Red Thunder Dancers happy to stay home for awhile

Alberta

Guide to Indian Country Page 7

While some members of the Red Thunder Native Dance Theatre enjoy Paris

this spring, other members will enjoy staying home to launch a new show.

Red Thunder's new project, the Pitaa Native Dinner Theatre, is set to

debut this month at the Howard Johnson Hotel, located on Calgary's busy

Macleod Trail.

The two-and-a-half hour show will feature the best of Red Thunder

performances, plus Native cuisine. Unlike the road show, however, the

local dinner theatre will allow dancers to go home instead of going

back to a hotel room Most of the 500 shows that Red Thunder presents

each year are far away from the theatre's base in the Tsuu T'ina Nation.

Touring is tiring, explained Aroha Crowchild, manager and producer of

the Pitaa Native Dinner Show.

"The dinner theatre is for those who don't want to tour so much."

A break from Red Thunder's road tour, however, won't mean a rest for

the stay-at-home dancers. Instead, they will be busy performing as well

as teaching eight new Red Thunder recruits the basics of performing

arts.

"The dinner theatre is an opportunity to train young people, and offers

further development for dancers in our group, said Crowchild. The new

dancers, chosen during auditions in March, will be trained in 11

different areas of theatre, including stage production, modern dance and

sound and lighting.

"At the end of six months we guarantee them a job in the show and will

offer them the opportunity to tour with the company," she said.

Youth development, she explained, is at the heart of Red Thunder, which

was set up 10 years ago as an employment opportunity for your people.

But performances offer more than meaningful employment.

"Every time we do it, it's a restrengthening for us," she said. The

body of the buffalo, the mind of man and the spirit of the eagle all

combine to create "native consciousness re-strengthening," according to

the teaching of Chief David Crowchild.

The Pitaa Native Dinner Theatre opened May 22--Chief David Crowchild

Day--in honor of the great Tsuu T'ina chief. The dinner theatre's

300-to-350-seat home has also been named the Crowchild Room.

"Pitaa," meaning eagle in Blackfoot, is the name of Aroha Crowchild's

14-year-old son, who suffers from cerebral palsy.

"We thought we would like to honor him by giving his name to the show,"

she said. "Because we named it after Pitaa who is in a wheelchair, (the

dinner theatre) had to be wheelchair accessible."