25 Years of Kaeja d'Dance in Tandem

DANCE COLLECTION DANSE Number 75 Fall 2015DANCE THAT LASTS

New in the Archives: Barbara Cook

Elizabeth Langley: Embracing Transformation

Moving, in Tandem: 25 Years of Kaeja d’Dance

Finding Mrs. Colville: WWI Patriotic Performances in St. John’s

Stephanie Ballard: An Indelible Mark

Gadfly: The Evolution of Form

No. 75, Fall 2015 3

Dance Collection Danse MagazineNumbEr 75, FALL 2015

New in the Archives: Barbara Cookby Amy Bowring ....................................................... 4

Elizabeth Langley: Embracing Transformationby Philip Szporer ....................................................... 8

Moving, in Tandem: 25 Years of Kaeja d’Danceby Samantha Mehra ................................................ 16

The Magazine is published by Dance Collection Danse and is freely distributed.

ISSN 0 849-0708

301–149 Church Street, Toronto, ON M5B 1Y4Tel. 416-365-3233 Fax 416-365-3169

E-mail [email protected] Web site www.dcd.ca

Charitable Registration No. 86553 1727 RR0001

Cover: Walter Foster and Barbara Cook, 1952 Photo: Marcel Ray Photographers

Design/Layout: Michael Caplan [email protected]

Last year a dancer visited our offices and came across a book about a mentor of his; I said that DCD had published it and he said, “What does that mean?”

DCD has published 39 books. Thirty-Nine. I make this fact known each time I have the opportunity to speak publicly about DCD’s achievements. Few outside of those intimately involved in publishing are aware of the duration, the intricacies and yes, the anxiety, of this process. We started in the 1990s by printing books in our home office and assembling them using a toaster oven, harvested from the Goodwill, that Lawrence Adams had fashioned into a book binder. When we graduated from the toaster oven to a pro-fessional printing company, we ran between 500 and 2000 copies per title, depending on the book’s “imag-ined” market; three titles were reprinted several times. Books sold consistently to universities, professional schools, bookstores, library services and individuals.

We published memoirs and manuals, biographies, anthologies and cultural histories, dictionaries and a bilingual encyclopedia. We worked with emerging writers, established authors, and those in-between; we eagerly tracked down the images of dance photogra-phers. For the Dictionary of Dance (1996) we commis-sioned 20 contributors who provided “words, terms and phrases” representing diverse dance genres. For the Encyclopedia of Theatre Dance in Canada/Encyclopédie de la danse théâtrale au Canada (2000) we commissioned 43 writers to craft the entries and we worked with an editor, translator, research co-ordinator/copy editor,

French- and English-language readers. Over the years, we spent intense hours, days and weeks in conversa-tion with authors; and in some cases the book’s subject; and then in further lengthy discussion with designers, editors, translators and printers. Given that the average length of time it took to grant a book its life was 3.5 years (one of them took 8) the writers clearly “did it for love”. A handful of them received a grant to bulk up DCD’s modest fee; and with the foresight of prophets, the Dance and the Writing & Publishing programs at the Canada Council assisted with several of these books … 9 of the authors and 7 of the subjects have since passed on.

Working with writers was an inspiring and challeng-ing exercise. There were only a few tiffs over grammar, punctuation, language. And in dealing with biographies, the occasional hefty discourse about the moral respon-sibility of whether or not to “exclude” certain facts.

In our March 2008 fiscal year, DCD earned over $45,000 in book sales – slowing down dramatically beginning with the financial crisis of that year. Our last book, Renegade Bodies, was published in 2012. So pub-lishing has ceased (for a while) as we have evolved into other equally engaging activities to spread the word and share the stories about Canada’s dance history.

Who wants to buy a dance book? We have lots.

dcd.ca/shop/

Finding Mrs. Colville: WWI Patriotic Performancces in St. John’s

by Amy Bowring ..................................................... 24

Stephanie Ballard: An Indelible Markby Cindy Brett .......................................................... 31

Gadfly: The Evolution of Formby Soraya Peerbaye ................................................. 39

BY MIRIAM ADAMS, C.M.

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BY AMY BOWRING

We recently acquired a small col-lection from long-time DCD friend and supporter Barbara Cook. I first heard Barb’s name in my early days at DCD doing research on London, Ontario’s dance history. In my interview with London-based ballet teacher Bernice Harper, she talked about her 1960s trips to Sudbury to teach during the summer sessions at Cook’s Sudbury School of Ballet.

Born in Hamilton on March 28, 1930, Barbara Cook began her dance training with Nancy Campbell in 1933. A move to Toronto at six years old brought Cook to Boris Volkoff’s studio where she studied with him and his wife, Janet Baldwin. Cook’s theatrical training was further enhanced by a decade with Dorothy Goulding’s Toronto Children Players.

By 1946 she was performing with the Volkoff Canadian Ballet. With Volkoff, she participated in the his toric first Canadian Ballet Festival in Winnipeg in 1948; in the 1949

Barbara Cook

“Salute to Canada” pageant in Mid - land, Ontario, commemorating the 300th anniversary of the martyrdom of a group of Jesuit priests; and in the Canadian Festival of Ballet in New York City in 1950, which also fea-tured Ruth Sorel’s group from Montreal. Cook danced with the Janet Baldwin Ballet in the 1950s and par ticipated in all six Canadian Ballet Festivals. She was part of a pioneering generation of Canadian dancers whose efforts ultimately led to the professionalization of ballet in this country.

Barbara Cook in Don Gilles’s I Want, I Want Photo: E.E. Amsden

Members of the Winnipeg Ballet and the Volkoff Canadian Ballet, May 31, 1948

No. 75, Fall 2015 5

Her introduction to the Royal Academy of Dancing (RAD) method came through Janet Baldwin and Gweneth Lloyd, the indefatigable

co-founder of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet who opened a branch of her Canandian School of Ballet in Toronto in the early 1950s. Cook

ultimately became an RAD teacher and examiner. She taught for Bald-win’s school from 1951 to 1957 and was then brought to Sudbury by the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers’ Union to teach in a dance program the union had initiated for its mem-bers. She replaced modern dance teacher Nancy Lima Dent – a col-league from the Ballet Festival years.

Following her work at the union’s school, Cook opened her own ballet school. Like many rural teachers in this period, Cook travelled to reach students in nearby communities such as Garson, Copper Cliff, Elliot Lake, Espanola and Kapuskasing. She mounted recitals and directed an amateur concert group that gave performances in retirement homes, schools for mentally challenged students, and other community organizations.

Her years with Volkoff fostered important friendships with dancers Don Gillies and Ruth Carse. She

Members of the Volkoff Canadian Ballet in Boris Volkoff ’s “Polovtsian Dances” from Prince Igor at the First Canadian Ballet Festival, Winnipeg, 1948 Photo: Arthur Kushner

Don Gillies Photo: E.E. Amsden


performed in Gillies’s choreography for the Janet Baldwin Ballet and later brought him to set work on her own group in Sudbury. Her connection with Carse led to teaching oppor-tunities in Edmonton with Carse’s newly formed Alberta Ballet. Cook was also an important team mem-ber in the initiative to start a dance program at Grant MacEwan College.

It also provokes more questions about the activities and connections between members of this generation. For example, a series of snapshots depicts members of the Winnipeg and Volkoff companies picnicking by the Port Credit River in Missis-sauga roughly a month after the First Canadian Ballet Festival.

There are also rare items in the collection including Cook’s costume from Gillies’s acclaimed work I Want! I Want! for the Janet Baldwin Ballet, and photographer Arthur

Kushner’s photos taken from the balcony of the Walker Theatre during the first Canadian Ballet Festival. I spoke to Kushner about his photos almost twenty years ago and he told me he had given them all away, mostly to Gweneth Lloyd. Lloyd’s photos from this period were sadly lost in the 1954 fire that also destroyed her company’s docu-ments, musical scores, costumes

and sets. DCD now has some copies of these treasures from the past. Margaret Hample, Arnold Spohr and

James Pape, May 31, 1948

Lillian Lewis, May 31, 1948

Cook made a career change in the 1980s when she began studies in theology ultimately being ordained as a United Church Minister in 1984. During her years of min-istry, she also choreographed liturgical dances. Her church work brought her to Manitoba and eventually retirement in Winnipeg where she assisted her dance colleagues in the archives at the Royal Win-nipeg Ballet.

Cook’s collec-tion fills several gaps in the story of Canada’s burgeoning professional ballet scene of the mid-twentieth century giving us more details about Boris Volkoff, Janet Baldwin and Don Gillies.

Janet Baldwin Volkoff, Gweneth Lloyd and Boris Volkoff at the First Canadian Ballet Festival, Winnipeg, 1948

Barbara Cook Photo: Marcel Ray Photographers


Elizabeth Langley is someone of limitless growth. Born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1933, she has been in Canada for fifty years – first teaching and directing performances, then founding the dance program at Concordia University. Not one to remain idle, she leads a rich life in post-retirement, performing as well as directing, providing dramaturgy and the coaching of dancers and choreographers.

Transformation

Elizabeth

Embracing

BY PHILIP SZPORER

Langley

No. 75, Fall 2015 9

Call it the importance of being Elizabeth Langley. The octogenarian dancer-choreographer and educator has been variously described

as a mentor, a teacher, an innovator … and an origi-nal, outspoken woman who can be brutally honest.

Dancer-choreographer Denise Fujiwara worked with Langley for twenty years. She says she was exposed to, and benefitted from, the full force of Langley’s “many qualities that make her intimidating to work with: an incisive eye, a critical intelligence, an inability to lie about the work, a sophisticated aesthetic sense and an impa-tience, which means she does not suffer fools gladly.”

Langley’s vision and discipline continues to influence Zelma Badu-Younge, professor of dance at Ohio Univer-sity and a Concordia dance graduate. She’s deferential to her mentor’s “beauty, grace, power, strength, brilliance and a wealth of knowledge and intelligence. Such an engaging and creative spirit here on earth guiding, teach-ing and inspiring us all with honesty and pure heart.”

Asked why she chose dance, Langley replies, “I don’t think I was supposed to be a dancer. But I’ve had a really good life, so I don’t feel badly about it. I think I was meant to be an actress.” Her sister, ten years older, had already “confiscated that performance mode.” Langley’s upbring-ing, like many Australian children, was very physical. “I had played every sport since I could stand on my two feet. And I used to do my ‘thing’. I didn’t even know a word to describe it at that point.” She’d dance and “inter-pret the music,” says Langley. “Then one of my brother’s girlfriends said to me, ‘Oh, I go to a studio where they do that.’ Now, the idea of people coming together to do my ‘thing’ was really exciting. So my mother took me to the [dance] studio.” The next week … she began.

In 1951 Langley took a teacher’s course in creative dance. Two years later she was offered a job teach-ing adult and children’s dance classes. For seven years, she packed thirty-five to forty classes per week into her gruelling schedule, plus personal training, choreography and performing. “It was total absorp-tion. I’d lie in bed at night bone-tired.” But she says, “If you can turn your passion into your profession, you’ll be one of the happiest people in the world.”

She was married briefly, for one year, in 1958. “It was one of the things you did,” she says. 1960 was a turning point. Harry Belafonte’s company was touring Austra-lia, and some of his musicians came to a friend’s party. She jokes that she was wearing a “horrible green and

blue tartan ensemble.” Regardless, she met Belafonte’s accompanist Ernesto Calabria, and for the length of the tour they were “inseparable”. It was decided that Langley should join him in New York and become his common-law wife. Belafonte sponsored her student visa to attend the Martha Graham School. A letter dated October 10, 1960, written by Hanny Kolm Exiner, prin-cipal at the Studio of Creative Dancing, in Melbourne, supported her application. Langley, it states, has “intel-ligence, imagination, and great zest … She is a forceful dancer, with originality and a great sense of comedy.”

