For filmmaker Erica Tremblay, “Fancy Dance” has already earned top honors.
After screening the film before an audience of Cayuga language speakers in Toronto last year, one of the elders grabbed her by the cheeks and said “good job” in Cayuga.
“Some of them were crying because they're in their 80s and 90s and they'd never seen their language on film before,” Tremblay says. “For me, that's the most important award the film has received so far.”
“Fancy Dance,” which hits theaters Friday in a limited release before arriving on Apple TV+ on June 28, follows Jax (Lily Gladstone) and her teenage niece Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson), whom she has been caring since Roki's disappearance. mother. While Jax juggles finding her sister and helping Roki prepare for an upcoming powwow dance, the authorities come to remove Roki from the reservation and place her with her white grandfather.
Directed by Tremblay, 43, who co-wrote the script with Tlingit screenwriter Miciana Alise, “Fancy Dance” marks the narrative debut of the Seneca-Cayuga filmmaker. The film premiered as part of the American drama competition at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Like his 2020 short “Little Chief” (which also stars Gladstone), “Fancy Dance” is set in and around the Seneca-Cayuga Reservation in Oklahoma.
Isabel Deroy-Olson, left, and Lily Gladstone in the film “Fancy Dance.”
(Apple TV+)
Tremblay, who has written and directed shows such as “Reservation Dogs” and “Dark Winds,” explains that he found inspiration for the film's story while studying Cayuga in a three-year language immersion program.
“At that time we were learning family words and I learned that the word for mother is knó:ja' and that the world for your aunt on your maternal side was knohá:'ah, which means 'little mother' or your 'other mother,'” Tremblay says. “This beautiful matriarchy and the importance of matrilineal kinship was so brilliantly obvious in the language and it moved me so much.”
Within the vocabulary, grammar, and syntax of Cayuga, Tremblay was able to feel a connection to his culture in a new way. And he was also a reminder that it wasn't long ago that his culture and his perspective on matriarchy were present and thriving.
Through the story of Jax and Roki, “Fancy Dance” addresses ongoing systemic issues affecting Indigenous women and their communities, such as the missing and murder crisis and the forced separation of Native American children from their families. But mostly, “Fancy Dance” is Tremblay's love letter to her culture and the Cayuga language.
“I realize that in a few days the movie will be available around the world and Cayuga will be heard around the world,” he says during a recent Zoom video conference. “This is a big deal. So I feel gratitude and pride, which is sometimes hard for me to allow myself to feel.”
Tremblay below discusses the Cayuga dialogue from “Fancy Dance,” the themes the film addresses and his optimism for the future of the industry. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Why was it important for you to use Cayuga in this film?
We are in a place with our language, Cayuga, where there are less than 20 first language speakers left. That's terrible. I think it is considered almost extinct as a language. I don't speak fluently. I will always be a language student. But I have knowledge of the language and you can't keep it to yourself. It feels like a responsibility that, because I had the privilege of studying in a language immersion program, I have to do my part to pass it on.
Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson), left, and Jax (Lily Gladstone) in “Fancy Dance.”
(Apple TV+)
Jax and Roki's relationship is in the heart of the movie. What I really enjoyed were the little ones routine moments they shared – moments of joy, like when roki gets his first period.
It was really important to have those moments of joy and those moments of levity because that's what it feels like in my community. I know a lot of Jaxes. Jaxes raised me and without those women and queer people in my life, I wouldn't be here. It is through laughter and through connection that you can transcend all of these things that are happening.
Both my nieces and nephew have gotten their period. My youngest niece just got her period last month. It is a very happy occasion for us, the Haudenosaunee people. When [Roki and Jax] I went to the restaurant and she ordered all the strawberry things, it was like when I got my period and we went to the Chinese buffet and I ordered sweet and sour chicken and all that stuff. We can't celebrate menstruation enough.
I'm always happy to see cultures celebrating periods. because very often it feels as if there is a strange shame or shame around it.
