PREVIEW: Fall 2022

fall 2022

ON EDUCATION

TITANS THROUGH TIME Ethel Bruneau, Amy Sternberg, René Highway, Saida Gerrard, Willy Blok Hanson

THE BATTLE OF BODY SHAME How do we create body shame free education spaces?

THE PLACE OF RACE Critical reflections on dance studies education

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contents

Willy Blok Hanson (1955) / Photo courtesy of Dance Collection Danse; Candice Irwin and student / Photo by J. Casson Photos; Jess Huggett / Photo by Alvin Sim, courtesy of Propeller Dance; ON THE COVER: Ethel Bruneau and Cornelius "Poppy" Scott, The Melody Twins (1950) / Photo courtesy of Dance Collection Danse

Volume 25 Issue4 fall 2022

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21

36

DEPARTMENTS

CURRENTS

FEATURES

4

Masthead

W HAT’ S O N ?

F EATURE PROF IL E

6

Digital Reads

9

16

7

Editor’s Letter

8

Event Previews

P RO F IL E

11

The Value of the Spirit

Kunji Ikeda starts in a new position at the University of British Columbia this fall by jenna shummoogum

Contributors

F IRST P E R S O N

12

The Place of Race

Critical reflections on dance studies education by amy hull S P O N S O R E D CO N TE N T

The School of Toronto Dance Theatre Ushers in a StudentCentred Curriculum 13

ON THE COVER FEATUR E

After appointing new artistic and pedagogical director Sasha Ivanochko, the school enters a transformational time

Titans Through Time 26

fall 2022

HISTO RICA L MOM E N TS

The Trailblazing Galway Sisters of St. John’s 14

Their legacy of dance instruction continues 80 years later by donna ball, with research support by amy bowring, executive and curatorial director of dance collection danse B O DY

15

Ask the Chiropractor

Dr. Stephen Gray answers the most common questions about chiropractic care

TITANS THROUGH TIME Ethel Bruneau, Amy Sternberg, René Highway, Saida Gerrard, Willy Blok Hanson

IN PRACTICE

21

The Battle of Body Shame

If body shaming is more than words, how do we create dance education spaces free of it? by candice irwin MENTORSH IP TA L K

36

Academy of Peers

Jess Huggett and Elizabeth Emond-Stevenson on how their peer-to-peer mentorship differs from a traditional student-teacher relationship interview by catherine abes

POSTSCRIPTS CH ECK IT OUT

Five educators, some more known than others, who helped shape the industry by emily pettet, in collaboration with dance collection danse

ON EDUCATION

Curious Linda

At 76, Linda Rabin, the prolific modern dance and educator, still wonders: What’s next? by philip szporer

Toronto-Born Choreography App Levels Up 43

With an understanding of the financial strains often placed on those in the arts industry, StageKeep continues to offer flexible payment options by anne dion LOV E L ETTERS

45

An Alternative Perspective

Investigating the teaching style of De-Ann Weekes by norah wardell POETRY

46

Sometimes I Am

by mitchell larsen

THE BATTLE OF BODY SHAME How do we create body shame free education spaces?

THE PLACE OF RACE Critical reflections on Dance Studies education

thedancecurrent.com

3

feature profile

Curious Linda At 76, Linda Rabin, the prolific modern dance artist and educator, still wonders: What’s next?

Rabin / Photo by Tony Chong

by philip szporer

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the dance current

FALL 2022

Rabin, five years old / Photo courtesy of Rabin

The swelter of summer heat leaves a glow on the skin. As we sit in

her airy kitchen, at a vintage round wooden table, Linda Rabin serves two glasses of cool water to quench our thirst. The kitchen in her thirdfloor flat in Montreal’s Mile End district, where she’s lived for 41 years, leads to a narrow back balcony overlooking an enclosed courtyard. It’s a longtime immigrant neighbourhood, changing with time, but where she feels very much part of the fabric of the “hood,” as she calls it.

In the early 1980s, I took her modern dance classes at Linda Rabin Danse Moderne. She was authoritative and precise, with keen eyes and voluminous, curly dark hair. Today, her still full head of hair, now greyer, frames her same broad smile. Quite like old times.

Rabin’s calm and responsive as she recalls an early awakening. “I remember as a young kid, I was lying in my bed and I saw what seemed like a meteorite in the space up towards the ceiling. It was both coming towards me and away from me. There was a sense of ‘almost’ that I could connect, but not quite. I have no idea what it means, but perhaps when I die, I will know.” It’s a plainspoken statement of practical mystery. The memory grounds her, sparks emotion and is fundamental to understanding Rabin’s gifts as a seeker.

