Back Issue

Who owns movement? The issue is vastly complex because movement originates from bodies, and bodies – like thoughts – are “things” that we can say, assuredly, no one owns; they’re not property. But choreography and style can be. Dance is created, practised and shared in varied contexts, each of which come with a prescribed or loose set of expectations surrounding authorship. The features in this issue engage with these ideas. 

In our main feature, former TDC editor Lee Slinger explores contemporary dance’s tenuous relationship with intellectual ownership and how the evolving relationship between artists and digital media sharing have shaped how these concepts are understood. Slinger also weighs in with Carys Craig, a scholar of intellectual property, who argues that the legal system imposes binaries, such as choreographer/ performer or work/performance, on creative work that no longer speak to how dance is created and performed. 

These complications are by no means limited to contemporary dance. Ola Mirzoeva took a deep dive with two founding dancehall artists, Orville Hall and Carlene Smith, and discussed dancehall’s co-option throughout popular culture. Advising against learning and repeating the steps via YouTube, Hall expresses the importance of studying the form from a knowledgeable source, explaining, “[Dancers] don’t look at the cultural aspects. Our history is lost in translation.” The piece also features several dance artists who have studied dancehall abroad and are practising in Canada. 

This issue’s photo essay features two dance projects that reimagine the works of founding modern dance artists. First, we peek into Winnipeg-based artist Kathleen Hiley’s work on the movement of Isadora Duncan. Hiley worked closely with Jeanne Bresciani, artistic director of the Isadora Duncan International Institute, and eventually acquired a selection of Duncan’s choreography to 24 Preludes and Marche Slav, a work of social protest. The second project, Slipstream, is an installation by Jenn E. Norton, performed by Katie Ewald, with garment design by Juliann Wilding. The work is an installation that reimagines fin-de-siècle dancer and inventor Loïe Fuller through video and post-production techniques. There’s one catch: the dancer is absent. 

Isabelle Van Grimde is our feature profile artist. Philip Szporer provides insight into her thirty-year practice, through which she has been blurring the boundaries between technology and dance. Szporer sat down with the Montréal-based choreographer to discuss her introduction to movement, the beginnings of Studio 303, her company Van Grimde Corps Secrets, as well as her newest work, Eve 2050, which utilizes technology as “a form of magic” to create enchanted spaces. 

For those of you jumping back into the studio in September, check out our Healthy Dancer column on “the ethics of risk” by Jon Drops Reid, dance outreach consultant at Canadian Actors’ Equity. Have a safe and creative fall!

For Wolfe, dance has proven to be an exercise in connection – to the artists he has met through mentorship and collaboration, to the music that shapes his practice and to the Indigenous heritage at the core of his personal and national identities.

Patteron-O’Brien is a Vancouver-based emerging dance artist whose artistic practice is driven by curiosity. Since she graduated from the dance program at Simon Fraser University in 2015, her focus has been drawn toward building a career as an independent choreographer, producing works that she describes as gestural, abstract, devoid of emotion and structured by complex patterns and rhythms.

Originally from Porto Alegre, Brazil, Moraes is an alumnus of the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and the founder, artistic director, choreographer and researcher of Newton Moraes Dance Theatre. His dance company has toured the world, including Brazil, Germany and throughout Canada and is now celebrating its twentieth anniversary.

What are the ethics at stake for choreographers when asking dancers to execute risky choreography? In weighing the ethics of risk, the power inherent in the choreographer’s role is entirely different from an autonomous choice of a dancer in motion.

With an illustrious, twenty-year career as principal dancer with The National Ballet of Canada, Chan Hon Goh now directs both the Goh Ballet Academy and Youth Company Canada, as well as serving as artistic director for the Global Dance Challenge. Extending her reach and always advocating for the arts, Goh also serves as a jury member for several international competitions. 

Goh is a founding member of Vancouver’s Arts and Culture Policy Council, which assists in giving the creative community a voice. Her accomplishments, with irrepressible devotion to the enhancement of the cultural life of Canada, have garnered several prestigious awards including the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, the YWCA Women of Distinction Award, the New Pioneers Arts Award and the Best Teacher Award at the World Ballet Competition.

Like any versatile dance partner, fans take the stage in multiple dance forms.

“You have to be one with the fan,” says Patrick Alcedo, a Philippine folk dance artist with a PhD in dance history and theory. “You become a part of it,” says Veronica Choi, a Chinese folk dance performer and teacher. “They become an extension of my body,” says Rosanna Terracciano, an independent artist who works amongst the intersection of flamenco, dance, contemporary performance and film.

Wells-Smith spoke with Alcedo, Choi and Terracciano about the relevance of fans in their respective dance forms. In many different dance forms, fans are used to create images, enhance choreography and (sometimes) honour tradition.

Vancouver-born Livona Ellis started dancing at the age of eleven at Arts Umbrella under the direction of Artemis Gordon. After completing the graduate program in 2010, Ellis was offered an apprenticeship with Ballet BC and joined as a full-time member after one season. She has been part of Springboard Danse Montréal, Movement Invention Project NYC, the Banff Professional Dance Program and the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance Summer Program. She has created work for Live at the Bolt: Small Stage and at Dance Deck Trois. In 2017, she received the Mayor’s Arts Award for Emerging Artist. Ellis is currently on faculty at Arts Umbrella.

The concept for this work came from Donna Hilsinger, executive director of the Algoma Fall Festival. Soon after, the piece was joined by Shirley Horn who served for six years as Missanabie Cree First Nation Chief and is the first-ever chancellor of Algoma University. An artist, speaker and extraordinary leader, Horn brings with her insight, strength and hope. What brought all three women together was a desire to share and connect – to connect old wisdom with new challenges. 

The full-evening program has two parts: Bears Stars and Trees and the new thirty-minute creation, Omen. It asks us to consider “Where do we go from here?” and “What can we learn from old teachings that is applicable to the present?” The dance artists involved include Arik Pipestem (former Cirque du Soleil hoop dancer from Tsuut’ina First Nation), Montana Summers (Oneida of the Thames First Nation), Brendan Wyatt (contemporary dance artist) and two emerging dance artists: Eleanor van Veen, former member of The Chimera Project’s Company B mentorship program, and Maia Joseph, part of the summer apprentice program through Company B. Inner impulses and reaction are the movement fuel for the piece, which is metamorphosing into a vocabulary that channels the cast’s experience in powwow, First Nations hoop dance, ballet, western contemporary dance and hip hop.