From snowmachine to the stage

DUSTIN SOLBERG

April 04, 2008 at 8:38AM AKST

These dancers came two by two. Over the snowy tundra of March. On snowmachines.

The eight dancers who traveled from the Lower Yukon River village of Pilot Station set out early Friday morning. A long 110 miles later, they arrived at the annual Cama’i Dance Festival in Bethel.

"It was bumpy all the way," Crystal Fancyboy said. "The longest trip I’ve ever been on."

The snowmachining dancers met the rest of the Pilot Station Dancers in Bethel, where they performed on stage before a capacity crowd at the Bethel high school gymnasium.

It was an especially important dance festival because the Bethel Council on the Arts dedicated it to Fancyboy’s grandfather, the late Kumkaq Noel Polty, for his devotion to keeping traditional dance alive in Pilot Station and the Delta. Her father, Evan Polty, received a plaque dedicated to Kumkaq Noel Polty.

After he was presented with the award by festival organizer Linda Curda, he introduced to the audience his namesake grandson, teenaged Noel, who danced with the Pilot Station Dancers at Cama’i. The presentation also included a video clip in which Noel Polty spoke about traditional dance.

The group’s next song was one written by Polty. Written for a granddaughters’ potlatch, it told of picking berries in a place south of the village where a cool wind blows.

Many of his songs are still sung.

And "some of his songs, they still sing in other villages," Evan Polty said.

Speaking after the dance, Evan explained that his father was among those in Pilot Station who helped resurrect a dying tradition: the drum, dance and song. The three are a timeless tradition in Yup’ik culture but not an uninterrupted one.

Dance had disappeared for a time. But the elder Polty helped bring it back in the early 1950s – doing so required a meeting with priests in the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches that overlook the village from separate hills.

"They got together and they said it was OK to have Eskimo dance," said Robert Greene of the Pilot Station Dancers, speaking through a translator. "When people go to church and when they go to dance, they do the same thing, almost the same."

The tradition today brings dozens together on several nights a week in winter. It’s a part of life in winter that Evan Polty, for one, loves.

"When I go to Eskimo dance, everything disappears," he said. "You forget everything troubling you. What’s on your mind goes away."

Dustin Solberg can be reached at (907) 348-2480 or toll free at (800) 770-9830, ext. 480.

Cama’i Dance Festival Living Treasure awards

Paugyuk Virginia Tom of Tapraq, Stebbins

Text from a plaque awarded to Paugyuk Virginia Tom:

Virginia, your Yup’ik dancing the last 40 years has been a joy to watch. Thank you for teaching the young people the dances you make so special by your motions. Your teaching makes people around you have fun, smile, and enjoy themselves.

‘Eskimo salad’ sells out

This year, it took just 20 minutes. Evelyn Day’s beloved "Eskimo salad," sold in plastic cups and eaten with a fork, was gone before many at the Cama’i Dance Festival even knew she was in the house.

For the uninitiated, her Eskimo salad is a tossed medley of beluga, bowhead whale muktuk, seal, smoked salmon, aged blubber and bits of apple, radish, broccoli and spring onions – all drizzled with a dressing that at least one customer couldn’t quite place.

Minnie Sallison-Frittz of Bethel said she thought it might be vinaigrette dressing.

But just what was that dressing with the certain unnamable quality?

"Whale oil," Day said.

"Every year, we bring it on Saturday," said Day, who makes several gallons of her trademark salad and sells it with help from her daughters.

"When people are hungry for muktuk, they call me," said Day, who lives in Bethel but grew up in Kotzebue. And when she gets the call, she obliges.

"That’s in our culture, that we have to share."

She said her Sunday dish would be akutaq.

"It will have a lot of fish in it. That’s what they want. Not Crisco," she said.

And, as always, word will spread.

"As soon as one or two people come, they all know," she said.

Some call her ‘Diva of the Delta’

MaryAnn Sundown drew more applause than any single dancer at 2008 Cama’i Festival. The 89-year-old Scammon Bay dancer joined many members of her family. She took center stage, literally, and often stood up from her chair to dance for an audience that adores her.

During a Saturday performance, she also made a cameo appearance during Scammon Bay’s own Yup’ik basketball song – it has dancers "shooting baskets" on stage – to the delight of the crowd.

She spoke to the crowd in Yup’ik after the Scammon Bay performance, concluding her remarks in English: "God bless you."

‘We’re Pamyua’

"We’re Pamyua. So we’re going to sing."

So opened the Saturday performance of the popular Yup’ik song and dance group. And sing they did, with throat singing inspired by the traditional song of the Mongolian steppe to start them out. Along the way they invited all those who wanted to join them in dance on stage.

In this way, the Pamyua sets – just Stephen Blanchett, Phillip Blanchett and Ossie Kairaiuak on the Cama’i stage, as member Karina Moller is near to giving birth – filled the stage with dozens of rhythmic mostly young dancers.

One guest on stage was storyteller Jack Dalton, whose antics – eating more "berries" than dancing during the berrypicking song – drew laughter from many at the festival.

Not the normal hoop dance

At a Saturday afternoon workshop, young people curious about hoop dancing had an "up close and personal" look at a peculiar spin on the remarkable dance form.

Dallas Chief Eagle, a Lakota dancer visiting Cama’i from South Dakota, shared the hoop dance with a room full of girls and boys to prepare them for a performance on stage Saturday evening.

A boys’ performance followed the girls’, and many of the young Delta dancers performed beautifully after only a brief introduction earlier that afternoon.

John Pingayak, who watched from aside the stage as he waited to step on stage with the Chevak Dancers, said he was pleased to see young people engaging in the dance from the Plains.

"I think it was very enriching for our young people. I enjoyed watching it," he said.

The interesting twist came earlier, at the afternoon workshop, when Chief Eagle performed his "Spaceship of the World." With a circle of dozens of children below him stretched out on the floor surrounding him, he spun a long length of intertwined hoops in a circle from the center of the room.

The long hoops buzzed as they flew through the air like a single spoke in a wheel, with Chief Eagle at the center. The line of hoops whistled through the air and came within inches of the children on the floor, but if the children were terrified, they didn’t show it.

Asked how close the spinning hoops were flying from their noses, most indicated, with a thumb and forefinger, that it flew just inches away.

‘Just a great time’

For drummer Myron Naneng, the 2008 Cama’i Dance Festival was a success. "Just a great time," he said, and "the first sign of spring."

A highlight of the fest was the opportunity to see his youngest son, Harley, dance with the Upallret Dancers as well as with the dancers of Kilbuck Elementary School.

"And that in itself was a highlight personally for our family," he said.