"'...Powwow' is an Algonquin word that means 'he who dreams.' All the things that are done at a powwow are part of the dreams that the people have and the celebration of life and all those symbols and values are inherent in the powwow: the outfits, the celebration, the camaraderie amongst people, the connections that are made. It's all so much a part of our culture. It's the beauty of sharing that we've always been taught to do, to share our culture and to share our dances."
(Dance historian Ann Brascoupé)

In 1996, after the Canada Council awarded Michael a grant to begin researching native dance traditions, a close friend, Mark Adam, hearing of Michael’s plans to journey across North America, realized that this could be the basis for an interesting documentary. Adam brought this idea to Allan Burke at CBC and pitched it to him. A year later, a one-hour film entitled, "Adrienne Clarkson Presents: He Who Dreams: Michael Greyeyes on the Powwow Trail," premiered on CBC Television across Canada. This documentary, produced and directed by Allan Burke, followed Michael as he travelled from powwow to powwow with champion dancer Boye Ladd as his teacher, while dance historian Ann Brascoupé contributed teachings on this journey.
(Photo © Pete Janes, Aboriginal Voices Magazine)

Clarkson's CBC website at the time described this documentary as "a very personal journey back home to Saskatchewan, where he connects with his past and learns the most traditional form of native dance: grass dancing. …The Cree dancer/choreographer's restless creativity has led him to further explore the language of dance, and tell stories his own way. Dance and choreography have always been an essential part of Greyeyes's life. However, he realized that in order to communicate the stories he needed to tell, he had to explore the language of dance beyond classical training. He began by visiting isolated reserves, going to powwows and talking to elders to learn what he could. 'He Who Dreams: Michael Greyeyes on the Powwow Trail' follows the dancer as he learns to move, feel the music, and connect with the beat of the drum—which is the heartbeat of native dance. He discovers that although grass dancing is a traditional form dating back to the late 1800s, it is a living art, and there is room to even incorporate moves and steps from classical ballet with already established and accepted powwow steps." (quoted from CBC website)

"When I was performing and dancing with the company [National Ballet of Canada], I felt I was living out a goal, a dream that I had. But at the same time, the kind of dancing, the kind of performances that they were producing came from a very, very different culture than mine. Although ballets are stories—fairy tales like Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake, storytelling on that level—it wasn't the kind of work that was interesting to me. Especially since I wanted to learn more about my own past, my own history. I needed another challenge. I started producing my own work, choreographing my own dances, and that work was based on native themes, native stories or native ideals or myths or things that involved the culture. These things were the basis for the work, although I was using Western-based dance movement to express them. I kept working that way for about a year and a half, and I realized that I didn't have enough background in the specifics—the details of traditional dancing in order to use them to express the cultural themes more clearly. It's difficult trying to say something about another culture with another kind of language. So I started studying. I embarked on a journey."

"With the classical training I received, it's difficult dancing because it's unnatural. You don't want to hold your body that way. Nobody does. Some people have an easier time at it than others, but still it's an unnatural posture and style. What you're trying to do as a student is to fit yourself to a mould that isn't “you” exactly. Some of the maneuvers demand a lot of coordination and balance. The way you use the elements of the body, other than the footwork, serves to coordinate you as a whole. For example, you do a turn in classical ballet and you have to be kind of pulled up. Our teachers used to grab our hair and say, 'Think—it's like you're being pulled up in the air.' … In that instance, your body has to have a certain rigidity, a strength to hold yourself. You hold your arms so, as you turn around, you try to keep the most economical position of your head and your body. And that makes doing the footwork easier if you complete the whole body movement."
(Photo © Michael Greyeyes, as a student at National Ballet School, Toronto)

Dance teacher Boye Ladd says about Michael's transition from ballet to traditional native dance: "He's got to learn to follow with body movement where he isn't so stiff and rigid. In dance, it's a relaxation, a feeling, a spirit. Let your spirit do your dancing. Your head, shoulders, footwork, body, everything will become fluid and one will follow the other. It's just a matter of knowing how to synchronize your footwork. Balance and smoothness, smoothness especially is very important.” (Boye Ladd)

"When I started doing grass dancing and powwow, it was different because the footwork exists through the beat. You're keeping the beat with your feet. The whole movement is imitating the way grass moves in the wind. There's a certain disjointing of the body. Grass doesn't move stiffly in the wind. There's a natural ease to the movement. And our bodies move that way. You're not fighting against the way your body wants to move naturally when you're doing powwow.”

"Powwow movement has a lot of style and variation. But there's an economy of movement. I wasn't fighting against anything to do a turn, for example. And then, what became important wasn't an exterior look, but how I was connecting to a thread of movement. It was based on a turn, a circle…So then, in my mind, I was thinking about flows. Where was the dance flowing? Did I stop it unnaturally? You'll feel it right away. If I came out of a spin—stopped—well, that doesn't feel good. I was creating a motion and a continuation of rhythm and form. That's what I've learned to look for more naturally by taking powwow, by studying it, and now by practicing it and experiencing it.”