She arrived in New York to a huge snowfall. Wading through snow banks, she made her way to Graham’s beautiful studios on East 63rd Street. She watched faculty class. “I said I am going to stay here until I know that,” she recalls. Even with all her experience, she was placed as a beginner. Graham told her, “You don’t even know how to breathe.” Langley gives a vivid description of the leg-endary Graham. “She was very short. Her body propor-tions were Asian, long spine and short legs. Her stacked hairstyle extended her height. At this stage she had a drinking problem, but she was an incredible genius.” She stayed with Graham five years. “What I loved about the Graham technique is that you danced from your gut to your fingertips and not from your fingertips to nowhere.”

Top left: Elizabeth Langley teaching in Melbourne, Australia, late 1950s Bottom left: Elizabeth Langley, 1964 Photo: Guenter Karkutt Top right: Elizabeth Langley rehearsing Angst, directed by Denis Faulkner for CBC television, 1974


Politically and artistically, the city was a hotbed, though she didn’t meet up with the Judson Church art-ists. “In New York you can’t do everything. There was so much there, and I was starved.” But life in the city could last only so long with her student visa expiring, and she wasn’t looking for a serious dance career there. As for her relationship with Calabria, she says, “He wanted to get married. But you make your choices.”

She boldly lit out from Second Avenue to a log cabin on Meech Lake. The year was 1965. In Ottawa, she says, “there seemed to be a lot of people wait-ing for somebody with energy to come and do things … [And] I came full of ideas and with a lot of toughness having survived in Manhattan.”

A dress boutique she opened had difficul-ties and did not provide satisfaction. She rebounded as manager at the city’s noted Café Le Hibou Coffee House, where performers Josh White, Jr., Odetta, James Cotton and Bruce Cockburn headlined. While performing in a theatre piece at the space, in which she uttered only one line, she met a future husband, with whom she had a daughter. They later divorced.

In the meantime, the Strathmere Farm summer day camp in North Gower, Ontario, hired her to teach dance to, says Langley, the “verbal, engaged and intelligent” children of activist parents. The experience prompted her to open a studio on Laurier Street. “I never forced a class plan on children, but I did on adults. I never wanted disciples. I wanted free spirits,” she says. Circa 1972 she was living and teaching at Ottawa’s Pestalozzi College, which wasn’t a college but an urban commune, with rent-affordable housing.

Toronto Dance Theatre’s current artistic director, Christopher House, then a major in political science, was enrolled in her Move-ment for Actors course at the University of Ottawa in the fall of 1975. “I knew in the first class that I had encountered an extraordinary person,” he says. Within days, he was tak-ing her evening sessions in modern dance at Pestalozzi. He describes her classes at U of O as “very inspiring, teaching us a new aware-ness of our bodies and unlocking sensations.” He quickly figured out what dancing meant to him, and how he moved most naturally. “I have a strong memory of a ritual we performed outside in a field, a hunt of sorts. At a certain point I started to run in a huge circle. The expe-rience was utterly euphoric, and by the time I stopped running I was a different person.”

Meanwhile Langley was exhausted and felt her practice did not have potential for growth. She booked tickets on a ship to New Zealand, where she had family and support. She was forty-five, poor and with a nine-year-old child. That’s when she received a phone call from Alfred Pinsky, the then dean of Fine Arts at Montreal’s Concordia University, offering her a job to first teach in the theatre department (a course called Dance Practicum) while designing a Canadian university dance degree program geared to training choreographers. It was a “top opportunity, in a city that I’d been told I would love.” Langley became the first chair of the Department of Modern Dance, inau-gurated in the 1980/81 academic year and renamed

Tessa Hebb and Christopher House in Elizabeth Langley’s Anais Nin, Ottawa, June 1976Photo: Courtesy of Christopher House

No. 75, Fall 2015 11

the Department of Contemporary Dance in 1987.She had moved to Montreal late in 1978. “Some

very heavy rumblings were happening here, artis-tically, politically and sociologically,” says Lang-ley, referring to the game-changing election of the Parti Québécois two years earlier that saw masses of people leaving the province. “There was a pas-sion here [after the PQ win]. Also, raw beginnings and disturbances are the most exciting of times.”

The degree program was “one of the peak experi-ences of my life,” she says. “Everything that I had done [previously] prepared me for this job.” The small department started with her as the only full-time faculty member and a roster of part-time teach-ers, including Silvy Panet-Raymond, who would become full-time faculty and Langley’s constant col-league throughout her tenure. The program required

someone who was tough, but equally generous and supportive, to give leadership and feedback.

Langley states in an unpublished transcript: “Some people when they first come to the department see me as a tyrant. Maybe it’s because I am very concerned with people learning how to work. I am of the idea that if you can do this you can always get work.” Lang-ley inherited that ethic from her father. “He also had a philosophy, which I still live by, and it fits a day or a life span,” she says. “You wake in the morning – or you are born. You find out what you do best, and you do it the best you can. You do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, and you deserve a dry bed and a warm meal at night, or a peaceful death.”

The Concordia curriculum was devised to support the students’ development as original artists. Teachers did not teach their own method or choreograph on students.

Elizabeth Langley and James Tyler, “Improvisation”, Victoria School Gym, Montreal, 1980Photo: Ian Westbury


In essence, the program supported the liberating power of the imagination. Year-end shows would include works by the students. “I really like four-minute works,” Langley indicates. “I think in four minutes you should be able to get on, make the statement you want to make, and get off. And I think that’s also good for the audience. Don’t hang around when the message has been spent.”

A chapter entitled “Like Cactuses in the Desert: The Flourishing of Dance in Montréal Universities” in the book Renegade Bodies (DCD 2012), makes hay of Langley’s perceived outsider status in the Montreal dance community. Co-authors Dena Davida and Cath-erine Lavoie-Marcus write: “As a newcomer in the city and as a unilingual Anglophone, she worked in relative isolation from the others,” referring to Fran-cophone counterparts from other university dance departments. Langley states, “Members of the com-munity questioned my right to be here and do the

job.” She adds, “Foreigners see things differently than local people, because we come and things are fresher to us, and I think we’re paying more attention.”

Shortly after she arrived in the city, the Octobre en danse festival took flight. “I sat through every single program, and it was as though every dance com-pany in this town was being promenaded in front of me.” The upsurge of rebellious dance experiment-ers in Quebec fascinated Langley. “There are always people doing something that other people are not doing. There’s faith in my heart about that forever and ever. This is why art keeps evolving; there’s always somebody that’s asking questions and creating.”

During a sabbatical in 1997, she studied at Amster-dam’s School for New Dance Development. “I drifted so far from my desk. I didn’t know how I’d get back,” she says. She retired from her university job and jumped full throttle in re-establishing her performance life and

Elizabeth Langley (and her life-sized puppet) in her one-woman show in camera or not (translation “in private or not”), Montreal, 1998 Photo: Steve Leroux

No. 75, Fall 2015 13

the creation of her own one-woman shows. At a theatre festival in Turkey, Langley met Australian director Paul Rainsford Towner (known professionally as Rainsford), who heads an innovative company working in dance and physical theatre forms. Langley calls Rainsford “a visionary … a man that has an uncompromising desire to make theatre and a strength to create original work, and I see those things in me too.” Together they created Journal of Peddle Dreams, based on the writings and life of Australian author Eve Langley [a possible relation]. The emphasis was on getting to a stripped-down zone and making her presence felt. “He made me the best per-former I had been in my life,” she says. “I got to the point where I was shameless, getting to the heart of things.”

In a profession driven by the cult of youth and beauty, not to mention the physical demands of dance, Langley extends and defies the parameters of her domain. In 1999, she received the prestigious Jacque-line Lemieux Prize. The award committee described her as “an inspiration to the community who stretches the boundaries of the art form,” and praised her “com-mand of the direction she has chosen to move in, and

the strength and power with which she is doing it.”Post-retirement, Langley has also worked consistently

as consultant, dramaturg and mentor for many art-ists. In late 2011, Toronto-based dancer-choreographer Sashar Zarif was re-imagining a lost dance form called mugham, which combines poetry, music and dance, and is connected to the Sufi and Shamanic cultures of Azerbaijan, Iran and Central Asia. “I’d heard Eliza-beth was upfront and honest, and with her I’d get feedback. I wanted that. I didn’t need someone to pamper me.” They met at a dance studio. Zarif said, “I dance, you watch, we’ll talk.” As Langley recalls, “He took me into a world I didn’t know existed.” A month later, they started intensive work together.

Crucial to Fujiwara was how Langley catalyzed her development as a choreographer and per-former, helping her to navigate into “the arcane art of butoh and into the deep performance required for Natsu Nakajima’s solo Sumida River.” She admires Langley as a “deeply compassionate and a skilful communicator so that even in the most difficult times, she was always encouraging and inspiring.”

Denise Fujiwara in Sumida RiverPhoto: Cylla von Tiedemann, courtesy of Denise Fujiwara


Philip Szporer, writer, lecturer and filmmaker teaches at Concordia

University and is a scholar-in-residence at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance

Festival. His dance writings have appeared in The Dance Current, Tanz

and Hour, among others. He is co-founder, with Marlene Millar, of

the arts film company Mouvement Perpétuel. Together they have

co-directed and produced award-winning documentaries, short films

and installation projects.

In 2011, Langley delivered the keynote address at the Society of Dance History Scholars’ inter-national conference on dance dramaturgy in Toronto. She distilled advice in a compelling ten-point framework based on over thirty years of her experi-ence. As Pil Hansen (with Darcey Callison and Bruce Barton) writes in “An Act of Rendering: Dance and Movement Dramaturgy”, Canadian Theatre Review, Sum-mer 2013: “Langley sees the dramaturg as mentor, a person who helps a choreographer reach clarity about his or her choreo-graphic expression by respond-ing to the emerging work from the position of an informed ‘first spectator.’ Langley operates from a neutral position, in which the dramaturg attempts to leave no artistic imprint on the work.”

Zarif celebrates Langley’s sea-soned perspective. “She’s become a big part of my life.” While House acknowledges, “She gave me lots of great advice that has stuck with me for forty years. I wouldn’t be a dancer or a choreographer if I hadn’t met her.” Badu-Younge comments that in her home-land of Ghana “there are many names in Ewe, the ethnic group of my father, to best describe [Langley’s] excellence: ‘Emefa’ – Calmness, ‘Akorfa’ – Consoler, ‘Dzigbodi’ – Patience, ‘Etria-kor’ – Undefeatable, and above all [she is] a ‘Kplorla’ – Leader.”

Langley has always lived in the present and has never lost her enthusiasm or ability to embrace ambi-guity and transformation. “She continues to remind people, through her own actions, how much one can love life, how to live in the present with courage and with a big open heart,” says Fujiwara. After sixty years in dance, Langley is not in a phase of career summation. By no means finished, she is in full “evolve and change” mode. “I’m designing myself a new life. I just don’t know quite what that is yet,” she says with a hearty laugh.

Elizabeth Langley delivering the keynote address at Society of Dance History Scholars Conference, Toronto, 2011


Moving,

BY SAMANTHA MEHRA

25 Years of Kaeja d’Dance

in Tandem

If you haven’t heard the name Kaeja,

prepare yourself: its nuances will

exhaust you.

Allen and Karen Kaeja have

moved in synergetic tandem for two-

and-a-half decades, infusing

the name with many meanings.

Kaeja means dancer. Kaeja means

choreographer. Filmmaker. Archivist.

Teacher. Lecturer. Writer. Festival

Producer. Husband. Wife.

No. 75, Fall 2015 17

The Kaejas, partners in art and in life, recently celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of their Toronto-based company, Kaeja d’Dance (formed in 1991), culminating in a performance as part of Harbourfront Centre’s NextSteps series. The evening captured the very essence of each half of the company. Karen’s Taxi! saw the cast of dancers take the audience on an emotional and kinesthetically engaging journey of the search for love, with an emphasis on relationships, sewing through provocative vignettes where costum-ing (including wedding gowns) and spoken text provide a vivid sensory experience. Allen’s .0 similarly considered the points at which human beings intersect, but using a distinctly athletic, physical, fast-paced vocabulary. While both were exploring the intricacies of human relationships, they did so with their signature kinesthetic voices under the umbrella of one evening.

