so full of ideas,” said Amiel Gladstone, director of Theatre Arts at the Banff Centre, who said her risk-taking choreographic ideas stood out. “Her creative voice feels unique and bold, and that’s exactly the kind of work we want to be doing.”
As part of the award, Diabo will be receiving a cash prize of $14,000 as well as two fully supported residencies at the Banff Centre, one focused on creative research and development and the other on production and performance.
“I couldn’t believe that they chose me, I was just so surprised, and so happy,” Diabo said.
She’d long known of the award, which is considered one of the most prestigious choreography awards in Canada, but found the confidence to apply thanks to fellow dancer Victoria May, who is Red River Metis/Michif. May had pushed Diabo to believe in her work.
“One of the first things that came to mind when I heard I got it was that yes, my name is on it, but I had so many people support me throughout the years. There’s the people who work with me, there’s my family, everyone is an essential part of this award,” she said.
The award was established in 1978 to support the creation and development of innovative choreographic work, and more than 50 applications for the award were received this year.
“We look at what kind of a fit the applicants are for the centre and then consider how excited we are by the work,” Gladstone said. “Barbara just came in with all these images of incredible costumes and really whimsical ideas involving things like putting dancers on roller skates, and so we felt it was exciting as a dance piece but also there’s just this spectacle of it all that’s so great.”
The Banff Centre requires applicants to submit fleshed-out proposals for a full-length piece during their application, and Diabo’s piece is titled I Dream in Wampum, a work that she’s been developing with fellow artists for the past year.
“It really merges my three passions of dance, science fiction, and my Kanien’kehá:ka culture,” she said.
The piece is inspired by the Seven Dancers constellation of stars, also known as the Pleiades, and centres a Kanien’kehá:ka youth who has a dream about being given seven wampum belts, one from each star. Each wampum belt allows him to travel through each star to get to new planets in the Sky World.
“It’s an imagining of the future, and each planet is going to be a completely different world that’s inspired by our stories,” Diabo said. “It’s going to be really positive and upbeat, and there’s going to be some deeper more intimate moments in it as well, because there’s a different teaching that he receives in each world.”
It’s a way to connect the Sky World to life here on Earth, Diabo said.
“It’s a lot of fun, because I wanted to imagine our ancestors who still live up in the sky, who evolved on these planets, who evolved without colonization,” she said. “What would that look like, if our people in the stars, our ancestors, had evolved that way? How much could we have gone forward with things? I’m allowing myself to dream positively.”
The research and development residency will take place in December of this year, with the production component to be scheduled in 2026.
Diabo will take her creative team with her, which includes her son, Marshall Kahente Diabo who will be one of her dancers - the work will be very much a family affair, with her brother, Michael Diabo, composing music for the piece.
Barbara and the rest of her creative team will have their accommodation, meals, and technical support covered while working at the Banff Centre.
“Their facilities are just gorgeous, the environment you’re in with the old mountains around you is just magical,” Barbara said. “Being given the time and the space and the resources to create this work just opens up this whole new space to really augment the creativity in this piece, and I’m really excited for that.”
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The final production of the piece will take place at the Banff Centre in April of next year.
