Across the country, Indigenous-owned dance companies are melding tradition and innovation

Hamilton, Ont.-based choreographer Santee Smith started Kaha:wi Dance Theatre in 2005 so she could tell Indigenous stories.

Consider, for a moment, the appeal of dance. A gesture, small but seismic, where under studio lights or in an open-air gathering, a body will sway, arch and spin, translating feeling into form. Certain dances reverberate far beyond the stage, something that is particularly true for a number of Indigenous artists in Canada, for whom dance is both ceremony and invention.

In Hamilton, some of that inheritance moves through Santee Smith. As a choreographer, performer and founder of Kaha:wi Dance Theatre, Smith has spent two decades showing what it means for the body to function as an archive.

“I started dancing at two years old,” Smith recalls. “Looking back, I can see