Going Bird Meets Cougar-Asleep-on-Tree-Branch

Abstract

In November, 1992, I had the honor of participating in a symposium on interdisciplinarity at the University of Virginia, and was asked to submit for publication some version of my thoughts under the title Theater as a Paradigm for Interdisciplinarity. A few months later I found myself at Portland State University with a mandate to make a performance merging my Dance Company with members of the music, dance, drama, and art departments. Adding one fortuitous circumstance to another, during our residency a powwow featuring Native American dancing from around the country was taking place in the campus gymnasium. A young Cherokee named Cougar-asleep-on-tree-branch, whose goal is to keep dance rituals alive by providing forums for practicing and sharing them with other tribes and with non-Native American spectators, heard about our project and was interested in our task of trying to get university departments to cooperate. He requested a meeting with me, and I told him of my desire to produce a document on the very subject he was interested in. He agreed to frame our talk accordingly. We hadn't spoken long before he nicknamed me Going Bird, a reference to a voluntary officiator of the Green Com Ceremony during the 1930s. The name fit: I was indeed flying around campus from one department to another gathering and shaping resources for our show.