Rulan Tangen is the Director, Choreographer, and featured dancer at Dancing Earth, a contemporary dance ensemble of Native dancers whose performances tease out the interplay between traditional and contemporary practices. Her work balances a commitment to share dances with regional, national and international communities at venues as varied as festivals, universities, elementary and high schools, Native wellness gatherings, youth leadership symposiums, art museums, desert canyons, dried river beds, and symposiums for social-environmental justice. The company’s performances have been described in the press as “rooted in the spirit and energy of the First Peoples and the land, the mythic power of Dancing Earth’s performances respect, embrace, and expand the context of Indigenous culture into vital contemporary relevance.”
Her work engages the community through intergenerational dance training workshops with Native youth and full length theater productions. One enthusiastic comment from a youth participant was, “I didn’t know our people could move like that, but that’s how they look in my dreams!” Her choreography has received international acclaim and has been commissioned by venues including the Heard Museum, Santa Fe Art Institute, Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, Teatro Nunes in Brasil, Centro Cultural de Recoleto Argentino, the International Aboriginal Choreographers Workshop, and she has choreographed for the films Apocalypto (director Mel Gibson) and The New World ( director Terrence Malick). Her work in the coming year will focus on the element of water as a primal force of earth and its life forms, and from an Indigenous perspective on ancient and current water issues. This encompasses a broad cycle of water themed movement activities: inter-generational workshops, inter-disciplinary collaborations, community actions, and site specific installations, as well as the development of a full length production for Dancing Earth titled “Walking the Edge of Water”.
Rulan is our first Dance Fellow.
Video Descriptions:
These motion clips are short films developed in collaboration between DANCING EARTH and Native American filmmakers; as evidence of Rulan Tangen’s inclusive vision as a choreographic/director, to engage Indigenous artistic involvement at every level and thus revitalize Indigenous art in an interdisciplinary way.
1 ) This short film made in collaboration with Dene filmmaker Larry Blackhorse Lowe ( at the time at early stages of his emerging career; he later was awarded Best of Show in Indian Market 2010 ). It shows a 2004 commission by curator Joe Baker of the Heard Museum, in which Rulan Tangen with DANCING EARTH performers interpreted the design themes of potter Virgil Ortiz. Accompanying music is by Jim Wilson of Tulku Music ( sound engineer for Robbie Robertson) and incorporates medicine songs of Peruvian amazonian ayuhuascqueros, as matches the theme of the Wild Plant solo .
Dancers: Alejandro Meraz ( now a popular actor in the Twlilight films ), Quetzal Guerrero ( internationally touring violinist/martial artist), Anthony Collins ( photographer with 2 recent consecutive covers of Native Peoples Magazine), Jessica Allen ( subsequently toured the USA as lead performer in BLAST and PBS TV anchor for International Drum Corps) , Kalani Queypo ( now an award winning screenwriter/director of ‘Ancestor Eyes’) and Rulan Tangen.
2) This short film by Jonathan Sims of Acoma Pueblo captures the exciting movement quality of DANCING EARTH’s cardinal eco-production Of Bodies Of Element at its very first preview in 2010. Accompanying music is by Jim Wilson of Tulku Music ( sound engineer for Robbie Robertson) and incorporates the voices of peyote singers Primeaux and Mike, referencing the desert born prophecies of the 1800s of dance unifying Native peoples – as in the ill fated Ghost Dance which is glimpsed within the clips, incorporating projected video imagery of earth’s destruction through pollution and nuclear power. The CAGE sequence is choreographed by Raoul Trujillo, invoking the capture of wild plants through seed patenting as a metaphor for colonization.
Dancers include DANCING EARTH company members, guest artist, and community participants.
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