The Kaejas’s reservoir of collected performance programs and photog-raphy, along with their memories, are an archivist’s dream. This, as it turns out, is no accident; the impor-tance of archiving in an effort to preserve history is of great import to both. “My father [Morton] was a Holocaust survivor, and when he left the camp he had no photographs, or anything else. When he came to Canada, whatever he could find from other people was gold, precious to him,” Allen Kaeja (born Allen Norris in Kitchener, Ontario, in 1959) says. “He kept his boat ticket, his train ticket, and other things so that his five children could have a history.” Understanding the importance of retaining artifacts, Allen began col-lecting personal items from a young age – anything that he considered a “part of his genetic makeup,” from his first wrestling award to his first dance program. Karen Kaeja (born Karen Resnick in Toronto in 1961), too, admits to having an instinct

to save, a deeply rooted part of her personality. “I began to keep every-thing because I started dancing late [at age eighteen], and I thought that becoming a performer would be a miracle. When I saw my name in print, it was a miracle realized, and [saving things] has been a continued fascination for me.”

Both Kaejas began dance later in their lives, but the emergence of their craft coincided with exciting times in the Canadian dance fabric, worthy of remembering. Prior to dancing, Allen was submerged in the worlds of competitive wrestling and judo. At sixteen, he visited Israel, where he chanced upon a memorable

dance experience in a bomb shelter-turned-discothèque. “I found my dance that night, and it changed my life,” he remembers. “When I came back to Canada after six weeks, I felt my traditional western training was inadequate for me in terms of endurance, so two close friends and I would sneak into discos and start dancing. I danced so wildly no one would dance with me. If I cleared the dance floor, it was a good night.” This foray into dancing initially fell outside of his family’s understand-ing; admittedly, his father, a butcher, did not understand the arts. But after he attended the University of Waterloo and had been invited to

Allen Norris and Cynthia Hawkes in Norris’s Avari (1981) Photo: John Lauener

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train in wrestling at an Olympic level, he considered ballet as a way to improve his balance and agility. He remembers walking into his first ballet class adorned in wrestling gear, where his teacher, Gabby Kamino, told him, “Lose the hoodie, lose the shoes and go stand at the barre.” After beginning to cull his technical skills, Allen’s first dance performance was as a super for The National Ballet of Canada’s The Sleeping Beauty in the fall of 1980. By the following year, he decided to dedicate his life solely to the arts and dance. This led him to enroll in a six-week summer program at York University, which sowed the seeds for his interest in site-specific work. Dance artist and instructor Terrill Maguire had her students explore the campus by performing site-specific pieces. In the fall of 1981, Allen auditioned for The School of the Toronto Dance Theatre (STDT), where he was accepted under proba-tion. During the two years he was there, he felt more confident that he was, at his core, a choreographer even though he was still submerged in training. During his time at the school, he began cultivating a body of work and founded the Allen Nor-ris Dance Theatre in 1982. Ever the rogue, he was admittedly evicted from STDT after stripping down onstage during a performance. But

this moment did not signal an end to his relationship with STDT, but a beginning. “Within eight years [Karen and I] were both on faculty, teaching partnering, contact improv-isation and our Kaeja Elevations.”

Karen also entered dance later in life. Born to Devora and Arthur Resnick, Karen knew from a young age that she wanted to work in

the realm of psychology, but had similarly always carried a natural instinct to move. This innate desire eventually brought her to the halls of York University, where she would join the dance program, initially with an emphasis on dance therapy. “This was back in 1980, and I had no ballet training. I took a course at Toronto Dance Theatre (TDT) to figure out what modern dance was, too,” Karen recalls. She submerged herself in the rigours of ballet and contemporary dance training on a daily basis at York, while also minoring in psychology, and even started her own therapy practice, leading a dance therapy program at Baycrest Hospital (1982–1983) as part of a practicum for a York dance therapy course. But by this time, the performance bug had truly bitten her. Inspired by the dance profes-sors and occasional guest artists at York (such as members of Toronto Independent Dance Enterprise), she

Karen Resnick, age 10

Allen Kaeja and Karen Kaeja in Allen’s Auro Choreola (1993) Photo: Cylla von Tiedemann

No. 75, Fall 2015 19

submerged herself in more per-formance courses and workshops. These included a contact improvisa-tion course offered by Sally Lyons, where Karen firmly “took a hold of the curiosity that followed me through a lifetime.” She was later featured in the works of choreog-raphers such as Kathleen Rea, Peter Bingham and Randy Glynn.

Allen and Karen collided in 1981 during a choreographic process workshop to which Karen arrived late. “I saw this goddess walk into the studio, drifted over to her and started dancing with her,” Allen says. “It was because of Karen that I took my first contact class at TDT with [choreographer] Paula Ravitz, and we began to partner right away.” The meeting of the Kaejas was kinesthetic kismet, and no doubt resulted in their fascination with contact improvisation, site-specific works and their own branded

contact movement technique, which they call “Elevations”. The process of understanding their own movement practices was born out of their first collaborations. Allen’s initial view of the body was based in wrestling and judo; yet, through their work together, they found a mutual understanding of each other’s bodily listening and responsiveness. “We never allowed ourselves to get complacent in our improvising.”

In their years creating together, each have amassed a distinctive body of work, some of which have toured internationally and earned them many awards. As early as 1990, they were creating their own site-specific work as a duo: Savage Garden, for instance, was created and performed by the pair, and moved vertically through the many lev-els of the Cecil Street Community Centre, and later became part of one of their first performance programs,

Kinetically Charged (1991), at the Winchester Street Theatre. Karen initially acted as a muse and feature performer in Allen’s works, while also building her own choreo-graphic voice. Seminal works for Karen, which explore identity and human relationships with provoca-tive imagery, include Crave (2004) and Sarah (co-created with Allen in 1994), which explores the identity of Morton Norris’s wife (whom he married prior to the Second World War) and toured across Canada. Karen’s Eugene Walks With Grace (1995), initially set on Allen and Eryn Dace Trudell, was remounted in 2012 on Mairéad Filgate and Zhenya Cerneacov and became part of the Dusk Dances Ontario Tour in 2013.

Allen’s work has often incorpo-rated highly physical and athletic movement, while also at times exploring certain themes, such as the legacy of displacement and destruc-

Mairéad Filgate and Karen Kaeja in Allen Kaeja’s Armour/Amour (2011), Harbourfront Centre Theatre, Toronto Photo: Andréa de Keijzer


tion wreaked by war and the Holo-caust, such as Old Country (1995) and Resistance (2000). Seminal multidisci-plinary works for Allen also include Lost Innocence (1992/93), a work for five dancers and two actors explor-ing the events of a displaced youth being brought into the arms of the Children’s Aid Society, and Armour/Amour (2011), which takes a magni-fying glass to the architecture of the body and of the self. Combined, the two artists have deconstructed much thematic and physical territory and have been able to reach out to and emotionally engage with interna-tional audiences through the univer-sal nature of many of their works.

Within the Kaejas’s body of work are a significant number of dance films, twenty-six to date. Allen began working with multimedia in the 1980s and soon became interested in using the camera as the third dancer. Karen also investigated dance on film during a course run through the Dance Umbrella of Ontario. In the mid-1990s, the pair began to focus their mutual interest on the convergence of film and movement, adapting several of their stage works for the camera including Witnessed (1997), Old Country (appearing first

as a duet for TVOntario in 1994 and then for CBC Television in 2004) and Asylum of Spoons (2005). Wit-nessed is adapted from the stage work Courtyard and explores the displacement of ghettoized individu-als during WWII, hearkening back to Allen’s family history. Shot in only one day, and edited over a few weeks, it has toured internationally and is now part of the permanent collection at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. They also found

some revelations in exploring this medium on the performative level: “Underneath, I am a shy person,” Karen says. “Film suited my per-sonality as it is a private encoun-ter with a camera, but it allowed me to communicate to many.”

The Kaejas have also continued to make site-specific and audience-engaging performances a central aspect of their annual work. As early as 1987, they embarked on a multi-disciplinary work titled Beare: a Celtic Odyssey, involving seven performers at the Winchester Street Theatre with live music by Loreena McKennitt and script by Allen. More recently, they have performed as part of Toronto’s Nuit Blanche. In Stable Dances (2008), they sourced from a previous site-specific work (Bird’s Eye View) to create an all-night installation in the historic stables and carriage rooms of Casa Loma for a revolving audience, incorporating live video projections, with music by Edgardo Moreno and over twenty performers. They are also the masterminds behind annual outdoor community events such as Porch View Dances.

The Kaejas are prolific teachers in the Toronto dance community and beyond. Indeed, their teaching

Karen Kaeja in a solo she created for Allen Kaeja’s Asylum of Spoons (2004) Photo: Albert Camicioli

Allen and Karen Kaeja in Allen’s Resistance (2000) Photo: Cylla von Tiedemann

No. 75, Fall 2015 21

contracts with the Scarborough and Peel Boards of Education in the 1990s funded their initial concerts. Their goal has been to build communities while also encouraging risk-taking, kinesthetic understanding and con-fidence in dancers and non-dancers alike. Through improvisational structures, the Kaejas allow for movers to experience sharing weight and working with momentum. In addition to mentoring students at STDT, Canada’s National Ballet School and the Canadian Children’s Dance Theatre (now Canadian Con-temporary Dance Theatre, CCDT), they have taught in the public school sector. The fun has been in seeing movers transform before their eyes. “Karen and I worked with CCDT, and we got a nine-year-old to be able to take me on her shoulder; it changed her life and instilled in her a kinetic understanding of being powerful,” says Allen. “Partnering is universal; if we can give you the

foundation, the world is yours.” DCD co-founder Lawrence Adams

coined the title of another Kaeja creation, a teaching syllabus for schools called Express Dance made in collaboration with drama teacher Carol Oriold, and published by DCD in 2000. The syllabus crystallized as an idea after Oriold requested a handout following a 1998 workshop at the Council of Ontario Drama and Dance Educators conference. A primer for teachers, it incorpo-rates compositional frameworks and movement lexicons, engaging students from grades four to twelve in a co-operative and creative move-ment space. After Oriold shadowed the Kaejas for over a year at various teaching events, she compiled the notes, which were then edited down by Allen and Adams into a now frequently used publication. Indeed, this primer set a tone for movement creation that reached beyond the classroom and into the Kaejas’s own

processes. Their interest in educating translates into the emerging artist world as well. The pair created a sec-ond company, K d’D2 (2000–2005), which offered graduates from dance conservatory programs (such as STDT and CCDT) the opportunity to begin dancing in professional works, such as Allen’s Resistance, and tour Ontario. These tours also offered the dancers the opportunity to engage with new communities, develop relationships and teach.

Both Allen and Karen have also helped to nurture the festival culture for dance in Canada. Estrogen, a festival for women creators, was co-founded by Karen and Sylvie Bouchard. Karen also co-founded The Festival of Interactive Physics (with Pam Johnson), which ran for ten years and invited luminaries of North American contemporary improvisation, such as Andrew Harwood, Nancy Stark Smith and Peter Ryan, to conduct workshops

Zhenya Cerneacov, Merideth Plumb, Ana Claudette Groppler, Michael Caldwell and Allen Kaeja in Karen Kaeja’s Taxi! (2015), Harbourfront Centre Theatre, Toronto Photo: Ken Ewen


for over thirty participants. In his own right, Allen co-founded the CanAsian Dance Festival (1996) with Denise Fujiwara after being asked to help coordinate the dance portion of Asian Heritage Month. “[Denise] was as passionate as I was,” he says. “We felt the community was in such a rich place, moving for-ward in many contemporary ways. We wanted to promote and assist the aesthetic.” Prior to this, Allen co-founded fFIDA (fringe Festival of Independent Dance Artists) in 1991 with Michael Menegon. Dur-ing its run, fFIDA was a success-ful vehicle for independent dance artists from Canada and beyond to plant their feet in the dance milieu

and produce their own shows. The duo continues to prolifically

perform and create, in addition to presenting at conferences and serv-ing as artists in residence across the country. Most recently, they performed in lifeDUETS, a commis-sioned series for the pair that, in its various incarnations, has taken them on tours across Canada, to Mexico, Europe and Asia. In Octo-ber of 2015, they commissioned choreographers Tedd Robinson and Benjamin Kamino to make works that challenged their “more current bodies”. This challenge has also seen them involved with Older & Reckless, a series featur-ing senior artists and founded by

Claudia Moore, artistic director of MOonhORsE Dance Theatre.

