5 questions with Shion Skye Carter

Shion Skye Carter in 'Residuals' © Lula-Belle Jedynak

by Shanny Rann

I was very surprised, honestly. I am so grateful and honoured to receive this award because it is something that I have heard about from the time I was a student. I never thought that it was something that I would be able to achieve myself.

I only graduated from university a few years ago. A lot of artists who graduate from a postsecondary training program can attest to this feeling of a strange transition phase after you graduate, where a lot of the time you are still considered a student or just finished being a student, in the eyes of different organizations. It is a strange gray area between graduating from school and starting your work as a freelance artist.

I definitely experienced a lot of ups and downs; there are periods that are quite condensed, when you might have rehearsals every single day for a project that you got hired for, and then, you might have a whole month or two with nothing, where you're just doing a parttime job. Those ups and downs took a little while to get used to, and I am glad that I just kept on working through that.

To get to this place now where I am receiving this recognition is amazing. It affirms to me that I am on the right path, and I have to just keep doing what I am doing. It is incredible to get the support from The Dance Centre, the resources, and the financial support, to fully flesh out this new solo work that I have been developing called Residuals and to be able to perform it in the Faris Family Studio, which is the plan for September 2022. That is a venue that is well known in the city, and I think it is going to be a big step for me in my career.

I took my very first ballet class when I was eight years old at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts where I teach now. I only did ballet class there for one year, and I told my mom I don't want to do it anymore. I wanted to do sports instead. That was my first little introduction to dance, and I didn't start again until I was 13. So, I consider my actual dance training to have started when I was 13 years old, which is a bit later than a lot of dance artists that I know who have been dancing since they were little. I was nervous when I first decided to go into pursuing dance because I couldn't help but compare myself a lot and to know that I didn't have as many years of training in my pocket. From 13 years old, I was training in modern dance, contemporary dance, and jazz, and they captured my heart. I loved how expressive I could be, and the connection to my body with which I felt really in tune.

I trained at my high school, Byrne Creek Secondary School in Burnaby, BC. They have a strong dance and drama program. I was able to do lots of different technique classes, as well as teaching younger students. They also had an after-school program that was more of a dance company. I did all of my early dance training there which was an amazing public school resource to have. Shannon Tirling and Allison Murphy were my teachers. After high school, I auditioned for the Simon Fraser University Dance program. My dance teacher in high school went through the SFU dance program, so I knew that it existed. When I was in Grades 11 and 12, we would go watch the student dance performances and the repertory shows at SFU. It was very inspiring to watch the performances. Initially, I wanted to be a nutritionist or a physiotherapist, then I was like, “what the heck?! I am just going to try auditioning,” since I saw the open call for new students to audition. I got accepted and I haven’t looked back since. I did five years of my degree; I took an extra year to complete a kinesiology minor as I have a potential plan to go into a masters in physiotherapy later on. At the moment, I'm just loving and focusing on being an artist.

I am so grateful that I have been able to not only focus on creating my own projects, but also be a part of quite a few of my colleagues’ projects, especially during COVID-19. It has been a rough time for the arts and a lot of artists have just been persevering and continuing to create work, despite everything that is going on and the impact on this industry.

I am working on quite a few of my own projects; a lot of them integrate calligraphy or my Japanese heritage which I really love exploring and allowing to permeate through multiple projects. I just completed one performance at Spanish Banks Beach with Kisyuu for a live performance version of Flow Tide, a dance film that is being screened at the Dancing on The Edge Festival 2021. We did a live performance for Powell Street Festival in July this year. We are doing one more performance for Vines Art Festival in August. We use giant calligraphy brushes and a giant piece of canvas fabric, like dancing calligraphy with tools on a giant scale. That has been quite fun! Kisyuu and I connected over Instagram last summer and we made the dance film without having met in person before. We only met a couple months ago to start rehearsing for this live performance. We got along right away, and I feel like I have known her for years. I would love to continue developing Flow Tide in different forms or to do another performance collaboration with Kisyuu.

This fall, I'm going to Galiano Island for a short residency and to make a short film. Galiano Island has a history of Japanese settlers who were there over a hundred years ago. There are remnants of the charcoal pit kilns they used to burn wood into charcoal. I am going to reflect on the Japanese settler history there. I will also be continuing the development process of my solo Residuals, that I have been working on for a year and a half now (it got delayed because of COVID-19), in August and September with the technical residency at Scotiabank Dance Centre, to prepare the lighting and video projection. I'll be presenting the first version of it as a premiere in Montreal at Tangente in October this year. Then, I will have a bit of a break before I perform at Scotiabank Dance Centre in September 2022, supported through the Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award.

