There’s another show set to take place at the Northern Arts and Cultural Center (NACC) this month and it’s happening in three languages.
It’s titled Aalaapi, a hybrid project combining the creations of both theatre and radio, and it’s being presented by Olivia Ikey and Nancy Saunders from Northern Quebec.
The show will be performed in Inuktitut and French with English subtitles — Marie Coderre, executive and artistic director with NACC, said that is the first time the performance will be shown in NACC.
“We really want the patrons in Yellowknife to get used to those beautiful Indigenous languages and we really believe in an cultural practices,” she said.
Aalaapi is an Inuktitut word meaning choosing silence to hear something beautiful, and that is what the show is all about, said Ikey.
“The show is about community and the sounds of the North,” she said.
The show is directed by Laurence Dauphinais and it’s about the daily life about Inuit youth going back and forth from the North to the south to learn things.
“The play is very beautiful because you don’t only watch the play, it’s a multi-sensory play where you listen, you watch and you feel the show — you can even smell the show,” Ikey added.
Coderre said everybody will bring their skills to the table and work around different technologies.
“I believe art is a vehicle to get people closer because there is a process and the process means that people have time to know each other, and it is really done in a way where people learn from each other and bring their stories to the stage,” she said.
Ikey also shared thoughts of the connection between Indigenous people in Quebec and Indigenous people in Yellowknife.
“We’re from Northern Quebec and the people of Yellowknife are from the Arctic, so that’s a connection for us,” she said. “We’re Inuit and there are similarities where we share different relationships with different nations and we’re very connected to the land.”
Coderre said that this will also be the last show of the season, and the next season is on Aug 19.
“This is the first year since 2022 that we were able to present shows at full capacity,” Coderre said. “It was a year of reintroducing lots of shows from different places.”
She also said that this year was a big one because it was a chance to get a sense of people’s behaviours and interests based on crowd interest.