After cultivating such a diverse and relentless repertoire of proj-ects for well over two decades, raising two daughters and work-ing in beautiful synergy, one has to ask: what’s next for the Kaejas? “Sky-diving,” says Karen. “That is what we do as artists; we take the plunge, and it stimulates us.”

Samantha Mehra Donaldson (MA) is a pro-

fessional researcher and historian with an

emphasis on media, dance history and heri-

tage. She has contributed to Dance Collec-

tion Danse Magazine, The Dance Current, The

Canadian Encyclopedia Online and The Oxford

Forum for Modern Language Studies.

Karen and Allen Kaeja in Allen’s X-ODUS (2013), Harbourfront Centre Theatre, Toronto Photo: Ken Ewen

No. 75, Fall 2015 23


Newfoundland has been the home of my maternal and

paternal ancestors for over 200 years. Its theatrical dance heritage has been a fascination of mine, and various research trips over the years have revealed the early echoes of theatrical dance in St. John’s in the twentieth century, as well as the later achievements of those who followed. It is a dance story that both reflects other patterns in Canadian dance history and that also etches its own distinct path.

July 1, 2016 is an important date for the people of Newfoundland. It marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Somme. There, on that first day of July in 1916, at 9:15 a.m., 778 men of the New-foundland Regiment went over the tops of their trenches near the French village of Beaumont-Hamel to attack the Germans. When the next roll

BY AMY BOWRING

call was taken, 68 men answered their names – 386 were wounded; 324 were dead or missing and presumed dead. It was a defining moment for this small country. Even after Confederation with Canada in 1949, July 1 for Newfoundland-ers has never been so much Canada Day as it is Memorial Day. Knowing the significant military sacrifices made by Newfoundland during the Great War, and knowing the promi-nence of patriotic performances to raise funds for the war effort in other parts of Canada, I became curious to know what Newfound-landers, and specifically women in St. John’s, were doing in terms of performances for benevolent purposes during World War I. And that’s when I found Mrs. Colville …

In the Dance Collection Danse archives, there are photocopies of a handful of pages from a 1916 pub-

lication called The Distaff produced by the Women’s Patriotic Association of New-foundland. An article about amateur the-atricals includes two references to a Mrs. Colville and includes two photographs of her productions: The Triumph of Harlequin and a pastoral play held at Vigornia,

which was the estate of St. John’s bakery owner John Browning. With the help of archivists and digital sources at the Centre for Newfound-land Studies at Memorial University, Mrs. Colville’s contribution, and that of others, began to unfold.

Born Helen Withers in the early 1890s, Mrs. Colville was the daugh-ter of John and Emma Withers; Withers had become the King’s Printer in St. John’s in 1890, replac-ing his own father in this role. As a member of the Church of England, young Miss Withers would have been educated at Bishop Spen-cer College in Newfoundland’s church-run school system. By the late 1890s, Bishop Spencer Col-lege had a reputation for offering a wide variety of extra-curricular activities including dramatics.

Cover page of the 1916 edition of The Distaff published by the Women’s Patriotic Association

WWI Patriotic Performances in St. John’s

Finding Mrs. Colville

Mr. Leonard Reid, Miss Mary Doyle, Miss Bartlett, Miss Lois Reid, Mrs. Helen Colville and Miss Flora Clift (sitting down) in Mrs. Colville’s Triumph of Harlequin, 1915

No. 75, Fall 2015 25

Numerous news paper clippings demonstrate that Helen Withers had a keen interest in performance; one of the earliest clippings found shows that she was in the cast of a production of C.M.S. McLellan’s Leah Kleschna at the Total Abstinence Hall (T.A. Hall) in January 1909. And in the following month, she was in a comedietta called Mrs. Oakley’s Telephone at the British Hall and a production of the one-act farce My Lord In Livery at the Synod Hall. She was back at the T.A. Hall in April in the play Liberty Hall. 1910 saw our Miss Withers in a “Grand Variety Entertainment” at the Canon Wood Hall where the audience took in songs, dances and a playlet.

In the spring and fall of 1911, Helen Withers performed in ben-efit concerts for the Feild-Spencer Association in aid of these two Church of England schools: Bishop Feild for boys and Bishop Spen-cer for girls. On both occasions, she appears to have sung a duet with a young man named Cecil Clift. On February 14, 1912, she performed in a one-act comedy at a Valentine Social for the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire at the Methodist College Hall. This comedy was followed by a “Japanese dance” and then a tableau. And in the same evening, she performed a Pierrot dance with Clift at another Valentine benefit, which “scored a great success” with the audience according to the Evening Telegram.

In October 1910, Helen Withers and many other single society girls were invited to a ball at Government House to entertain the naval cadets of the HMS Cornwall. It is quite possible that it was here that she met her future husband, Lieut. Mansel Colville, as he was assigned to the Cornwall. Colville, himself, had trod the boards in A Pantomime Rehearsal at the T.A. Hall in 1909. The two were married on September 11, 1913. Serv-ing in the Royal Navy would have

taken the lieutenant away from home for much of the year particularly as the possibility of war increased. Eleven months after their marriage, Britain declared war on Germany on August 4, 1914

and the call for volunteers soon went out across Newfoundland.

The women on the home front also got to work right away. An early “Patriotic Concert” in St. John’s, if not the first, was given on September 29, 1914. It was organized by the Wom-en’s Patriotic Association, which was tremendously productive through-out the war with fundraising, making bandages and organizing women to knit socks and other items of comfort for the men overseas.

Through much of the war, they were led by Lady Davidson, the governor’s wife, and she often opened up Government House as a centre for the association’s labours. This particular benefit concert was held at the Casino, a local vaudeville and movie house that often hosted patriotic performances during the war and was located on the second floor of the T.A. Hall. In addition to a number of patriotic songs, such as the Marseillaise and the Russian national anthem, a group of national dances of the United Kingdom were presented. The latter half of the program was dedicated to a series of seven tableaux vivants with titles such as “Newfoundland’s Offer-ing”, “The Hero of the Hour”, “The Allies” and “The British Empire”.

The term “tableaux vivants” translates to mean “living pictures”. Costumed performers posed in an arrangement that depicted a scene, or living picture, and then they moved to transition into a new picture. In patriotic performances using tableaux, the personifica-

tion of nations was quite common. Tableaux were a widespread form of entertainment with roots in the royal pageants of the early Renaissance. The tableaux of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, often performed by refined young ladies – and sometimes gentlemen, are more connected to “Delsartean Expression” developed by French music and drama educator Fran-çois Delsarte. Delsarte approached drama education from a scientific and analytical perspective. He saw human experience as physical, mental and emotional-spiritual, and he divided the body into parts that corresponded to these distinctions.

Examples of Delsartean expression for “watching” and “ridicule”

Lady Davidson as depicted in The Distaff, 1916


He created a rather elaborate system determining how certain body parts should be used to communicate specific emotions and behaviours.

Delsarte’s methods were intro-duced to America in the 1870s by an actor and teacher named Steele MacKaye who had studied with Delsarte in France; one of MacK-aye’s students, Genevieve Stebbins, also helped to spread Delsarte’s teachings in New York and Boston. Considering that the routes of many of the Newfoundland steamship companies connect St. John’s to Halifax, New York and Boston, it is easy to imagine how Delsartean Expression and its use in tableaux could influence performances in St. John’s. There are several accounts of tableaux in St. John’s dating back to the 1890s as entertainment, as a diversion at school assemblies, or as performances in aid of organizations such as the Church Lads’ Brigade.

The records of patriotic perfor-mances uncovered in this research reveal that Mrs. Colville participated in twenty-nine out of thirty-five

shows over the course of the war and we know she missed some shows because she was in the U.K. She was variously a performer, organizer, director and choreog-rapher, and she often worked with Mrs. Herbert Outerbridge and Mrs. Chater. Participants in many of these concerts include names of old and affluent St. John’s families such as Outerbridge, Clift, Reid, Rendell, Ayre, Job, LeMessurier, Bowring, Baird and Harvey, as well as well-known artistic families such as Charles Hutton and the Rossleys.

John and Adelaide Browning also played an important role in patriotic work through organizational efforts and through their estate, Vigornia. The Brownings provided the estate grounds for several garden fêtes and patriotic performances to raise funds for charitable war work. Mrs. Browning also opened her doors two or three afternoons per week for the members of the Women’s Patriotic Association (WPA) to do their work. In November 1917, Mrs. Browning returned from a trip to Canada (a

separate country from Newfound-land at the time) where she had met doctors and nurses with experience in treating consumption. One of her particular causes was Jensen Camp, which had been created primarily on her initiative in 1916 as a hospital for soldiers with tuberculosis. The Evening Telegram on June 11, 1918 reported the status of fundraising for Jensen Camp and listed Mrs. Colville’s contribution from the proceeds of patriotic performances at $410. In 1918, Mrs. Browning was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire for her work with the WPA and Jensen Camp.

Vigornia was situated on King’s Bridge Road where the Family Court now resides. A suc-cessful garden fête was held on July 14, 1915 and this may be the first of such activity at Vigornia. It was held under the patronage of the Governor

Members of the Rossley Kiddie Company, St. John’s, 1917. These costumes provide a good indication of the personification of nations that was typical in patriotic tableaux. Photo courtesy of the Rossley Kiddie Company Collection (COLL-472, 1.01.007), Archives and Special Collections, Memorial Libraries

Mrs. Adelaide Browning as

depicted in The Distaff, 1916

No. 75, Fall 2015 27

and Lady Davidson in aid of cots for the wounded, though by this time in the war the Newfoundland Regiment was primarily training in the U.K. The St. John’s Daily Star described the pleasant setting: “Vigornia is always attractive but yesterday it seemed as if some fairy wand had touched the place.”

The main attraction of the day was the pastoral play On Zephyr’s Wings. Mrs. Colville played the role of “Alidor” while her frequent collabo-rators, Mrs. Chater (also the direc-tor) and Mrs. Outerbridge, played “Gracieuse, the Queen’s Daughter” and “Queen Ilerie” respectively. Miss Flora Clift, who was also in nearly every production with Mrs. Colville, played “Zephyr, Goddess of the West Wind”. The show was set on a terrace surrounded by trees and the Daily Star had much praise for the production: “The dancing was perfect, even Terpsichore would have been envious and the music delighted all. The costumes – every-thing of the pastorale was as the author intended it should be.” Further funds were raised through the sale of candy, flowers and fancy work. The event was such a success that it was repeated at Vigornia on July 26 and the two occasions combined raised over $600.

It’s important to note that such performances served more than just fundraising purposes – they were also important to local morale and recruiting, particularly as the

fighting wore on and casualty lists grew longer. The July 27, 1915 edition of the Daily Star described the event at Vigornia as “a scene that one was loathe to leave.” And an account of On Zephyr’s Wings in the Evening Telegram on July 24, 1915, indicates the power of escape people needed:

The fairy’s wand will again turn shepherds into princes, shepherd esses will dance upon the sward, while Cupid flits among the trees and wields its magic dart. Mordicante with her fairies and her gnomes bringing discord will draw her magic circle round fair Gracieuse, but Zephyr’s lightest breath will break the spell, and Love reign over all.

the brain better fit for work next day.” While one should take the market-ing spin of such a statement into consideration, there is a lot to be said for the Casino Theatre’s argument.

