The answer is land, but what is the question? Perhaps: how can we continue to exist on our ever-shrinking territories and preserve our culture on traditional lands heavily beset by global warming?

Sámi choreographer Elle Sofe Sara articulates it better. About Vástádos Eana/The Answer is Land, opening tomorrow at Harbourfront’s Fleck Dance Theatre, she says, “It’s about inviting the audience into a state where we are all here together. The [performers] are standing equally on the same ground and we take the audience on a journey, one that is based in spirituality.”  

The Answer, created in 2021, is about kinship and the shared sorrow of the Sámi people, colonized for decades, herded into residential schools like the indigenous peoples of Canada, their language and culture suppressed, their Sápmi territories drastically reduced.

Today, the approximately 2 million Sámi peoples, historically occupying the land for about 12,000 years, are confined to lands in the northern tips of Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula in Russia.

Elle Sofe Sara’s prize-winning show is a celebration of the still thriving Sámi culture and a defiance:  the dancers are literally standing their ground in the face of a global crisis.

A special aspect of the show is the result of collaborating with southern Sámi yoiker and composer Frode Fjellheim, best known on this side of the pond for the adaptation of his 2002 song “Eatnemen Vuelie”, as the opening number for the animated film Frozen.And what is a yoik, you say? Check YouTube and you’ll see a Laplander in traditional dress, softly pounding an indigenous rhythm on a skin-drum while singing songs remarkably similar to those of the British Columbia coastal peoples.

The seven dancers in the show, all women, and some Sámi, perform Fjeillheim’s polyphonically arranged songs in during the show, creating a complete aural and kinetic sphere of Sámi origin. As seen in the trailer, the dance, with its ritualistic movement, is reminiscent of Jean-Pierre Perrault’s 1983 breakthrough show, Joe, which also invited the audience into the bodies of the dancers on stage to share in their unity of purpose.

Sara is known for her globe-trotting creations and has been to Canada before, once performing for the Arctic Winter Games when they were held here. Last year her company performed The Answer in Montreal. Born in the Norwegian villageGuovdageaidnu, she never saw professional dance on stage, but somehow by 16, she knew dancing was for her. Getting dance training, she says, “Opened up a whole new world for me” and was the spark for a life of creation. She holds a master’s degree in dance and received dance training at London’s Laban Trinity School. She’s also an accomplished filmmaker, whose works have appeared on the slate of the Imaginative festival. When not touring Sara lives in the village of her birth, with her partner, a reindeer herder.

As the jury said, in awarding Elle Sofe Sara the 2023 Telenor Culture Prize, “Elle Sofe Sara is an artist who really transcends boundaries. She is a choreographer, a director, and a filmmaker – and to all her productions she brings a lot of playfulness and curiosity as she continues to combine different elements to great effect. She is unafraid to challenge established ideas about the limitations of the performing arts and remains eager to explore new ways of engaging with her audiences.”

Personally, I’m keen to join those viewers

The Answer is Land

Choreography Elle Sofe Sara

Composer Frode Fjellheim

Costume design Line Maher

Set Elin Melberg

Lighting Øystein Heitmann

Toronto premiere runs in the Fleck Dance Theatre, March 6 and 7

See The Answer is Land trailer here: https://vimeo.com/724070129