"I was able to watch dancers and watch the flow that they were trying to achieve inside the dance, how they were using their footwork. I looked at some steps and I recognized them because, in a weird way, they were very balletic… One step - I saw a guy dancing. He was tapping his toe, which is a very popular step, tracing a pattern on the ground in front of him and all of a sudden he lifted it up and he brought it through to the back, passing his foot by his other knee, and then planted it behind him. I looked at that and I had never seen anybody else do it in the powwows. That's what you call an envelopé in ballet. An envelopé is basically the same thing but the styles are different… But really, it's the same step, just a different way of performing it, a different flavour, a different style."
(Photo © CBC - Adrienne Clarkson Presents)

"I'm trying to find something in the dance, something that I understand. So that's your through-line, trying to connect with the drum, with the song. You listen to that melody. It's just you and the melody. You're not anywhere. You're not at a powwow in Saskatchewan. Hopefully you're making a connection further beyond that."

"I started thinking about my past training and I said, 'What would fit within what I know as the aesthetic of the grass dance style?' Some steps I'd just throw out right away. There's no jumps in grass. [But] There's lots of turns in both dance styles. Some steps could fit into the grass aesthetic and some couldn't. There's a term in ballet, called adagio. It means slower, controlled movement. In many ways grass [dance] is like that. There's a control and real flow—easiness. Adagio movements from ballet might go through the translation and survive into the other dance style.

"Without the drum—there'd be no dance—there'd be no song. The drum comes from the earth. I learned something very specific from my teacher, Boye Ladd. He was playing a song for me. He said, 'Run to the beat, dance to the beat, follow the beat.' So I was dancing and following the beat. And then, right in the middle of the song, he turned off the music and he said, 'Now listen to your heart.' And I listened to my heart, and it was the same beat. He said, 'In every powwow song your heart will follow that beat, and it connects you with that song.' No dance teacher I ever had said it that way. Your heart is connected to the beat of the drum. At that level, it made it a real connection. Like you need the dance to live."
(Photo of drum group Bird Town Crossing, July 2002)

In a Canadian magazine article, Michael wrote: "It is said the drum is the beat of Mother Earth, and we dance in synch with the Earth's rhythms. A dancer's heart also beats with the drum…When we hear the drum and see the dancers, each step reminds us that at this moment, past and present are linked." (from Michael's article entitled "Powwow, A Long Journey," published in Aboriginal Voices Magazine, Jan./Feb./Mar. 1997 issue. NOTE: This magazine is unfortunately no longer published, nor is the article any longer available on the Aboriginal Voices website.)

"My people, years ago, travelled a lot. They would travel around to the best hunting grounds and visit people. I've been on a journey, too. I've travelled. I went to Toronto; I went into another world, you could say, the world of that kind of dance. I didn't lose myself there, fortunately, with my family and a sense of who I was. I went to that world and then I came back stronger, like a warrior. That image is very powerful [to me]."
(Photo © CBC - Adrienne Clarkson Presents)

Sadly, powwow gatherings were banned, by means of U.S. and Canadian assimilationist laws, for decades until the 1940s and 1950s. These laws intended and caused a great loss of culture. Since the 1960s, powwow dancing has enjoyed a dynamic growth and renaissance. Many hundreds of powwows, large and small, are held each year, on reserves, in towns and cities all across the U.S. and Canada. By participating in this documentary, Michael was gratified to know that besides archiving the voices of his community’s elders, the piece also served to educate many non-native viewers of the subtleties and history of traditional native dance.

Dance historian Ann Brascoupé says, "The historical development of the dances has evolved and its origins have been warrior societies. But I don't think you should think about it strictly in its most Westernized concept as warrior. Warrior being a protector of the people, warrior being your role in the community, your role in continuing the culture."

When Michael's mother was asked what she thought when he began to study traditional native dance, Mrs Greyeyes said, "I was very happy. I thought, finally our culture is going to keep growing into the next generation. I thought he would enjoy it, because I think it's in our bones."

"When I go back to Saskatchewan and go to gatherings and powwows...I [am] literally flooded with the feeling like I'm home. Like no place on earth...This is the land where my ancestors lived. This part of the world - it's where we're from. When I come back, I would like to honour them by connecting with the place where it all originated. That's the way I approached the dance. I was looking for something. I stopped and I looked around. What I was trying to think in my head as I looked around was to absorb its beauty, just think about all the people who've walked here before me, and do them proud."
(Photo © Pete Janes, in Aboriginal Voices magazine)