Qaggiq Arctic Performing Arts Summit

“You can’t have one without the other,” Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory says over the long-distance delay. “You need a place for performances to take place, and you need performances in order to justify the place.” I am calling from Ottawa to go over the highlights of the previous week’s Inuit performing artists’ summit in Iqaluit.

Buoyed by their recent Arctic Inspiration Prize win this past March, Qaggiavuut! held its most ambitious arts summit yet. Some fifty Inuit performance artists from across Canada gathered at Iqaluit’s Frobisher Inn to participate in workshops and consultations, culminating in a collaborative performance that drew a full house despite a three-day blizzard that shut down most of the city. The performance began with a bare-bones script called Kiviuq Returns. Qaggiavuut!’s Ellen Hamilton and Looee Nowdlak Arreak provided the outlines of the plot, and what followed was five long evenings of character composition, choreography, stories, discussions on Inuit culture, loss and renewal and a growing camaraderie between participants that later spilled over onto social media and the start of other collaborative works.

The group included high school students, educators, professional