Indigenous Organization

ABOUT US
Raven Spirit Dance creates and produces contemporary dance that is rooted in Indigenous worldviews and honours the communities and artists we work with. We share stories through Indigenous perspectives and practices while creating a platform for others to do the same.
The streams of activity of Raven Spirit Dance are the creation of new work, presenting and touring, training and mentoring, outreach and advocacy. The company works from the following values: generosity, openness, engagement, integrity, and honouring.

Our medium is contemporary dance; and, we incorporate other expressions such as traditional dance, theatre, puppetry and multi-media to tell these stories. By sharing this work on local, national and international stages, Raven Spirit Dance reaffirms the vital importance of dance to the expression of human experience and to cultural reclamation. Raven Spirit Dance aims to explore how professional artistic work is responsive and responsible to the community it is a part of and to continue to redefine dance’s place in diverse community settings. Raven Spirit is Vancouver-based yet indelibly tied to the Yukon through its projects and inspirations, as our Artistic Director, Michelle Olson is from the Tr’ondek Hwech’in First Nation.

CREATIVE PHILOSOPHY
The moment of an impulse is the collision of inherited worldviews, traditional and urban cosmologies, and personal and collective histories. From this place, one dances and creates and it is how one arrives at an expression that is distinct. Raven Spirit values how indigenous expression is realized through contemporary dance in this way. It values creating an environment for dialogue and critique and values pushing the boundaries of the work and our cultural selves.