Rabin’s extraordinary skill has been to shift conceptions of dance and movement in Canada. Throughout her prolific career, she’s assumed many roles as a teacher of dance – notably co-founding the school that would become École de danse contemporaine de Montréal – a choreographer, a rehearsal director, a somatics practitioner, a mentor, and a Continuum teacher. Her depth of questioning and deep listening have resonated across generations of students, and the Canadian dance scene is better for it.

Rabin’s quest as a youngster to today is deeply linked to her innate curiosity, cultivated in her early Hebrew education. Born and bred in Montreal, she attended the United Talmud Torahs of Montreal day school, a parochial system where she was educated in four languages.

“Whenever we studied the chumash – the bible – whatever we were reading, there was a deeper meaning. You cannot take it as a story.

It represents something. So whatever I see or look at, I feel that it symbolizes something that I will understand at some point,” she says, when the meaning emerges at the right time. “I’ve carried that through my life. In my teaching, at whatever phase, from early on as a technique teacher to now, I’m looking at the person in front of me for what’s lying beneath what’s evident. That’s been my pursuit.”

Carol Prieur, a dance artist and longtime student, calls Rabin transformative. “She’s searching constantly, and I’m drawn to that,” she says. Rabin’s vibrant nature, her humour, playfulness and perspective are a big part of her draw, and her extraordinary teaching skills are unsurpassed. Lin Snelling, a dancer who teaches, writes and performs, characterizes Rabin, in her teaching capacity, as “insightful, combining her own accrued wisdom with her understanding of the potential of each student on their own, and also together in the room.”

She is 76. Her artistic imagination coalesces a sense of the spiritual transcendence with an engaging curiosity that engages movement as

life. She seems to have always been moving and dancing. And she’s not letting up. Movement is what connects her to the world. With recent accolades like the Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award, presented by the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards, and being named a member of the Order of Canada, her legacy is still growing.

—

At five years-old, Rabin took ballet and tap at a neighbourhood dance school. After-school ballet classes at the Talmud Torahs, taught

by Tatiana Kushinsky, further fueled her passion. As a teen, she was enthralled by the television program Your Hit Parade where the highlight would be a dance choreographed to the number one song of the week. “I thought, That’s what I want to do. I want to be a choreographer,” she says.

In 1960, when Rabin was about 13, a classmate at Mary Beetle’s Dance School told her about Elsie Salomons’ creative dance classes. She loved what her classmate was describing so told her mother she wanted to join. She then called Salomons and indicated that she wanted to be a choreographer.

“Well, before you can be a choreographer, I think you need to learn to dance,” said Salomons, then asking a young Rabin why she wanted to do this.

“Well, I want to feel like I can dance whatever I want to be,” said Rabin, seeing an apple on the table. “If I had to dance the apple, I could dance an apple. That’s what I want to do!”

At 14, she arrived at Salomons’ studio, which offered an eclectic mix of folk dance, modern dance, ballet, improvisation and creative dance.

In her first class, the students wore black leotards and tights cut off at the feet, and they all improvised around a shy, non-moving, Rabin.

Salomons picked up on Rabin’s self-consciousness, and when the improv was over, she encouraged her to move to the other side of the room. “We went off and improvised again. I was surrounded by a couple of people who were so involved in the improv, and I felt it so strongly. I was being taken by the energy around me. I had no choice, so I started to improvise. I remember it so clearly… I was in prison, behind bars, and I had handcuffs. I was chained at my wrists, and I started to move, and the whole thing was about freeing myself from the handcuffs and the bars and opening into the light. From that moment on I was home free.” To this day, Rabin credits Salomons’ encouragement and smarts for opening up the doors to that internal creativity, allowing her to express emotions through movement, and instilling confidence that nobody could take away.

When she was 18, this encouragement landed Rabin at New York’s Juilliard School in the mid-1960s. She immersed herself in José Limón’s musicality and fluidity, the intensity and power of the spiral in Martha Graham’s technique, as well as Anna Sokolow’s composition classes. The thedancecurrent.com

17

in practice

The Battle of Body Shame If body shaming is more than words, how do we create dance education spaces free of it? by candice irwin

Irwin and students / Photo by J. Casson Photos

Trigger warning: this feature discusses disordered eating

thedancecurrent.com

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the battle of body shame

studio owner. “I was always pretty petite. I never had a teacher call me fat or tell me I need to lose weight to win a role. And yet, I still never felt that I was good enough. I still never felt like my body was good enough.

