The Toronto-based Red Sky company augmented its dancers with three dancers and three musicians from Mongolia in the production Tono.

EDMONTON - It is a kaleidoscope of movement, dance, music and spectacle.

Mystical horses prance around the stage, dancers stomp to pulse-quickening rhythms, gymnasts fly through the air and one remarkable contortionist becomes a Shaman, a powerful aboriginal sorcerer, who dreams upside down.

And the music. Percussive and exotic, melding the tonalities of the Far East with the elemental sounds of the North American aboriginal.

The instruments -- among others, a stringed horses-head fiddle whose design was old when Genghis Kahn ruled the eastern world.

Bass tones generated by a very modern synthesizer.

The unearthly growl of Mongolian throat singers -- once heard, never forgotten.

The show is called Tono, a creation of Toronto-based company, Red Sky.

The production is on its way to Vancouver where it will be one of the top acts for the 2010 Cultural Olympiad. Tono is pausing here for a two-day, pre-Olympic preview at the Arden Theatre.

Sandra Laronde, who grew up on a reserve in Northern Ontario, founded Red Sky in 2000 to bring together the disciplines of modern dance with traditional performance in dance, theatre and music.

Laronde, who has been called "a force of nature," makes sure her productions are universal in scope and entertaining in nature.

She's not interested in presenting obscure works to niche audiences.

"The connection comes when you open up all these little doors (... to aboriginal cultures) and those little doors lead to big places."

Red Sky opened big. Their first concert, a decade ago, was before 5,000 people with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. And they haven't looked back since, relentlessly criss-crossing the world with their performances.

Tono was developed at the Banff Centre where Laronde is director of aboriginal arts.

"I saw a lot of aboriginal work that seemed to be focussed on issues -- like alcoholism and the atrocities we have faced. But we are about more than issues. What I want to show is the beauty at the core of our culture," she told the Sun.

Laronde maintains that there are threads that aboriginal people share all over the world. Humour is one.

"But there is something else that is hard to describe," she goes on. "Something that lives in the eye. There is a resonance that I find in our people. I found it in Mexico and in Mongolia."

The quest to put that resonance on stage has taken Red Sky to Australia, Iceland, China, Switzerland and other countries.

Laronde was in Western China on one of her tours when she saw a mountain range.

"What is that," she asked. "Mongolia," she was told.

The dancer/entrepreneur had always been fascinated by the country so she set about on months of research, especially focusing on the images and art of Mongolia.

"I wanted to discover the common ground of cultures existing oceans apart. I found out that the horse culture was shared by the Chinese, the Mongolians and my people in Canada. It spoke to me on a universal level: the beauty, grace and the strength and power of the horse."

To augment her company of dancers, Laronde brought three dancers and three musicians from Mongolia.

Tono, which premiered in Banff, has already met with wild acclaim across Canada.

Enthused the Globe and Mail, "Tono is a ravishingly beautiful dance work with absolutely stunning stretches and body twists."

Said Scene 4 Magazine, "(There) is a sense of unseen mystery throughout."

"I want the indigenous essence here," says Lalonde. "And I want a place where everybody can come together and experience that essence. Tono is created for all people."

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