Anakwad is based on an Anishinaabe tale of the sleeping bear dunes, in which two baby bears wandering the dunes lose their mother when a fire takes place symbolizing societies loss of connection to earth and the complex queer experience of familial loss. The bear medicine performance and a queer noise night to transform the work into the ritual of bear medicine.
In the first version we worked very closely with the piece as a spoken narrative with time in a MoCap studio we were able to bring the bear medicine dance into the piece recording Ty Defoe’s performance of bear medicine and transmuting him into a bear apparition. The piece now inherits the properties of an indigiqueer ritual.
