PULSE THE SERIES

Canada’s Indigenous Peoples and the Art of Dance

Pulse is an exciting new 13-part variety television series that dives deep into Indigenous peoples’ passion for dancing. It showcases how Indigenous dancers are revolutionizing the art of movement.

Long before the arrival of colonialism, dance was an important part of First Nations’ ceremonies, social lives, and way of communicating with one another. Dance is to the human body what wind is to Mother Earth. It moves freely, inspired by the surrounding elements. It brings things together in a single embrace. The combination of movement and rhythm crosses cultural barriers like no language can.

While Indigenous people continue dancing many traditional dances during ceremonies, potlatches and powwows, they have let their identity shine through other dances like hip-hop, ballet, contemporary dance and burlesque. They have taken their connection to sound and movement into non-traditional forms of dance and they are now internationally renowned for this ability to fuse who they are with the way the move.