{"id":1470,"date":"2011-03-26T12:00:29","date_gmt":"2011-03-26T08:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clarissarizal.com\/blogblog\/?p=1470"},"modified":"2011-03-25T09:03:14","modified_gmt":"2011-03-25T05:03:14","slug":"a-small-bit-of-barrow-dances-into-juneau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clarissarizal.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/a-small-bit-of-barrow-dances-into-juneau\/","title":{"rendered":"A Small Bit of Barrow Dances into Juneau"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Barrow Dancers performed for a full audience at Juneau's High School Auditorium<\/p><\/div>\n

Lis, Greg and Leif pulled me out of the house last Saturday night, March 19th.\u00a0 I could have continued weaving on my robe, finish my homework due on Sunday, prepare for my business trip this week, or gone to the movies with my mother and brother; even though I love the dances of the Far North people, I was reluctant to go to the performance because of my stack of responsibilities. \u00a0 Of course, I was glad to have gone.\u00a0 The way of “Eskimo” dance is very different than any other kind of dance I have seen or have done; a happiness is reflected in the dances and songs of these people.\u00a0 The first time I had seen Eskimo dancing was about 25 years ago when the King Island Dancers performed at the ANB Hall here in Juneau.\u00a0 I was pleasantly surprised at how my spirit was uplifted by this kind of dance and song.\u00a0 I hadn’t heard anything like it.\u00a0 There is a quality that is highly spiritual – those are the only words I can find to describe the experience, a happy, spiritual experience.\u00a0 Watching the Barrow Dancers was as equally another spiritual experience.<\/p>\n

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A young man dances solo this story while the men drum with women sitting behind them singing the chant.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Barrow Eskimo Dancers are all Inupiaq Eskimo.\u00a0 They are the oldest dance group in Barrow, Alaska and love to pass down their traditional motion dances that tell stores of life long ago and modern times.\u00a0 They are an all-ages group with over 60 members varying in age from two years old to almost 100!\u00a0 Some begin training while still toddlers and others join when they are in their 60\u2019s.<\/p>\n

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The women wore purple, cotton kuspuks (traditional dress) and the men wore white shirts with bolo ties; every member wore black pants tucked into the traditional mukluks <\/p><\/div>\n

The locally-derived songs of the Barrow Dancers were composed largely by original dance group members the late Walter Akpik, Sr. and Warren Matumeak\u00a0 and their forebears, and have their roots in the north central North Slope of Alaska.\u00a0 Other, more recently composed songs and motions were composed by some of the other dance performers.\u00a0 May of the recently-composed songs are performed with a smile (one dance, for example, mimics the pre-flight briefing of airline stewardesses).\u00a0 Some songs have been borrowed and exchanged with groups from as far away as Savoonga and Chukotka in the Bering Sea and Arctic Canada.<\/p>\n

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Dancing the famous "Walrus" dance!<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cEven though most of our elders have passed on, what they taught us still lives on in many of the dances we do.\u00a0 Especially during practices when we are learning new dances or bringing\u00a0 back old dances.\u00a0 Teaching the young ones the songs and dances makes me feel like we are passing down our culture and the knowledge so that it lives on when we are gone.\u201d\u00a0 Fred Elavgak.<\/p>\n

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Grandma Priscilla and grandson dance in friendship<\/p><\/div>\n

Barrow is the northernmost city in the United States being 320 miles above the Arctic Circle.\u00a0 It is a desert averaging less than 5 inches of rain a year, a land of harsh extremes with extended darkness, strong winds, dense cloud cover and unforgiving temperatures.\u00a0 Archaeological sites in the area indicate the Inupiat lived around Barrow as far back as 500 A.D.\u00a0 Some remains of 16 dwelling mounds from the Birmirk culture of about 800 A.D. are still in evidence today on the shore of the Arctic Ocean.<\/p>\n

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Priscilla's son has created some of the dance groups new songs and dances<\/p><\/div>\n

The Barrow Dancers participated in the inaugural parade for President-Elect Obama on January 20, 2009 in Washington, D.C.\u00a0 They have performed as a group as far away as China and are very excited for their first performance in Juneau.<\/p>\n

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This was such a cool dance, I just had to add another image of it!<\/p><\/div>\n

The Barrow Dancers performance in Juneau was sponsored by Alaska Airlines and co-sponsored by the Driftwood Lodge.<\/p>\n

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Alaska Governor Sean Parnell dances with the Barrow Dancers - it was one of the highlights of their performance - you can see that everyone was digging it!<\/p><\/div>\n

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Governor Parnell's wife was also asked to join the dance - such an honor!<\/p><\/div>\n

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During the audience invitational dance, I got to take a close-up of the drummers<\/p><\/div>\n

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Backstage you can see a small portion of the big crowd who joined the dancers on stage during the audience invitational dance<\/p><\/div>\n

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A surprising number of audience members joined in the invitational dance - so much fun!<\/p><\/div>\n

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The Barrow Dancers stood for their Honor Song as the Tlingit Dancers joined them<\/p><\/div>\n

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Lyle James leads his Tlingit dancers to welcome the Barrow Dancers<\/p><\/div>\n

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The Barrow and Tlingit dancers merge as one<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lis, Greg and Leif pulled me out of the house last Saturday night, March 19th.\u00a0 I could have continued weaving on my robe, finish my homework due on Sunday, prepare for my business trip this week, or gone to the movies with my mother and brother; even though I love the dances of the Far […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19,23],"tags":[129,62,127,128],"class_list":["post-1470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-honoring-others","category-photo-essays-of-alaska","tag-alaska-airlines","tag-alaskan-artists","tag-barrow-dancers","tag-juneau-arts-humanities-council"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarissarizal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarissarizal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarissarizal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarissarizal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarissarizal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1470"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarissarizal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1500,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarissarizal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470\/revisions\/1500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarissarizal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarissarizal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarissarizal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}