Ursa Major: A Polyphonic Masque For Speakers & Dancers

by Robert Bringhurst, Wesley W. Bates (Illustrator)

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 speakers – and multiple languages and traditions – to 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.

Genres: Poetry

90 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2003

About the author

Robert Bringhurst is a Canadian poet, typographer and author. He is the author of The Elements of Typographic Style – a reference book of typefaces, glyphs and the visual and geometric arrangement of type. He has also translated works of epic poetry from Haida mythology into English.

He lives on Quadra Island, near Campbell River, British Columbia (approximately 170 km northwest of Vancouver).