A particularly grand event was held at Vigornia on August 2, 1917. Called the “Sunshine Entertain-ment” it was organized by Mrs. Charles McKay Harvey. By this time, the Newfoundland Regiment had played a significant role in major bat-tles: Gallipoli (September 1915–Janu-ary 1916), Beaumont-Hamel (July 1916), Guedecourt (October 1916) and Monchy-le-Preux (April 1917), and the work of women on the home front was more necessary than ever.

Back row: Miss Agnes Hayward, Miss Bradshaw, Mrs. Babcock, Mrs. Colville, Mrs. Chater, Miss Rendell; Front row: Miss Doyle, Miss Ayre (Cupid), Mrs. H. Outerbridge, Miss Job and Miss Flora Clift (reclining) in On Zephyr’s Wings, 1915

A patriotic tableau vivant on a float in the Peace Parade, August 1919

This plotline could easily exist as a metaphor for the war itself with the malevolent Mordicante represent-ing the Germans and Zephyr, the Allies – in the end, love and peace will reign supreme and the sons of Newfoundland will return.

An ad for the Casino Theatre on January 30, 1918 further highlights the role performance can play in the war effort, stating: “The machine that wins the war through fighting or through industry is the human brain. And what the brain requires the theatre gives – change of thought, relaxation, the real rest that makes

Once again the grounds of Vigornia were decked out in bun-ting, with the addition of electric lights during the evening. The gardens were in full bloom and there were decorated stalls where sweets, ice cream, flowers and handmade items were sold. The afternoon performance opened with a dance of the seasons followed by a minuet. The press gave great acclaim to Mrs. Colville and Miss Flora Clift for their Narcissus and the Nymph dance. Mrs. Colville choreographed the movement to a mazurka by Auguste Durand, and the pool that Narcissus


gazes into was created using an arrangement of mirrors and grass.

The evening show presented a series of tableaux vivants, which, according to the Daily Star, “sur-passed anything ever seen here and was equal to anything ever seen abroad on the same scale.” The first tableau paid tribute to the new-est ally, the United States, which had joined the war just a few months earlier in April 1917. Mrs. Colville represented France and several other performers personified other allies: Belgium, Russia, Italy, Serbia, Canada, Britannia, India, Newfoundland and Greece. Another interesting tableau was called “Women Before and During the War”. In the “before” section, performers portrayed a lady and her maid, suf-fragettes and an actress. During the war, these characters transform into lady farmers, munitions workers and nurses. Social dancing followed the performance and the whole event raised $1170 for Jensen Camp.

By February 1918, Mrs. Colville was advertising in the Evening Telegram for an experi-enced nurse to look after a young child. When exactly her child was born is unknown but it is highly likely that she performed the Sunshine Entertainment while pregnant – a bold and independent move for a woman of the time.

The Brownings hosted another garden fête at Vigornia a year later

that included games and an open air concert in the afternoon, tab-leaux vivants in the evening and social dancing until midnight. Among the afternoon games was

one called “Kill the Kaiser”. The first series of nine tableaux depicts familiar stories such as Blue Beard, Pocahontas and Cinderella. The next nine tableaux were patriotic in nature with titles such as “After the Battle”, “The Red Cross” and “Bri-tannia Calls Her Sons”. Mrs. Colville portrayed Belgium in a tableau with her daughter, and her friend Mrs. Outerbridge played Britannia

in several scenes. This time, $1121 was raised for Jensen Camp.

Tableaux vivants made a last patriotic appearance in the St. John’s Peace Parade in August 1919.

Several of the parade floats included tableaux paying tribute to the other allied nations. Mrs. Colville arranged the award-winning tableau “Britain and her Domin-ions” and also por-trayed India while her daughter, also named Helen, was a herald.

Mrs. Helen Colville is but one example of the patriotic women of New-foundland who used their skills to aid the war effort in whatever way they could. They were obviously energetic and dedicated women who no doubt discovered a new level of indepen-dence through their war work. It is not surprising then that many of the women involved in the WPA became involved in women’s suffrage after the war. They also demonstrate how holistic Newfoundland’s contri-bution to WWI was – a contribution that would be repeated in WWII.

Amy Bowring is the Director of Collec-

tions and Research at Dance Collection

Danse where she began a mentorship with

Lawrence and Miriam Adams in 1993. She

is known in the Canadian dance community

for her advocacy work in dance heritage and

preservation. She teaches dance history at

Ryerson University and is the founder of the

Canadian Society for Dance Studies.

Check out the St. John’s edition of DCD’s inter active map series, Touring Through Timedcd.ca/walkingtours/stjohns.html

Front cover of the instruction manual for the tableau and flag drill Rule Britannia, performed in St. John’s in 1917

No. 75, Fall 2015 29

Moving ForwardSt. John’s today boasts a rich and vibrant dance scene primarily com-posed of independent artists performing a range of genres from tra-ditional step dancing to salsa to postmodern dance. The performing arts scene is arguably one of the most interdisciplinary in Canada and many St. John’s artists do not limit themselves to one art form.

Two of the city’s mainstay arts organizations are Neighbourhood Dance Works (NDW) and Kittiwake Dance Theatre (KDT). NDW was originally a performance collective founded in 1981 by Cathy Ferri and Agnes Walsh out of the classes they were teaching in the basement of the LSPU Hall (one of the city’s primary arts venues). Initial members included Lois Brown, Beni Malone, Mandy Jones and Peggy Hogan. Today, NDW’s mandate has shifted to dance presentation including the annual Festival of New Dance, which celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2015. Festival curators have included Ann Anderson, Lois Brown and Anne Troake. Some of the local artists who have been presented at the festival include Louise Moyes, Sarah Joy Stoker, Lisa Porter, Evelyne Lemelin, and the Louder Than Words Collective, as well as native Newfoundlanders Jennifer Dick and Christopher House.

KDT is Newfoundland’s oldest non-profit dance company. A semi-profes-sional company, it was founded in 1987 by Linda Rimsay, an American émigré with a background in modern dance and dance education. Rimsay arrived in St. John’s in 1978 and immediately got involved with Newfound-land Dance Theatre (NDT), which had been founded by Gail Innes and Lisa Schwartz in 1975, lasting for just over a decade. It was from the young per-formers’ group of NDT that Kittiwake evolved. The company’s repertoire over the decades has included many original works such as Mermaids of Avalon, spring showcases and choreographic workshops. Its annual Nut-cracker has included distinctly Newfoundland references such as mummers (mummers dress up in disguise and make house visits over the Christmas season). Currently, the company is under the direction of Artistic Director and Choreographer Martin Vallée and Artistic Associate Jennifer Foley.

Lois Brown, Beni Malone, Mandy Jones, Peggy Hogan and Cathy Ferri at Cochrane Street United Church Photo courtesy of Neighbourhood Dance Works

No. 75, Fall 2015 31

California-born choreographer Stephanie Ballard says that she “adopted the Prairies,” or that the Prairies adopted her – a perfect description of Ballard’s intimate connection to the Winnipeg dance community where she has worked for the better part of forty-four years. Ballard belongs to a generation of artists who grew up under the nurturing watch of the indomitable Rachel Browne as a member of Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers (WCD) in the 1970s. She went on to become an award-winning dance artist with a reputation as an intelligent and poetic choreographer, a creator of humanist expression that explores isolation, relation-ships, mythology, literature and the female psyche. However, what makes Ballard extraordinary is not merely the depth and scope of her numerous creations; rather, it is her intense awareness of dance and move-ment as a vehicle for personal discovery and artistic ancestry. For Ballard, movement is a medium that simultaneously defines and expresses our identity: who we are, where we come from and where we are going.

Stephanie BallardAn Indelible Mark

Left: Stephanie Ballard, 1987 Above right: Stephanie Ballard in Norbert Vesak’s The Gift to be Simple, c. 1976

“If we are breathing, we are moving. And I suggest that our movement throughout a lifetime is a dance, a very personal dance that is care-fully choreographed by each

individual human being.” – Stephanie Ballard

BY CINDY BRETT


Ballard’s journey began in San Francisco, California, where her first memories of making movement are of directing pageant-like “movies” with her brother and neighbourhood children. She remembers her expansive view of the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate City from her bedroom window in Twin Peaks – a vantage point that she believes gave her an innate sense of adventure and an insatiable thirst for exploration.

Following her parents’ separation, Ballard moved to Los Angeles with her mother and began studying jazz dance with choreographer/actor Roland Dupree, best known for creating a style of dance known as “West Coast Jazz”. For a time, Ballard envisioned herself dancing on Hullabaloo (a variety show similar to American Bandstand that aired from 1965–1966). She also trained in Graham technique with former Graham dancer Fanya Sage.

Although she inherited a strong work ethic from these early influences, a rebellious streak in high school

eventually alienated Ballard from both academics and dance. It was only by happenstance – during an impromptu visit to her stepfather back in San Fran-cisco – that Ballard wandered into the studios of Merriem Lanova’s San Francisco Conservatory of Ballet. Eyeing a return to dance as a potential source of personal restitu-tion – and with nothing to lose – Ballard enrolled in the conservatory’s two-year diploma program.

During Ballard’s time at the conservatory, she per-formed character roles in its student company Ballet Celeste, which toured across the Western United States, and she met her then-partner, fellow dancer William Starrett. When she graduated, a friend found her a job with Shirley Cobb Beckworth – daughter of baseball legend Ty Cobb and owner of a famous bookstore in Palo Alto. Meanwhile, Starrett had gone to Canada on a schol-arship to the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s (RWB) training program. Eager to remove the 3000 kilometres between

Stephanie Ballard, Leslie Dillingham and Margie Gillis in Linda Rabin’s The White Goddess (1977) Photo: D. Héon, courtesy of Linda Rabin

No. 75, Fall 2015 33

them, he arranged for Ballard to audition for Contempo-rary Dancers (later Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers) – a small repertory company founded by Rachel Browne in 1964. Ballard was accepted as one of the company’s first-ever apprentices and, badly needing a source of income, also graciously accepted a job as the company janitor.

The timing of Ballard’s entry into the Winnipeg dance scene was highly advantageous for an impressionable, young artist. WCD was charged with exciting activity in the 1970s: the decade’s opening years saw the com-pany receive its first Canada Council operating grant; its first studios in the historic Aragon Building; and a new subscription series that, coupled with annual tour-ing, provided rich performing opportunities. Ballard’s free-spirited approach to people and witty, vivacious personality has drawn many to her. She had immediate exposure and connections to several high-profile inter-national choreographers who Browne was commission-ing work from at the time, such as James Waring, Robert Moulton, Sophie Maslow, Richard Gain, Cliff Keuter, Lynne Taylor-Corbett and Paul Sanasardo – many of

whom hailed from New York’s modern and experimental dance scenes. Meanwhile, several Canadian choreogra-phers were finding their artistic voices in the 1960s and ’70s, and Browne also began tapping into the wealth of bourgeoning choreographic talent from artists across the country such as Karen Jamieson, Judith Marcuse, Paula Ravitz, Jennifer Mascall and Linda Rabin – Rabin in particular would have a major impact on Ballard’s career.

Living in an isolated prairie city and working in a small company, meant that Ballard also forged strong personal relationships with the tight-knit community. Browne was a trusted mentor and friend to Ballard and other protégées, such as Faye Thomson, Gaile Petursson-Hiley and Odette Heyn – who all danced with WCD in the 1970s and today sit at the helm of its affiliated School of Contemporary Dancers (SCD). They, and many other generations of Winnipeg artists, consider themselves to be Browne’s “dance daughters”. Ballard’s relationship with Starrett also brought her close to Arnold Spohr (artistic director of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet from 1958–1988), and when Starrett returned to the United

Francisco Alvarez, Tedd Robinson, Monica George, Gaile Petursson-Hiley, Marilyn Biderman, David Holmes Jr. and Mark Chambers in Stephanie Ballard’s Snow Goose (1979) Photo: David Cooper


States in 1976, Ballard became Spohr’s go-to dinner date and loyal friend. These personal relationships fostered an important network and planted roots that became integral to Ballard’s identity as an artist. She felt a strong spiritual connection to the city and, almost immediately, began identifying herself as being “from Winnipeg”.

