Ursa Major: A Polyphonic Masque For Speakers & Dancers

In March 2002, the Regina-based dance company New Dance Horizons performed Robert Bringhurst’s Ursa Major: A Polyphonic Masque for Speakers & Dancers, a work that had been commissioned as part of an evening of modern performance and dance entitled Invisible Ceremonies. In Ursa Major, Bringhurst explores a polyphonic technique that allows multiple speakersand multiple languages and traditionsto collaborate in the story’s telling. The subject of the masque is Ursa Major, the great bear constellation, one of the most universal themes in world mythology. In setting the Cree tradition alongside the mythologies of ancient Greece and Rome, Bringhurst demonstrates the richness of metaphor that North Americans have inherited. This publication is an attempt to express the masque’s performance in typographic form.