The Feather Dance
Native American Dancer and the Japanese Red Crowned Crane
The Oklahoma Feather Dance, also known as Fancy Dance, stands as a powerful contemporary display of Native American culture. In the 1880s, with the introduction of a ban to inhibit the practice of Indigenous ritual and ceremony, traditional expression moved underground in order to survive.
In this act of survival, tribes consciously recreated and reimagined their ancestral dances. It was these adaptations which then influenced the emergence of Fancy Dance in the 1920s, a fast paced, high-energy dance style loosely based on traditional war dances originating from members of the Ponca tribe.
Here, the dance is performed as an exhibition of athleticism, prowess and culture. The movements are a manifestation of identity, they are natural, they are instinctive.
Shown through a visual harmony of form between the Red-Crowned Crane and a Native American dancer, the artwork explores the balance between man and nature through a shared rhythm of movement and proclamation of the individual spirit.
Oil on Canvas
60in x 40in