Photograph by Tim Rummelhoff, Courtesy of McKnight Fellowships for Choreographers.

2019-2020 – Incubator Project

she who lives on the road to war will explore Native feminist leader Jigonhsasee’s foundational influence on the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the U.S. Constitution. I will contribute to indigenizing our history by tracing this cultural–political genealogy through my embodied relationship to it: through dance. I will weave the real and imagined histories of how the Haudenosaunee Confederacy coalesced from separate Nations and feature Jigonhsasee’s role in envisioning new governing structures, peoples, and territories. Recuperating lost matrilineal origins, this work can remind us that we are stronger together when we acknowledge our history. It is my hope that this work will lead towards creating peace our ancestors deserve and demand.

A feminist artist and activist, I grew up and live in the Twin Cities intertribal Native community. Being rooted in cultural teachings, values, ethics, and sense of the world gives me a deep foundation from which all my work as a dance maker and community leader emerges. My work is underpinned by the culture, history, and identity stored in my body, renewed daily through interactions, collaborations, and political actions with Native artists, activists, and educators.

2022 Residency and Performance Run

SHE WHO LIVES ON THE ROAD TO WAR BY ROSY SIMAS DANSE is in the Weisman’s Target Studio for Creative Collaboration gallery from SEPTEMBER 10, 2022 – FEBRUARY 19, 2023. The project includes a new installation and in-gallery performances throughout the fall of 2022.

she who lives on the road to war is an immersive installation and dance performance created by Rosy Simas in response to global loss and the collective need to come together in peace and reconciliation. It is both a physical space for rest and refuge, and a performative work of Native futurities that imagines a world of relational balance with nature and with each other.

Their artist statement reads: “Audiences are invited to gather, rest, grieve, condole with one another, and to consider how we can all work towards reconciliation during the dual pandemics of systematic racism and COVID-19.”

she who lives on the road to war will have a dual premiere at WAM and in the heart of the Twin Cities’ Native community, at All My Relations Arts. After its performance run in Minneapolis, the work will tour to Gibney in New York City, Maui Arts & Cultural Center, and other cities.

Project Collaborators

Director: Rosy Simas

Composer: François Richomme

Lighting Designer: Heidi Eckwall

Performers: Jessika Enoh Akpaka, Lelis Brito, Erin Drummond, Sam Johnson, Sam Aros Mitchell, Valerie Oliveiro, Pedra Pepa, Sharon Picasso, Lela Pierce, Rosy Simas, Judee Shui Xian, Jeffrey Wells, Taja Will

Production Manager/Community Engagement Coordinator: Sequoia Hauck

Studio/Production Assistant: Atim Opoka

Photograph by Tim Rummelhoff, Courtesy McKnight Fellowships for Choreographers

Rosy Simas, Haudenosaunee (Seneca, Heron Clan), is a choreographer and film and visual artist based in Minneapolis. Her work investigates how culture, history and identity are stored in the body and expressed in movement. For more than twenty years she has created work that addresses a wide range of political, social and cultural subjects from a Native feminist perspective. She has received support from Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, First Peoples Fund, Guggenheim Foundation and McKnight Foundation, and she is a Dance USA Fellow as well as a Joyce Awardee.

Register to attend a performance at WAM >>

WEISMAN ART MUSEUM
333 EAST RIVER ROAD, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA | MINNEAPOLIS, MN
FREE, BUT RSVP REQUIRED; CAPACITY IS LIMITED to 15 guests per performance.

All My Relations Arts Performances

All My Relations Arts
1414 East Franklin Avenue | Minneapolis, MN

Opening: Thursday, October 6 – reception at 6 p.m.; performance begins at 7 p.m.
Friday, October 7, 7 p.m.
Saturday, October 8, 2 p.m.
Monday, October 10 (afternoon, TBD)
Saturday, November 12, 6 p,m.
Sunday, November 13, 2 p.m.
Saturday, November 19, 6 p.m.
Sunday, November 20, 2 p.m.

Initial research for she who lives on the road to war was supported by the Weisman Art Museum’s Target Studio for Creative Collaboration and the Pamela Beatty Mitchell Residency in Contemporary Dance at Colorado College Department of Theater and Dance. This presentation of she who lives on the road to war is made possible by a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation SHIFT award, The MAP Fund, and the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Mellon Foundation. Projects of Rosy Simas Danse are supported by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and the McKnight Foundation.