I first picked up the The Dance Current off the lobby coffee table at the School of Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers. I soon realized how little I knew about the history of my own practice and the artists creating work across the country. It’s not an overstatement to say that the magazine inspired me to continue my studies in dance. As a contributor to the magazine for over a decade, it’s a thrilling challenge to curate its pages.
The current moment is a captivating time to engage in dance dialogue. I began in this position a week before the word appropriation was brought to the forefront of Canadian magazine publishing, adding fuel to the conversation about not only who is represented within a magazine but also who is writing in it. With my colleagues, I am working toward continuing to broaden who is writing about dance in Canada.
Each of the features in the magazine reflects, in one way or another, changing paradigms for dancers, dance creators and viewers. Hilary Bergen’s feature explores the intersections of dance and augmented reality technologies. Challenging the commonly held fear that technologies will render embodied experiences obsolete, Bergen outlines how Canadian dance artists are discovering ways to highlight sensory experiences through technological interaction.
Halifax-based artist Liliona Quarmyne, the subject of our feature profile, makes work that intersects activism and social justice. Michael Lake details her recent contribution to a project inspired by the Shubenacadie River environmental crisis in Nova Scotia. The work was part of the Global Water Dances project, an initiative for which over 100 performances were created around the world to highlight local water issues.
In the photo essay writer Lucy May, with editorial advisor Vladimir “7Starr” Laurore, shares how Krump made its way to Canada from the inner city of Los Angeles, through TV and YouTube channels, and how it is being harnessed for youth advocacy across the country. The essay is a fit companion to our Influences piece by Jillian Groening, in which she interviewed dance artists who use social media to share work, exploring how this platform has allowed them to rethink how they represent and present their work.
Finally, as more artists are looking for alternative vocabularies in their own artistic practice, we ask, in which contexts is classical training still relevant? Aparita Bhandari spoke with established dance creators, who each articulated their complicated relationships in relation to training, technique and evaluation. The article is meant as a preliminary discussion that I hope will widen to include a range of voices – including perspectives that address which bodies might be left out when strictly adhering to classical forms.
Let’s bring these conversations to life this fall. In this vein, I encourage writers and artists to reach out, share their work and collaborate with The Dance Current.
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Emma Doran / Photo by John Carvalho