I am still working on expanding my network and my connections with artists in the local dance community and across Canada as well. I am trying to develop my own choreography alongside being a dancer who is hired for other projects. One big goal I have is to travel. I haven't been to Japan in a couple years, especially because of COVID-19. I've only been there just to visit family, but I want to travel there as a dance artist and to do a performance or residency, and to connect with the local communities of dance artists. Lately, I've been connecting with Japanese Canadian artists through Powell Street Festival and through the Nikkei Museum and Japanese Cultural Centre in Burnaby. There is an online directory for Japanese Canadian artists as well. It has been amazing to connect and to share personal experiences with them.

Ziyian is such a prolific dance artist and very established in the community. When I was a student at SFU, she was one of the guest choreographers. I was not in the cast that she choreographed a piece on, but I watched her work and was captivated by her choreography. I never really had much of a conversation with her.

BC Arts Council offers a mentorship grant which allows you to receive mentorship over the course of several months to a year with an established artist in your field. I knew that as a recent graduate from SFU, I needed to discover more of my voice as a dance artist and a choreographer. One thing I really want to do is honour my Japanese heritage and bring that to the forefront. I am curious how aspects of my ancestry and traditional art forms that I practiced when I was younger (like calligraphy) can not only coexist side-by-side, but also blend together and be on a level playing field.

I noticed that Ziyian is extremely powerful in her work. She has a strong artistic voice, but she honours her heritage as well. The fact that she is also an Asian Canadian dance artist is very inspiring to me. I reached out to her without having spoken much to her before, asking if she would be interested in mentoring me for a few projects. We proposed to BC Arts Council that she would help me develop my solo, Residuals. I would get her outside eye, her mentorship in creating my own choreography, and also a chance to be an apprentice in her company.

Our relationship has really grown since we started working together in the fall of 2019. I consider her one of my very dear friends and colleagues, and also somebody whom I look up to a lot. One of the recent projects we have done together was Made In Voyage, which was a series of performances she put on at Morrow (a new art space she started during COVID-19 when many were closing down), drawing stories from our grandmothers. I also got to be in Spells for Chinatown, which was a project she pioneered at the Dr Sun YatSen Classical Chinese Garden in May. Going forward, I would love to keep getting her advice and see how I can work more in depth with her company, Dumb Instrument Dance.

So much of being a dance artist is about connection and the people you have in your network. Building relationships with people is hugely important and is the main way I have gotten hired for projects, whether it is meeting people at performances, introducing myself, connecting because either we are both in a different project or we want to collaborate.

The biggest advice I can give, for any younger artists, is to fake it till you make it, with confidence. I grew up being so shy and nervous about instigating conversations or taking up space with my ideas. I always kept things to myself, and I realized I was not going to get anywhere by continuing to be nervous. I didn't have confidence in the things that I had to say or the opinions that I had. Giving feedback to other artists is great. Don't be afraid to reach out if you need to. Just pretend that you're confident, just for yourself. It'll come eventually, naturally, the more you practice it.

Don't be afraid to reach out to an artist whom you admire, whether it's to receive mentorship or just to collaborate and let them know that you would love to work with them. It never hurts to reach out to somebody. It is better to go out and try to make these things happen instead of waiting for someone else to pass it to you, especially in Vancouver, where there are not a lot of auditions happening.

If you are wanting to be a part of a certain process or a project, but you don't see what you're looking for in the community, try to find ways to make it happen for yourself. You can make events or projects happen, you can apply for grants, you can get the support from community partners or venues, it's all worth a try.

It's a unique artistic community in that almost everybody is an independent, freelance artist who is making projects happen for themselves. There are not a lot of dance companies that you can audition for or sign a contract for one year—that traditional method and hierarchy does not exist here. So, put your foot down to make space for yourself, and don’t be afraid to do that, is probably what I would tell my younger self as well.

Shion Skye Carter is a dance artist originally from Tajimi, Japan and based in Vancouver, Canada. Through choreography hybridized with calligraphy, video, and sculptural objects, her work celebrates the intersection of her ethnographic and queer identities, in connection with her heritage. As co-founder of olive theory, an interdisciplinary duo with musician Stefan Nazarevich, she collaborates to experiment at the intersection between embodied performance, installation art, and live sound. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Dance and Kinesiology from Simon Fraser University.