fall 2021
TRAVIS KNIGHTS At his own table
DIGITAL UPRISING
The value of mediated performance
HEART OF THE CITY
The creativity of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside annual festival
Display until January 5, 2022 / $11.95
Joshua Hidson Royal Winnipeg Ballet & Natsumi Tsurata Ballet de Barcelona Bridge Program Graduates Photo: David Cooper
Bleiddyn del Villar Bellis Director Fellow and Examiner CC-CICB Enrico Cecchetti Final Diploma VICTORIA ACADEMYOFBALLET.CA
Located in beautiful Victoria, British Columbia, Victoria Academy of Ballet offers a half-day Professional Training Program for students in high school, and a three-year Post-Secondary Bridge Program to earn a diploma in classical ballet and contemporary techniques.
contents
Lilia Leon / Photo by Mahrie Boyle (Create Flow Photos); Freya Björg Olafson and Lise McMillan in MÆ - Motion Aftereffect / Photo by Josh Dookhie; lexwst'i:lem Drum Group / Photo by David Cooper
Volume 24 Issue 4 fall 2021
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DEPARTMENTS
CURRENTS
FEATURES
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Masthead
W HAT’ S O N ?
TECH NOLOGY
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What You’re Reading
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24
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Event Previews
N E WS
Editor’s Letter Contributors
Scotiabank Dance Centre Celebrates 20 Years 12
The landmark Vancouver building houses hundreds of classes, rehearsals and events by anne dion HISTO RICA L MOM E N TS
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Breaking Glass Ceilings
The legacy of Canadian after-school hip-hop clubs by kj dowdie F IRST P E R S O N
In the Throes of Wild Abandonment
ON THE COVE R
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Wants His Own Table
If we no longer believe in the notion of suffering for our art, does that make us lesser artists? by roxy menzies
20 Travis Knights
In the midst of a social reckoning, the renowned Canadian tap dancer challenges audiences to ask themselves, “Who are we to each other?” by catherine abes
S HO RT STO RIE S
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B O DY
17 fall 2021
The Career Chronicles Part 3
Dance artists find unique ways to boost their income by emily pettet
Back To School
With great space comes great responsibility. Here are five strategies to avoid injury when returning to training by geneviève renaud and dinah hampson T IP S
19 TRAVIS KNIGHTS At his own table
DIGITAL UPRISING
The value of live dance vs. online
HEART OF THE CITY
Vancouver Downtown Eastside’s annual festival
A Playful Life
Feeling anxious about going back to work? Try finger painting, face painting and jumping in puddles by kara latta
Digital Uprising
Has the hotbed of virtual dance content created during COVID-19 changed how artists and audiences value mediated performance? by jillian groening PH OTO ESSAY
Heart of the City Festival: A Retrospective 30
Community-driven by the organizations and artists of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, this year's festival explores “Stories We Need to Hear” IN CONV ERSATION
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Presenters, What Do You Expect?
The art of BIPOC artists is often expected to reflect the culture and ethnicity of the creator by robyn grant-moran
POSTSCRIPTS F IRST PERSON
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Reforming a Broken Relationship
After a series of injuries, Pilates helped me transition from feeling defeated to reconciling with my body by kristen lawson L ETTERS
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To Our Teachers
by christina de la cruz, samyuktha punthambekar, patricia allison POETRY
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Cone Vision
by sarah koekkoek
thedancecurrent.com
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feature profile
Travis Knights Wants His Own Table In the midst of a social reckoning in Canada, tap dancer Travis Knights challenges audiences to ask themselves, “Who are we to each other?” by catherine abes photography by marlowe porter
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the dance current
FALL 2021
I
n November 1989, Gregory Hines delivered a rhythmic love letter to Sammy Davis Jr. through the stage of the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. “I feel so much love for you that I’m going to try and dance it out, for you,” Hines said to Davis, who was sitting in the audience. Then with his tap shoes as his pen, every word, every pause and detail of Hines’ tribute resonated through the venue. The performance was part of Sammy Davis Jr.’s 60th Anniversary Celebration, a prime-time tribute to the Rat Pack member’s career in show business. It was one of Davis’s last public performances; he would pass away from throat cancer the following May. He couldn’t speak during the celebration as he was undergoing radiation. But something magical happened: Davis slipped on his tap shoes and joined Hines onstage. What happened next is what Canadian tap legend Travis Knights describes as “a rhythmic conversation,” as Davis and Hines improvised intricate rhythms back and forth, accenting and enlivening the simple jazz piano melody being played. Knights watched the tape of that performance (originally broadcast in 1990) repeatedly, leaving him in awe of the art form. “I had seen tap dance in the movies before, but what Sammy and Gregory were doing was different. It was alive, extra-dimensional,” Knights writes in an email. “We call it tap, but I think ‘the form’ that I’m enchanted by is unsayable. So a lot of my peers call it the DaNcE [sic]. It’s a secret language that can’t be described, only spoken through rhythm.” At the time, Knights’ parents had put him in team sports, hoping to find him a hobby that would help him get over his shyness. The effort failed: hockey was “a nightmare,” he says, and baseball “a little bit better but also a nightmare.” (To this day, Knights says team sports are still alien to him.) But when he saw Davis and Hines tap together, his interest was piqued. This was the first miracle in a series of many that