Building community through youth dance

When Lance Geyshick was 12, he had to petition his elementary school’s principal to be allowed to dance in a high school program new to his community of Lac La Croix.
Four years later, Geyshick, 16, has just finished his fourth solo dance performance at a major Toronto showcase event hosted by the national dance program Outside Looking In (OLI).
Geyshick was joined at the 2012 Toronto showcase by 14 other youth from Lac La Croix, the Treaty #3 community that has helped put OLI on the map.
The dancers from Lac La Croix have come a long way over the past four years, but Geyshick said that the difference the program has made in his community is equally inspiring.
“The older kids who were 16 when I was 12 loved to drink, smoke, do drugs,” Geyshick said.
“In our generation now, no one does drugs, every single kid is clean.”
OLI is at heart a dance program. Started in 2007, it operates in First Nation communities across the country, including this year in Onigaming and Lac La Croix in northern Ontario. The program is held in high schools, and awards high school credits to youth if they complete the full-year course. It also brings the top dancers from its schools across the country to the final showcase event in Toronto.
For Tracee Smith, the founder and artistic director of OLI, Lac La Croix’s example confirms everything she set out to do with the program.
Smith is passionate about dancing, about First Nations youth, and about the impact that positive programs can have in changing the mentality of entire communities. Being a Treaty 9 member she understands the challenges facing young people in remote communities – but knows there is ample talent for dancing or any other activity amongst First Nations youth, if they are given a chance to shine.
“The thing closest to my heart is why should kids living in remote communities have less opportunities than anyone else?” Smith said. “It’s not that the kids are any less gifted. It’s just that often they don’t have the same opportunities.”
In Smith’s vision, dance is a tool for instilling a host of other life lessons. She talks of leadership, commitment and dedication. She says OLI uses dance as a vehicle for not only developing the individuals involved in the program, but also for developing community around the success that youth are having.
Again, she goes back to the Lac La Croix example. Four years ago the community graduated five dancers to Toronto, only 20 per cent of the youth who started in September. This year 50 per cent of the Lac La Croix dancers who first signed up have made it to the showcase, and even more inspiring for Smith, the community has rallied around the young people and the program.
“The main thing I’m proud of is how proud the kids and the community have become about their own self-identity,” Smith says. “The self esteem of individual kids and parents goes up, but also the whole community’s self esteem improves.”
Part of OLI’s success is that the program gives no free passes to any of the students. Smith says one main rule is that any youth who makes it to Toronto has to earn their place in the showcase through hard work and dedication.
In the schools, OLI instructors are strict. Participants have to sign a contract at the beginning of the school year, promising to attend all the classes. For any absences without good reason, or for any misbehaviour, students are kicked out of the program. Only a small percentage of those who start the classes actually finish. But for those who do finish, the hard work and constant pushing from the instructors really pays off.
Geyshick remembers his first trip to Toronto four years ago, and something his father told him when he returned to Lac La Croix.
“I was the youngest one of the group,” he reflected. “When I got back home my dad told me that I went to Toronto an immature, really small kid, and when I came back I had matured a lot.”
This year Geyshick was one of the older youths, an experienced veteran of the show just trying to take as much in as he can. For one thing he has learned over the years is that the two weeks in Toronto with youth from across the country really fly by.
“When you’re here having fun, you don’t really think about it but then it’s over and you think I should have done more work, I should have made more friends,” Geyshick said.
Meanwhile a whole new group of dancers are going through their very first Toronto dance experience. One of them is 15-year-old Lorralene Whiteye from Onigaming, who along with four other youth from her Treaty #3 community made her way through the program this first year it has been held in Onigaming.
Whiteye said she first joined OLI because she needed the high school credit, before she quickly realized just how tough the program was. But for the powwow dancer taking her first steps in hip hop dancing, all the hard work is paying off now as she gets set for her first big show in Toronto.
“It’s awesome meeting new people, new friends,” Whiteye said. “Even though it was really hard keeping up with with dancing, attendance at school and my work, I learned that pretty much anyone can do it. If I can do it, anyone can.”
Now Whiteye is just hoping Onigaming can find the funding to keep the program running next year.
For Geyshick however, he is confident that OLI will continue to grow.
“Everyone sees what (OLI) did for Lac La Croix,” Geyschick says. “I think people continue to hear the great things and want to support it.”