The year 1977 marks a significant turning point in Ballard’s career. In 1976, Montreal-based choreogra-pher Linda Rabin began assembling dancers for a new project and needed mature artists for what she knew was going to be an experimental process. Rabin had first worked with Ballard when setting Domino on WCD in 1974 and remembered her trusting and open approach to creation. Although Ballard was suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and had actually decided to stop dancing, she was assured by Rabin that only minimal exertion would be required. Already sensing the signifi-cance of the project, Ballard joined Rabin in Montreal.

Since its first presentation, The White Goddess has been regarded as an event of mythic proportion. Based on Rob-ert Graves’s book of the same name, the work pays hom-age to female consciousness and honours the concept of a great goddess, or feminine deity. Nestled in the zeitgeist of second-wave feminism, and more ceremony than dance, the work had a profound impact on many of those who experienced it. Ballard remembers that Toronto Dance Theatre co-founder Peter Randazzo was intensely affected by its performance at the 1977 Dance in Canada Association (DICA) Conference and was reduced to tears.

For Ballard, the choreographic process of creat-ing The White Goddess was transformative. Aside from the introduction to the unique artistic climate in Montreal and the formation of important friend-ships with artists Margie Gillis and Candace Loubert, Ballard was inspired by Rabin’s creation methods

and instilled with a tremendous respect and curi-osity for artistic process. She returned to Winni-peg consumed with her own creative energy.

The spark of Ballard’s choreographic notions was well timed. By then, Browne had initiated a series of choreographic workshops for the company, and dancer Joost Pelt had spearheaded a Dance Discovery work-shop performance series. Ballard also received a grant that provided her with a year’s worth of living expenses and the opportunity to study the choreographic process by observing the work of David Earle, Lynne Taylor-Corbett and Norman Morris, among others. The late 1970s saw the birth of her first choreographies, includ-ing Mahler Duet (1977), Sympathetic Magic (1979) and her first full-length choreography, In Passing (1978).

In 1979 Ballard was appointed artistic director and manager of WCD’s apprentice program. This afforded her more opportunities to flex her choreographic muscles, and soon WCD’s repertoire contained three of Ballard’s choreographies: Construction Company, Snow Goose and her signature piece, Prairie Song.

Ballard has said that Prairie Song was created out of a “need and desire to explore the mysteries of isola-tion.” Having experienced nearly a decade of prairie winters, Ballard was inspired by the stories of her friends’ ancestors – many of whom had lived on the Prairies for generations. Filled with a respect for one’s ability to survive in such a rough and remote environ-ment in the pioneer age, Ballard created a work that touches on the solitude, and almost madness, of five individuals who are seemingly disconnected from each other. In an indication of the company’s faith in Ballard’s merit as a choreographer, WCD was repre-sented by Prairie Song at the prestigious Canadian Dance Spectacular at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre in 1980.

Prairie Song was followed by an ambitious rendition of A Christmas Carol (1981), which attempted to shed light on the social conditions surrounding the novel, and Time Out (1982) – an exploration of the relationship between Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Ballard was also commissioned to choreograph and perform for Mother Theresa during her 1982 visit to Winnipeg – an experience that Ballard remembers as one of the most rewarding of her career.

At the end of 1982, journalist/dance critic Robert Enright wrote in Dance in Canada magazine that the choreographic trinity of Browne as artistic director, Ballard as associate artistic director, and Tedd Robinson as resident choreographer at WCD, was a “potent force”. However, the promising partnership was not meant to be. Although Browne was a mentor and friend to many, some company and board members were reportedly dissatisfied with her leadership, and in a now notorious coup, Browne was ultimately asked to resign as director.

School of Contemporary Dancers 2003 graduating students Kevin Côté, Emma Doran, Zach Schnitzer, Allison Wersch and Brooke Noble in Stephanie Ballard’s Prairie Song (1980) Photo: Rodney Braun

No. 75, Fall 2015 35

Faye Thomson and Margie Gillis in Stephanie Ballard’s Anna (1987) Photo: Robert Tinker


Although several people considered Ballard to be next in line as artistic director – and she was certainly asked by the board to apply, more than once – she was conflicted by a lack of assurance that either she or Browne had any kind of a future with the company at all. In an act of defiance over how the search process was handled, Ballard withdrew her application and followed Browne out the doors at the end of the 1982/83 season.

Facing the loss of the company structure in which she had thrived for the last eleven years, Ballard adjusted to a challenging new reality as an independent dance artist, leaning on her network for support. Since The White Goddess, Ballard had remained in close touch with dancer/choreographer Margie Gillis, whose solo career had by then earned her a reputation as an international superstar and beloved Canadian icon. Despite this, Gillis was seeking artistic advice and asked Ballard to come to Montreal to observe some of her work. An artistic exchange began to take shape and Ballard became Gillis’s artistic advisor and company manager for the next ten years. During a decade of working together, Ballard also set several of her own works on Gillis, including Lithium for Medea (1984) and Gillis’s signature solo, Mara (1989).

Ballard was well recog nized for her success in the 1980s, receiving the Clifford E. Lee Choreography Award in 1982, the Jean A. Chalmers Award in 1985 and the Jacqueline Lemieux prize in 1986. And, though she worked closely with Gillis and lived with her part-time in Montreal, Ballard spread her talent and energy across North America like creative wildfire. By 1986, Starrett had been appointed artistic director of South Carolina’s Columbia City Ballet and began commis-

sioning Ballard to set some of her modern work on the company. Keeping to her roots, she also maintained an apartment in Winnipeg (which she rented to visit-ing artists) and occasionally returned to create work such as Trouble in the House (1986), Anna (1987) and Continuum (1990). Of particular note is Continuum, an expression of artistic and feminine lineage set on sev-eral dancers from Ballard’s past including Thomson, Petursson-Hiley, Rabin, Gillis, WCD dancers D-Anne Kuby and Ruth Cansfield and, of course, Browne.

Ballard admits that, at the age of forty, she was thinking heavily about the concept of continuum that year. Having graduated from the apprentice program with Thomson in 1972 and watched other colleagues follow closely behind, Ballard was struck by the interconnectedness of their paths. Reflecting on her family of dancers and the artistic and feminine histories that connect them, Ballard wrote in the pro-gram notes that Continuum celebrates “an energized dance relationship between dance artists that I have worked with, some for as long as eighteen years.”

This theme of heritage and legacy would become a cornerstone of Ballard’s career. In the mid-nineties, Ballard embarked on an extensive project with the intention to explore and document several overlap-ping concepts of personal legacy. The Legacy Project, as it was called, involved not only the revisiting and documentation of Ballard’s artistic history but also the exploration of movement as a form of revealing legacy itself – a way in which, working from the inside out, she feels we simultaneously discover and express our-selves by exploring movement patterns and impulses

Rachel Browne in Stephanie Ballard’s Homeagain (2010) Photo: Vince Pahkala

No. 75, Fall 2015 37

as an accumulation of experiences and memories. As part of this process, she created work on non-dancers from British Columbia’s self-help retreat The Haven, an experience that inspired her to eventually pursue a Master’s degree in therapeutic counselling. As another part of The Legacy Project, Ballard created a record of the archives and history of both WCD and SCD. And she developed a course for SCD on personal, Canadian and international dance history, which she still teaches.

At co-directors Thomson and Heyn’s request, Bal-lard has been a Guest Artist in Residence for the school’s Professional Program since 1997. Working closely with SCD has allowed Ballard to develop relationships with aspiring artists, passing on artistic experiences that she embodies. Since 2003, she has created Landscape Dances, or site-specific works, as a means of animat-ing her community with an architectural sentiment and providing performing opportunities for young artists. One of her most recent Landscape Dances was performed at the opening of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in September 2014 – an experience that she says was spiritually commensurate with performing for Mother Theresa. And, as Spohr reached the end of his life, Ballard brought a Landscape Dance to his garden.

Further musings on memory and retrospective led to experimentations with intergenerational choreography such as the 2004 work George (Grand Dames in Dance)

and Homeagain (2010), in which Browne performed at the age of seventy. When Homeagain was restaged in 2013 it was presented as a homage to Browne, who died in 2012 while at the Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa.

The idea of movement as a form of legacy is amplified as a generation of Canadian dance pioneers dies and as new artists take to the stage. In 2006, Ballard co-founded both a heritage organization (Winnipeg Dance Preser-vation Initiative) with charter RWB dancer Margaret Hample Piasecki and a youth-based collective (Mouve-ment/Winnipeg Dance Projects) with Petursson-Hiley. Mouvement became a conduit not only for the creation of new works but also to restage past works on their own “dance daughters” – Kathleen Hiley (Petursson-Hiley’s daughter); Robyn Thomson (Faye Thomson’s daughter) and Arlo Reva (Ballard’s honorary adopted daughter) – all graduates of SCD. In 2010, Hiley, Thomson and Reva founded their own Winnipeg-based collective, Drive Dance. As a solo artist, Hiley has also performed Bal-lard’s Mara (as has fellow SCD graduate Jolene Bailie) and Lithium for Medea. Other companies such as Young Lungs Dance Exchange and Peter Quanz’s Q Dance (for which Ballard is artistic advisor) have also been spear-headed by young Winnipeg artists in recent years.

We often discuss dance as being the most ephemeral of the arts – vanishing as quickly as it is created. In a way, Ballard’s life and career challenges this notion and promotes movement as a vehicle for the expression of both personal and artistic lineage. Just as we inherit our DNA, dance artists embody the spirit and artistry of their predecessors and their cohorts … eventually add-ing their own indelible mark to the great continuum.

Cindy Brett holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in dance and English litera-

ture from York University. She is currently the Archives Associate

at Dance Collection Danse and the copy editor of The Dance Current

magazine.

Kathleen Hiley in Stephanie Ballard’s Mara (1989) Photo: Lauren Helewa

Back: Faye Thomson, Stephanie Ballard, Arnold Spohr, Rachel Browne, Tom Stroud and Tedd Robinson Front: Gaile Petursson-Hiley and Odette Heyn, 2004

No. 75, Fall 2015 39

Ofilio Sinbadinho still remembers one of his first meetings with a presenter – barely five years ago, near enough for the memory to be fresh and sharp. He and partner Apolonia Velasquez, artistic co-directors of Gadfly, were seeking opportunities for their first produc-tion, Klorofyl – the title perhaps an apt metaphor for two urban dance artists who were – or were seen to be – young and green. They showed the presenter a trailer; she watched, cool, and then turned off the screen and asked them to explain the premise of their work. “It was like a

quiz,” Velasquez interjects, before Sinbadinho continues: “We were like little kids, excited to talk to her.” Finally she said, breezily, “This street dance stuff … it’s just the flavour of the month; it won’t last.”

Sinbadinho found the presence of mind to address her prejudice without anger, but ultimately the most resounding argument is Gadfly’s success – and that of street dance itself, which can celebrate a more than thirty-year history in both Canada and the United States. The form has unapologetically thrust its way forward through Canadian

Gadfl

y

BY SORAYA PEERBAYE

A multi-year grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation has allowed DCD to undertake several new initiatives – one being to address the gaps in the DCD archives. We will be working with one group from three dance genres currently under represented in the archives: urban, Asian and aboriginal. The objectives of this program are for DCD to assist each group with archival preserva-tion techniques; provide a notator to create a score of a selected choreography; and, publish a feature article in the DCD Magazine. Gadfly is the first of the three.

