Rayn Cook-Thomas,
future home of Movement 74
Kwakwaka’wakw Indigenous contemporary dance and choreography
Gilakas’la (thank you & welcome)
The supernatural magic inborn in the soil of Kwakwaka’wakw culture has always included dance.
Work, projects, choreography
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Recently created —
Dzunuḵ̓wa finds her way to Toronto, ON
Dzunuḵ̓wa is the wild woman of the woods and she has haunted ancient forests in the Pacific Northwest for time immemorial. Wild, vivid, colossal, and wily, Dzunuḵ̓wa is part of a complex supernatural society in Kwakwaka’wakw culture. While delivering compelling lessons in her traditional story, she is not a simple creature. Dzunuḵ̓wa, against the harsh colonial climate of Canada, might also be the protector of our masculine, feminine, and wild expressions. Dances, songs, oral history, and cedar carvings keep Dzunuḵ̓wa alive in Kwakwaka’wakw communities, yet as the forests are cut down in “British Columbia”, this piece will provoke the urgent and worrisome thought that is: When the forests disappear, where will she go?
Dzunuḵ̓wa (2022) was performed at York University and at the Gathering Divergence Multi-Arts Festival and Conference in Toronto, ON
Some more work:
The Picker reimagined as a dance piece
Originally performed as part of Krystal Cook’s one-woman theatre show, Emergence, “The Picker” was one of the many characters created for her show, all of which were portrayed with mask work. Skillfully crafted by Miles Lowry, the mask sat hibernating in a basement for almost eight years before one day, I asked Cook, my mother, if I could use the mask in a dance. Graciously, she said yes. The Picker follows the story of a sinister and beguiling creature born from the Residential School era. Knowing that this story is vastly different from my mom’s experience or my grandparent’s experiences, I created this piece as both a reflection on my own lived experience and as a portrait of the complex residue left from the Indian Residential School System in our communities.
The Picker was performed in 2019 in Victoria, BC and received the Ivy McGeachie Award for Young Choreographers, and then was remounted in 2020 for the Inspired Dance Film Festival Schools Divisions in Australia , which it won the top award for. It will start a new experimental process with Nostos Collectives this summer.