Knights says defined his dance journey. The renowned Canadian tap dancer’s professional career started in 2000, when he was cast as a principal dancer in the film Bojangles starring Hines and Savion Glover. Two decades later, his name nearly rivals the acclaim of the latter legends; he’s worked with Warner Brothers, Cirque du Soleil, the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, Tapestry Dance Company, the Vancouver International Tap Dance Festival and more. The second miracle was Knights’ introduction to Ethel Bruneau. When he asked his mother if he could take tap lessons, she started asking around to find a class for him. One of her friends suggested Bruneau – Montreal’s queen of tap – who wasn’t listed in the phone book. “I still remember the first lesson. I walked up these stairs as if I was ascending into heaven,” says Knights. “And this old Black woman from Harlem, New York, was teaching.” The iconic Bruneau, also known as Miss Swing, has been tap dancing for more than 80 years and teaching for more than 60. She trained at Mary Bruce’s School of Dance from the age of three, where she grew up dancing with Hines. She came to Montreal in 1953 and never left,
singing and dancing in dozens of clubs and making a name for herself before founding the Ethel Bruneau Tap Dance School in the early ’60s. Bruneau considers herself a preacher, teaching the gospel of tap dancing to her disciples. In the same way Bruce taught her, Bruneau ensures her students pay reverence to tap legends before them, or the people “whose shoulders you stand on,” she said in an episode of Knights’ Tap Love Tour podcast (a passion project of Knights’ in which he interviews tap dancers from across the globe about the history and artistry of the style). Knights says that at his very first lesson, he learned about toes, heels and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. “It was unacceptable for [Bruneau] for any of her students not to know the names Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson, Henry LeTang, Jeni LeGon, Jimmy Slyde and Bunny Briggs,” Knights explains. “It was important to her that we knew what we were doing and why we were doing it.” Bruneau made sure her students knew that tap was not just a practice but a distinct culture – more specifically, a Black culture.
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To understand the history of tap, you have to follow the rhythm. It started with African religious circle dance rituals involving drums and a “rhythmic relationship to nature, each other and the divine, all interwoven,” Knights explains. When Africans were kidnapped, enslaved and brought to America, these cultural traditions had to be adapted. Drums were prohibited in the 1740s to prevent enslaved Africans from uprising, which forced them to come up with percussive substitutes. This is when the rhythms became “corporeal,” Knights says, with music being communicated through the body: handclapping, patting thedancecurrent.com
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photo essay
Heart of the City Festival: A Retrospective Community-driven by the organizations and artists of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, this year's festival explores “Stories We Need to Hear”
30
the dance current
FALL 2021
lexwst’i:lem Drum Group (2020) / Photo by Mark Montgomery
Seeking to uplift and destigmatize Vancouver’s vibrant Downtown Eastside – commonly known for homelessness, addiction and crime – the 18th annual Heart of the City Festival showcases the area’s
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artists and their stories. Produced by Vancouver Moving Theatre, the festival was
Pour une dix-huitième édition, le festival annuel Heart of the City
founded in 2004 by Savannah Walling, artistic director, and Terry
met en vedette des artistes et des récits du Downtown Eastside
Hunter, executive director. The festival hosts a plethora of artistic
à Vancouver. Le festival veut soulever et déstigmatiser ce vibrant
offerings including theatre, dance, music, history walks, readings
quartier, connu pour ses problèmes d’itinérance, de drogues et
and films across various locations throughout the area. This year,
de criminalité. Une production du Vancouver Moving Theatre, le
the festival runs Oct. 27 through Nov. 7 and includes more than 60
festival a été fondé en 2004 par la directrice artistique Savannah
community partners.
Walling et le directeur général Terry Hunter. Heart of the City
The festival’s goal is to feature and develop the artists of
accueille une variété d’offrandes artistiques — théâtre, danse,
the low-income neighbourhood, who are often denied the
musique, promenades historiques, lectures et cinéma — sur nombre
same opportunities to participate in the arts as those in other
de sites dans le quartier. Cette année, le festival se déroule du 27
communities throughout the country. Historically, the Downtown
octobre au 7 novembre et compte plus de soixante partenaires
Eastside has been disproportionately affected by multiple social
communautaires. L’objectif est de présenter les artistes du
issues including homelessness and drug overdoses.
quartier défavorisé souvent exclus des occasions artistiques
“We’ve also wanted to provide a kind of window into the
régulières. Historiquement, le Downtown Eastside souffre de façon
community that’s honest and truthful to the larger community
disproportionnée de plusieurs problèmes sociaux. « Nous voulions
outside of us to help reduce some of the stigma that can get
ouvrir une porte sur une communauté avec honnêteté et lucidité
attached to an inner-city community,” says Walling.
pour aider à réduire la stigmatisation qui colle aux habitants du centre-ville », explique Walling. Cet article présente des photos des
Continue through the following pages to see photos from the
dix-huit années du festival.
festival’s 18 years >>
thedancecurrent.com
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poetry
cone vision place a sphere around your face connected to another face in silence, stare breathe have a conversation giggle feel the vibrations notice, when do we intersect?
poem and drawing by sarah koekkoek