The Evolution of Form

innovators such as RUBBERBAN-Dance Group, which preceded Gadfly by nearly a decade, and Yvon “Crazy Smooth” Soglo’s Bboyizm. There have been succeeding waves of new artists and groups, with distinct intentions: Break It Down (Jon Drops Reid, Toronto), Tentacle Tribe (Elon Högland and Emmanu-elle Lê Phan, Montreal), the 605 Collective (Vancouver), and Luca “Lazylegz” Patuelli (Montreal), who this year delivered the mes-sage on behalf of Canada’s dance community on International Dance Day. And these are only a very few.

Valerie Calam, Paul Kus, Simone Bell, Ofilio Sinbadinho, Apolonia Velasquez and Andrew Chung in Velasquez and Sinbadinho’s Klorofyl Photo: E.S. Cheah


duet suggested by Sinbadinho, was unusual in a field where perfor-mances are either solo or battles of crews. “Our studio was my parents’ apartment,” says Velasquez, “our mirror the little TV that we had.”

Their choreography is full of the ripples and ricochets characteris-tic of street dance – as though the body were a graph of transmis-sions, interruptions, reversals and redirections of force. But it is also theatrical – there are suggestions of persona, a self, a search, that give an attitude to the dance. Early on they were attracted to the music of Canadian electro-violinist Dr. Draw, and most of their choreog-raphies have been accompanied by his compositions – aggressive and lyrical at once. There is grace, but also a wildness in the rise of it, vibratos that threaten to veer out of control. “His music spoke in a way that fit perfectly [with] what we were working on,” says Velasquez. “There is rawness, realness in his music.”

Velasquez was born in Canada to Chilean and Guatemalan parents and studied ballet, Mexican folklore and a touch of jazz before finding street dance at the age of eighteen. Born in El Salvador, Sinbadinho moved to Montreal at age seven, studied martial arts and played soc-cer “like every other Latino.” When a group of rappers accompanied by dancers visited his high school, he was entranced: he began study-ing street dance at around the same age as Velasquez. She became a political science major at Concordia University, “dancing on the side. I didn’t know that being a dancer, a choreographer, was a thing.” Says Sinbadinho, “We wanted to dance, not make money out of it. We liked training, getting better, performing – we stumbled into the profession.”

In the early years, they stud-ied with Montreal-born Natasha Jean-Bart before she assumed the role of Lady Madonna in Cirque du Soleil’s production of LOVE. Jean-Bart introduced them to Brian Green, whose versatility of styles astounded them. “We got schooled,” says Sinbadinho. “He used to teach in New York once a month,” contin-ues Velasquez. “We were addicted – we would spend all our savings to go.” Their first choreography, a

As for Klorofyl, it was cited by Paula Citron in The Globe and Mail as the Breakout Performance of the year and earned three Dora Award nominations, claiming the 2012 Award for Outstanding Perfor-mance. The company has become known for its theatrical productions, but also for the Toronto Urban Dance Symposium, an annual professional development, networking and showcasing event. Since that meet-ing in 2011, Velasquez says, “We no longer doubt what we believe in.”

Gadfly is a joint venture, though its co-directors display very differ-ent temperaments. Sinbadinho is exuberant, quick-speaking, while Velasquez has a thoughtfulness that is both taut and supple at once. Watch them execute a choreography in sync and you’ll see their physical-ity likewise inflected: Velasquez’s compact body locks into each move, smooth and solid as iron pistons, while Sinbadinho is loose, elastic, jittery – micro-twitches in all limbs. I ask them what qualities they see in each other. “Curiosity, authenticity,” says Velasquez of him. “Everything he creates is original.” He laughs, “I thought you would say that I’m all over the place.” Of her, Sinbadinho says simply, “She commands.”

Tara Pillon, Lauren Lyn and Celine Richard-Robichon in rehearsal for Apolonia Velasquez and Ofilio Sinbadinho’s B8NUAR, The Citadel, Toronto Photo: Ofilio Sinbadinho

Celine Richard-Robichon, Andrew Chung, Apolonia Velasquez, Sarah Tumaliuan and Raoul Wilke in

Velasquez and Ofilio Sinbadinho’s Arkemy Photo: E.S. Cheah

No. 75, Fall 2015 41

Sinbadinho and Velasquez are used to being asked to describe what they do – street, dance theatre, contemporary dance … they won’t settle on a single answer. “There are three essentials to street dance: artistry, athleticism and authentic-ity,” says Sinbadinho. “If you have that, I don’t care what style you do.” They’ve mixed house, hip hop, break, locking and popping with contemporary, ballet and pointe. They have a fraught relationship with the word “inspiration”. “I think our work comes out of who we are and where we stand,” comments Sinbadinho, “We talk about soci-ety, about people.” Says Velasquez, “About ourselves.” Sinbadinho continues – “About today.”

Their choreography is peopled with archetypes, whether inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s film Seven Samurai, the imagery of manga or their own socio-political obser-vations on power, vulnerability, the desire to be true to oneself. A tongue-in-cheek humour is part of

transformations, Sinbadinho says, “The show is not abstract. It speaks.”

They have frequently worked with dancers without training in street dance: Stygmata, a commission from Dance Ontario, was created on five classically trained dancers. They created Uplika for Laurence Lemieux in a partnership between Gadfly and Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie and have been commis-sioned by the Canadian Contempo-rary Dance Theatre, MOonhORsE Dance Theatre and Kaeja d’Dance.

Why did they turn to the stage? “Freedom”, Velasquez says simply. It’s an intriguing statement, when one might think of the play and spontaneity of battle as freedom. But it is the answer of a choreo-grapher, as Sinbadinho affirms: “Out of a whole crowd of dancers, of movement, I might just want that hand, with this colour, that text, to get at something meaning-ful. So people see what we see.”

Alexandra “Spicey” Landé, founder of Montreal’s Bust A Move competition, captures the unique-ness of what they do. “Street dancers,” she says, “are used to performing to a crowd; to getting a direct connection, reaction and

gratification from what we do.” Gadfly, she argues, suggests “a story, a way for elements to relate, to make something more meaningful.” The proposal isn’t without its detrac-tors – even Spicey herself. “We have a friendly, ongoing argument about it,” she says. “I’m more of a purist. I love to see street dance just how it is, with honest energy. Apolonia and Ofilio love mixing things up; they’re not afraid to push into less familiar territory – even to the point that it’s not recognizable in the end.”

Still, it’s clear that Spicey embraces the disruption. “They have a genius way of taking something that’s not hip hop, adding their flavour and turning it into something else.” The impact on street dancers, she feels, is significant: “They’re creating a future for street dancers, letting them feel free to express themselves, to ask the question: how can I innovate?”

“For us,” says Sinbadinho, “it needs to draw from different sources, perspectives, music, move-ment, to be interesting. When we’re asked, ‘What do you guys do, is it urban?’ – we joke, ‘It’s ’aybrid. It’s just us.’”

Marisa Ricci, Alyson Miller, Natasha Poon Woo, Melissa Mitro, Ashley St. John and Margarita Soria in Apolonia Velasquez and Ofilio Sinbadinho’s Stygmata Photo: E.S. Cheah

it, too: Arkemy, a commentary on the privilege of living in North America created characters named Aidunno, Woo Ai and Mei-B. Regardless of the


The Toronto Urban Dance Sym-posium (TUDS) was perhaps an early form of Spicey’s question – “How can I innovate?” – while Gadfly was still formulating its own response. TUDS made public their own process of inquiry: how to make a living, how to make a life. “There was nobody helping street dancers,” says Sinbadinho. Christine Moynihan, then executive director of the Dance Umbrella of Ontario, encouraged them to apply for their first grant. The first edition of TUDS in 2010 was simple: work-shops, information sessions and panel discussions. Its achievement was tremendous – it made visible a significant, young and diverse community, skilled and versed in an extraordinary range of styles. Arts funders, service organizations and presenters paid attention.

Now in its sixth edition, TUDS has grown from a one-day event to a five-day festival. Its vision, says Velasquez, is “to highlight differ-ent angles of the culture, of the artist; to empower street dancers, but also to showcase the art form.”

TUDS now also includes profes-sional battles, solo and company and performances, commissions and the Gadfly Awards. This year, Sinbadinho and Velasquez are remounting works on young dancers who haven’t yet worked in a professional company context.

TUDS, says Sinbadinho, was intended “to give the form a chance to become a practice.” He describes what has been the culture’s tendency towards entropy: “You’d go to a showcase, and you’d see someone who’d make you say, ‘Whoa – this one’s killin’ it.’ If this was classical dance, you’d think, in ten years he’ll be in The National Ballet of Canada. But in the context of street dance, even the most brilliant dancer might disappear: this one will end up waitressing; that one will devote her-self to teaching without noticing that she’s stopped performing; another one will go back to college to study kinesiology. Three years later, at that same showcase, you’d find a whole new array of dancers.” Sinbadinho describes Gadfly’s vision to develop the culture so that “the commitment

Laurence Lemieux and Erin Poole in Apolonia Velasquez and Ofilio Sinbadinho’s Uplica, October 15, 2014 Photo: Kristy Kennedy, courtesy of Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie

deepens and the art can evolve. Now, young dancers see dancers who are mature, who are thirty years old, who are training rigorously. They see a dancer like Lady C, and I hear them say: ‘That girl – every night, she goes home, she pushes back her furniture to the wall and she trains.’”

Ronnie Brown of the Oakville Centre for the Performing Arts is among the presenters who have developed a long relationship with the com-pany. Brown programmed Klorofyl in 2012; that same year, before the Oakville premiere, the Downtown Oakville Jazz Festival was featur-ing Dr. Draw, and Brown convinced the committee to present Gadfly alongside as an outreach strategy. It paid off: the company performed on an outdoor stage for an audi-ence of 3000; that fall, when Gadfly performed at the Oakville Centre, the show sold out. “What they were doing wasn’t just for young people,” says Brown. “They were turning on all ages. Children came with parents and grandparents; teenag-ers came in social groups. I don’t

No. 75, Fall 2015 43

to create a new work with young dancers. The subsequent year, Gadfly returned to mentor these artists to create works of their own. “You can see Gadfly’s impact across Canada,” says Simpson-Fowler. “Apolonia and Ofilio are encourag-ing street dance artists and compa-nies who want to get into the theatre, with openness and generosity.”

Street dance still faces significant hurdles in the broader dance com-munity. This year, for the first time, two individual urban dancers were nominated for the Dora Awards: TUDS’ featured performers, Caro-line “Lady C” Fraser and Axelle “Ebony” Munezero competed for the title of Best Female Performance. The award went to Lady C, but not before a dispute within the Toronto Alliance of Performing Arts (TAPA), which presents the awards. Accord-ing to Scott Dermody from TAPA, the issue was the nature of the

think anybody knew they were coming to see a street dance com-pany … that was something they learned reading the program.”

Brown describes Gadfly’s tre-mendous influence beyond the Oakville Centre’s walls, including the company’s recent work with the Hamilton Art Crawl, as well as ArtHouse, an Oakville youth arts organization that prioritizes low-income families. “Apolonia and Ofilio are amazing with people, even if they’ve never experienced dance.” Brown notes both the waves of street dancers who are compelled by the possibilities of the theatre and contemporary dance artists who are influenced by a diversity of urban dance styles and says, “I see this as the future of contemporary dance.”

Andrea Simpson-Fowler, founder of Leaping Feats in Whitehorse, describes an equally enthusias-tic response in a wholly different

context. Simpson-Fowler initially brought in Velasquez to offer work-shops to the large body of students – up to 800 in a season – with a passion for urban dance. “She was incred-ible,” says Simpson-Fowler. “We have foster kids, kids with ADHD, autism; we deal with behavioural issues, coordination issues, learn-ing disabilities. And we also have serious dancers who go on to study dance at Ryerson University. It’s rare to find an instructor who can manage every single point on that spectrum the way Apolonia does.”