It's very sad because there is. We have certain things you can and cannot do when you are on your period. It is not shameful in our culture. When you're on your period, there are certain things you can't be around or around because you're so powerful that you can alter them. Anthropologists tried to rewrite that, but it's in the language, it's in the ceremonies, it's in the culture. I'm much more excited about accepting that than any kind of shame. I sign up for: I am at my most powerful moment.
How did approach that balances these issues that matter to you with doing entertainment?
Miciana and I wrote this movie and made this movie for the natives. We wanted the film to be a film by native people, about native people. When natives see this, they will see things accurately and authentically depicted that will make them proud and that they can identify with. So, number one, the responsibility when we were making the film was to the natives and not to retraumatize them or trigger them when they saw the film.
For the non-Native audience that will come to see this film, we wanted to be able to talk about the issues that are happening in Indian Country in the hopes that people who see this can be guided towards these issues by channeling humanity instead of punching. you on the head. Every one of us on this planet can relate to the themes of love, loss and grief. Hopefully through the ebbs and flows of [Jax and Roki’s] With love, audiences will recognize these systemic issues that are affecting Native peoples in modern times and think about their relationships with these systems.
Lily Gladstone in the movie “Fancy Dance.”
(Apple TV+)
We have been in a period where it seems that there are more attention paid to Native projects, like “Dark Winds” and “Reservation Dogs.” What has it been like for you to see and experience that growth? Has the momentum stopped?
I am very grateful for Sierra Ornelas in “Rutherford Falls” and Sterlin Harjo. [of “Reservation Dogs”] and Sydney Freeland [of “Echo”] and all these amazing showrunners and directors who are working and mentoring me. They are really fighting against all odds and it is very inspiring. It allows you to see yourself that way, to see yourself as a storyteller who can make a living from this work and that you can create stories about the communities you want.
You don't know if this is just a moment that Hollywood is having and it's just going to come back. With all the strikes and everything that happened, we are still trying to find our footing. What is the new Hollywood? What are the upcoming impacts of AI? All of this is really anxiety-producing.
It's very difficult on these sets. I often meet a tech explorer and I will be the only woman. It is possible that you are working with collaborators who do not want to listen to you because you are a woman or you are indigenous or they simply have the idea that you are not as knowledgeable. That's still very actively happening and it sucks. But I am optimistic that things are going in the right direction.
But how do you make up for over 100 years of truly deplorable and horrible behavior in three seasons of television? It will take a lot more investment from Hollywood studios to make up for the bad behavior that existed for so long and continues to exist. I always appeal to these studios and these companies: you can't just say things out loud. You have to do things really actively.
What that really means is writing checks. You have to actively employ people with money. It's great that you have these mentoring programs, but you have to hire these people, pay them, and invest in their proposals and their ideas. There needs to be more active support from these institutions and little by little we are seeing that happening. But we need more of that so that this is not just a fad. Then ask me this question again in five years.
I'm impressed by your optimism.
I think as an industry we're all holding on and hoping we can get things back. My mother always taught me to be optimistic and at the same time recognize reality. I think we can be optimistic and at the same time call out the bad behavior of studios and these systems. I want to work with them and I'm very excited when I do. Look at a show like “Reservation Dogs” – it’s a great example of how great work can come from these relationships and I’m excited to see more of that.
And I feel like my optimism is also a quality that I learned from the Jaxes in my life. When you look at Jax and Roki, the only way they can get to the other side of what they face is because they have optimism and love each other. They know that they can guide each other in this life as long as they depend on each other. I feel the same way about the work Sterling does and the work me and Tazbah do. [Chavez] and all these amazing filmmakers. The only way we get to the other side of this is by joining hands and doing it together. And that comes from being inspired by these incredible native peoples that I know and love and who are sustaining so much more.
I'm going home [to the Seneca-Cayuga reservation] and there is a missing person. That's a much bigger deal than not getting hired in Hollywood. But it is through laughter, love, humanity, hand in hand, that we reach the other side. We are going to survive Hollywood. We have survived much worse.
