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Story Type: Photo Essay

Dancers in regalia covered in long, brightly coloured fringe dance down Fort Macleod's Main Street past a stone bank building, while spectators and drummers watch from the sidewalk.

Drum Grid brings drums and dance to Fort Macleod’s Main Street

Written on . Posted in Arts & Creative Pulse, Culture & Community.

 

Spectators didn’t stay put for Drum Grid: A Sonic Journey with A’sitapiiksi on Friday evening in Fort Macleod. They followed the beat.

The free street performance, part of New Music Lab’s Unfamiliar Trails: Coming Together Festival, saw the Coaldale Prairie Winds Secondary drumline playing Drum Grid, a piece by Pulitzer Prize-winning Diné composer Raven Chacon.

The drumline led the crowd along the town’s main street, from one stop to the next, where the A’sitapiiksi Powwow Club performed different dances at each location, including grass, jingle, and fancy dance styles to traditional Blackfoot drumming and singing.

The powwow club started in June, after Maria Crowshoe’s grandson said he wanted to learn to dance. Randy Plain Eagle choreographed the performance with Justin Many Fingers, working with the young dancers over about six hours of rehearsal in the weeks before the show.

Dancers were from the Piikani and Kainai nations and Fort Macleod.

Members of the Coaldale Prairie Winds Secondary drumline march down Main Street playing hand drums from sheet music, led by a man with a frame drum, with snare drummers following behind.
Members of a high school drumline in yellow and black shirts walk along a downtown sidewalk carrying snare drums and hand drums, led by an older man playing a frame drum.
Dancers in feathered bustles and headdresses dance down Main Street at sunset, backlit by the low sun, their long shadows stretching across the pavement past historic storefronts.
A line of dancers in colourful regalia performs on the street outside a laundromat, while hand drummers in cowboy hats sing and drum on the sidewalk behind them.
Young women and girls in fancy shawl regalia spin with their fringed shawls outstretched in a Main Street crosswalk, as a crowd behind them watches and films on their phones.
Jingle dress dancers in red, pink and green regalia lined with rows of metal cones dance on a sidewalk, one woman holding a feather fan, as other dancers and spectators gather behind them.
Three hand drummers sing and play painted hand drums outside a brick building, as a dancer in a black shawl decorated with shells and a beaded belt faces them in the foreground.
Two girls in pink and blue regalia with fringed shawls and beaded crowns stand on the street, with jingle dress dancers behind them.
A fancy dancer in bright pink, green and purple regalia with feathered bustles and white fringe spins mid-step on an empty Main Street in Fort Macleod, lined with historic brick and stone buildings under a pale evening sky.
High school drummers with snare drums and hand drums stand in a row outside a red brick building, waiting to play.
Young dancers in full regalia carry white, red and blue flags down the centre of Main Street under a cloudy sky.

Drum Grid, Indigenous powwows, National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, Piikani Princess