Like Brown, Simpson-Fowler has invited the company as often as possible, each time with deep-ening involvement. Through the Breakdancing Yukon Society, Simpson-Fowler’s emerging profes-sionals initiative, she developed a collaboration between Gadfly, Tony “Ynot” DeNaro from Top Rock (New York) and Kim Sato from Vancouver

Lady C and Ofilio Sinbadinho battle at TUDS, 2014 Photo: E.S. Cheah


Skills + Soul event. Perhaps surpris-ingly, it wasn’t the fact that this was a battle (competitions, for instance, are currently ineligible at the Canada Council for the Arts). Dermody states that TAPA was unable to direct jurors as to how to fairly adjudicate the full run of a produc-tion where significant elements of performance change from night to night: the pairings of battlers and the choreography, which is improvised. Gadfly’s registration for Skills + Soul was initially disqualified. The company challenged the ruling, and ultimately TAPA allowed the reg-istration to proceed, but a decision will be made this fall on future eligibility, and a new policy drafted.

To suggest that the improvisa-tional nature of street dance pres-ents a problem for adjudication is questionable, especially in a period where structured improvisation is becoming more and more a part of contemporary dance and inter-disciplinary performance: think of Public Recordings’ what we are saying (Ame Henderson), which won two Dora Awards in 2014. And yet these kinds of negotiations reflect the tensile nature of the politics of urban

dance: the tone may range from anxiety and resistance, to curiosity and a willingness to re-envision. Through juries, policies, criteria for eligibility, assessment, membership … the dance community is being asked to come to terms with urban dance’s origins and culture, even as artists such as Velasquez and Sinbadinho imagine the possibili-ties of the art form in the theatre.

Apolonia Velasquez and Ofilio Sinbadinho with the “Summer Sizzlers” (Town of Oakville camp counsellors) during a rally/training session for the 2015 camp season Photo: Courtesy of the Oakville Centre for the Performing Arts

This is undoubtedly why the journey of companies such as Gadfly matter so much. “They’re fighters,” says Simpson-Fowler. “They got street dance into the Doras; they’re arguing with institutions that have formed opinions on an art they don’t understand. They’re fighting for all of us to get into the arena. Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but my experience with Latinos is that, coming from a country that lives with oppression, they’re critical thinkers and fighters and creative geniuses.”

Velasquez reminds me, too, that the company swears fealty to street. “We’re often asked,” she says, “if we lose the rawness of street dance by bringing it into the theatre. No. Urban dance lives in the studio, the theatre, the street …” Sinbadinho agrees, and advocates for a perspec-tive that is larger than their own aesthetic, that can include not only their company but also the myriad of practitioners of the dance. “You will not see a greater diversity of people in another form,” he argues, speak-ing of age, colour, culture. He describes how enraptured he was travelling to Taiwan, coming across a “massive” museum, glass-walled, within the heart of the city. “At midnight,” says Sinbadinho, “you could walk around and see groups of street dancers, practicing, watching their reflection to perfect their technique. House. Break. Lock and pop. Dancehall, funk. Krump. At midnight, you have people who come together to dance, to express themselves, to create. Imagine if that were the society, here in Canada, everywhere.”

Soraya Peerbaye is an arts manager living in

Toronto. She works primarily with diasporic

dance forms and body percussion, as well

as improvisation- and contemplation-based

practices. She is also a poet whose second

collection, Tell: Poems for a girlhood, is forth-

coming from Pedlar Press.

Apolonia Velasquez and Ofilio Sinbadinho in rehearsal for their work Klorofyl Photo: E.S. Cheah

FoundationsAnonymousThe Bennett Family

FoundationThe Hal Jackman FoundationJudy Jarvis Dance FoundationThe Winnipeg FoundationThe York Wilson Foundation

Visionary Partners ($10,000+)Anonymous Iris Bliss

Patron’s Circle ($1000+)AnonymousMiriam Adams, C.M.Anthony Giacinti

In Memory of Lola MacLaughlin

Ahava Halpern & Frank Lavitt Patti Ross MilneLaurie NemetzRichard Silver Robert S. Williams

Deluxe Box ($500+)Anonymous

In Memory of Grant StrateCarol Bishop-Gwyn Sally Brayley Bliss Earlaine Collins, C.M.Kathryn ElderAnn Hutchinson GuestRobert Johnston Allana Lindgren* Jeffrey MilgramSelma Odom Kenny Pearl* Nadia PottsDora Rust-D’EyeRhonda Ryman-Kane

In Memory of Lawrence Adams & Grant Strate

Jane Spooner Philip & Dianne Weinstein

Orchestra ($250+)Anonymous

In Memory of Michael ConwayLynly Bailie Cheryl Belkin-Epstein Amy Bowring William BoyleAnnette Browne

In Honour of Rachel BrowneElizabeth BurridgeSusan Cohen

In Memory of Lawrence GradusJocelyne Côté-O’Hara, C.M. Michael Crabb Kathleen FraserMaxine Goldberg

Gerald Gray Pamela Grundy

In Memory of Germain PierceRuth E. Hood David Kenyon Sylvia LassamSheila Lawrence Sallie Lyons Susan MacphersonHeather McCallumHeinar PillerGina Lori RileyJohn Ryerson David & Joanne ScottJane W. Smith

In Memory of Grant Strate & Beverly Miller

Tim SpainIn Memory of Diana Spain

Nora Foster StovelIn Memory of Lois Smith & David Adams

Grant Strate, C.M.*Karen Wierucki P. Anne Winter

Balcony ($100+)Anonymous* Anonymous

In Honour of Kate CornellAnonymous

In Memory of Terry GlecoffAnonymous

In Memory of Jack & Joan Arens

Conrad AlexandrowiczJocelyn Allen Francisco Alvarez

In Memory of Grant StrateCarol AndersonJune AndersonRosemary Jeanes Antze

In Memory of Brian MacdonaldMargaret AtkinsonPeggy Baker, C.M.

In Memory of Ahmed Hassan Stephanie Ballard Katherine BarberTrish BeattyMimi Beck John BirkettAmy Blake-HoffmanAnna Blewchamp Sandy & Joe Bochner Cynthia Brett Ann Kipling BrownCarol Budnick Alexandra Caverly-LoweryLynda Ciaschini Yves Cousineau Marilyn CrowleyHelen Davies

Barbara De KatJane Deluzio Judith DoanRay EllenwoodEsmeralda EnriqueCecil FennellJennifer FisherNorma Sue Fisher-Stitt Paul-André Fortier, O.C.Patricia FraserNatasha Frid* Friends of Canadian Art Louise Garfield*Elaine Gold Dr. Bernie Goldman, C.M., &

Fran GoldmanAnn HerringDonald HewittMartha HicksDonalda Hilton Elaine Hoag Marion HopkinsMonique Hubert Mary Aida HughesmanSylvia Hunter Gilles HuotDaniel Jackson Mary Jago-RomerilAllen & Karen KaejaSheila Kennedy Shirley Kline Nancy KroekerPatrick Kutney Slade LanderElizabeth Langley* Robert & Judith LawrieDouglas LissamanJuniper LocilentoBlanche LundDeborah LundmarkSheilagh MacDonald George Mann*Mary Mason Dale MehraKathryn Merrett Doreen MillinCarl Morey Moze MossanenJames Neufeld O Vertigo DanseCaroline O’BrienJean Stoneham OrrSylvia Palmer Joan Pape Bramwell PembertonJoan PhillipsRuth PriddleLinda Rabin Paula Ravitz Jill Reid Wendy ReidJeanne Renaud, C.M.

Don & Betty RichmondRobin RobinsonRichard Rutherford School of Contemporary

DancersJoan Askwith Short*Phillip Silver Robert SirmanMarjorie SorrellJohn Stanley Robert SteinerVicki St. Denys

In Honour of Nadia Potts Jini Stolk Lorna Surmeyan*Deanne Taylor

In Memory of Lawrence Adams, Gladys Forrester & Gweneth Lloyd

Veronica Tennant, C.C.Loree Martin Vellner Jonathan Voigt Barbara Wallace Mary Jane Warner Fen WatkinVicki Adams WillisDianne Woodruff Claire Wootten

In Memory of Grant StrateMax Wyman, O.C.Joyce Zemans, C.M.

Up to $99Anonymous*Anonymous

In Memory of Len GibsonAnonymous

In Memory of Gwen (Cox) Payne

Mauryne AllanPaul Almond, O.C.

In Memory of Angela LeighKelly ArnsbySherry BartonPeggy BernardShira BernholtzDavid Bowring Darcey CallisonPauline CampbellMarie-Josée ChartierWendy Chiles Tina CollettMaureen ConsolatiMichael CopemanKate CornellFreda CrispDeborah Cushing

In Memory of Betty Bates Jesshope

Elaine de Lorimier MathysKen DentColin Dobell

Many Thanks to Our Recent Donors

Georgie DonaisIn Memory of Grant Strate

Martine Époque & Denis PoulinIn Memory of Brian Macdonald

John FaichneySusan FarkasMary FarrarAndrew FeaderMarjory FieldingAviva FleisingPeggy GaleJudith GarayDavid GardnerLeslie GetzDiane GoudreaultDouglas GraydonJanet Hagisavas*Holly HarrisAnne Harvie

Lynne MilnesIn Memory of Bernice Harper

Arlene MinkhorstBarbara MitchellClaudia MooreViv MooreRichard MoorhouseSheila MurrayClairellen NentwichSusan NewloveYvonne Ng

In Honour of Mimi BeckKennetha O’HeanyCarol Oriold*Uma ParameswaranJohn PlankPeggy ReddinJanine RichardJennifer RiegerAndrea Roberts

Mary HeatherCandice HelmAme HendersonSandra HendersonLilian JarvisJoan JohnstonDebbie Kaplan

In Memory of Lawrence GradusStewart LewisKaylynne Lowe

In Memory of Joyce MattickSandy MacphersonTerrill Maguire-LangerJudith & Richard MarcusePatricia MargolesePauline McCullaghPaul McEwan

In Honour of Amy BowringSondra McGregorSylvia McPhee*

Juliana SaxtonLinda SchulzSuzette Sherman Margie SimmsRina Singha Barbara SorenEllen SpencerBarbara Sternberg Ross StuartPhilip SzporerSheri TalosiDominique TurcotteJohn Van BurekCarmen Von RichthofenJanet WaltersJanet WasonPhyllis WhyteAnne WildeMarilee WilliamsRick Wilson

*Donations made in Memory of DCD Co-Founder Lawrence AdamsIndividuals acknowledged above donated between September 1, 2014 and October 1, 2015

If your listing contains inaccuracies or omissions, please contact us.Dance Collection Danse gratefully acknowledges the support of our funders, all the individual donors and foundations,

and the late Nick Laidlaw. Dance Collection Danse extends lasting gratitude for the generous bequests from the Linda Stearns and the Lois Smith Estates.

An agency of the Government of Ontario.Un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario.

Have you considered DCD in your Estate Planning? When Lois Smith passed away in 2011, Dance Collection Danse became a recipient of funds from her estate. She was The National Ballet of Canada’s first prima ballerina and the first to make a future gift to DCD through estate plan-ning. We will be forever grateful.

This gift supported a bold move to our new facility which in turn has boosted our ability to celebrate this remarkable art form she so loved.

You too can help give Canadian dance artists a firm footing in the continuum of history. No matter what your income, you can make a future gift to DCD now without impacting your cash flow, lifestyle or family security. There are different types of planned gifts and contributing can be as simple as adding a sentence or appendix to your current will.

We invite all dance lovers to follow Lois Smith’s lead by including DCD in your estate planning. Through her magnificent generosity, Lois Smith has set the bar high. A great dancer, a great lady… a great example for all.

Please let us know if DCD is named in your Estate Plan. For more information, contact DCD’s Development Co-ordin ator Pamela Grundy – 416-365-3233 [email protected]

Lois Smith in Giselle, 1952 Photo: Gene Draper, courtesy of The National Ballet of Canada Archives

an Ontario government agencyun organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario

25 Years of Kaeja d'Dance in Tandem

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