If nobody was ever actively telling me, then how did that happen that I felt that way?”

I often ask myself that same question. I also ask myself: What is the solution? If body shaming is more than words, then how do we create dance education spaces free of it? I spoke with some of my colleagues and arts educators who I admire about how they unpack their inherited body shame, how they create safer spaces for their students, and why they believe this work is important for the future of the dance industry.

M

y mother often tells the story of how I walked up to her when I was four and said, “Mommy, I want to go to dance class.” I don’t recall this moment but I do remember hopping, wiggling and twirling whenever my The Little Mermaid cassette was played. And I remember, in my first dance class, loving to race across the community centre floor with my friends to pose in front of the back wall, a backdrop of brightly coloured squares. Moving my body with other people brought me indescribable joy. But how do you help a young child transition from lively dance parties to focused dance education?

As a past dance student, my mother took finding a good dance school seriously. She asked family and friends about their children’s experiences at various schools and interviewed studio owners about their beliefs and practices. My parents wanted to feel confident that I’d be physically and emotionally safe with the teachers they left me with.

I have had some amazing dance teachers. In each stage of my dance training, I can identify educators who encouraged my artistic growth and supported my professional aspirations. I can still hear the lessons they taught me as I travel across the studio floor today. At the same time, in each setting I’ve trained, I’ve also learned how to feel about my body. Unfortunately, they haven’t all been positive lessons.

There was The Nutcracker children’s audition director who told me they’d never seen someone with a pas-de-chat as amazing as mine, but they couldn’t cast me because I was too tall for all the costumes. So I began dreaming of moving to Europe as the taller graduates from my school had done. Then there was the dance teacher who told me I didn’t progress at competitions because I needed to slim down. That comment stopped me from eating consistently. But even before these moments, I frequently felt the need to prove I deserved to be in the dance studio.

“The messaging in most institutionalized dance is so insidious that even when teachers are not actively body shaming there’s still messaging happening,” says Savannah Boddy (she/her), a Toronto

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the dance current

FALL 2022

Boddy grew up training in ballet but pursued a career in contemporary dance because, despite her petite size, her impression of professional dance taught her she’d never make it as a ballerina. When Boddy started Propel Dance Centre in 2013, creating a dance education environment where important conversations about the body were ongoing became one of her goals. “It’s not just enough to stop body shaming,” she says.

“We can’t just say nothing. We have to say other things.” This is why Propel’s website includes a philosophy section explaining that the studio works to be body-positive, community-focused and genderinclusive. Through a series of videos, Boddy explains to prospective families why these philosophies are important and how her studio upholds them. In the video about body positivity, she shares: “It’s not just about the way things look in dance, it’s also about the way we feel.

We talk about being strong. We talk about being energized. The way that your child feels about themselves is at the top of our priority list.”

The studio’s culture reflects these philosophies by encouraging creativity while meeting students’ developmental needs. The studio also offers uniform options to honour their students’ gender expressions, and mirrors are used sparingly in class. Team meetings include group reflection on how applying the philosophies in the classroom is going.

“Not everybody comes to our school because they’ve read our principles,” Boddy says, explaining that some families find them because they live in the same neighbourhood. “But there are a lot of people who were specifically looking for our type of school and sought us out.”

She remembers one parent who came to Propel because she had body shaming experiences in her own dance classes and wanted a different experience for her child. “She said that we had exceeded her expectations in terms of what we had delivered,” says Boddy. “That was a great moment where I was like, ‘OK this is amazing, we’re on the right track.’ ” Maddi Pond (she/her) finds similar responses to her body positive dance education approach at her school Amp It Up Dance Studio in Salisbury, N.B. Pond has been making the local news since she opened up in May 2019 for having a dance school with a recreational and competitive program that, as stated on its website, is a respectful, inclusive

Irwin and students / Photo by J. Casson Photos

—

poetry

Sometimes I Am by mitchell larsen

Sometimes when I move,

And sometimes when I move it sets me free—

It feels like violence—

Free from the constraints of male or female, Of the rules of conduct,

Like every twitch is tearing through the air.

Of preconceptions forcing me into a shape that’s not my own.

Sometimes when I move, my body’s screaming—

I am ripping apart the paper cut-out that has

Pulling, wrenching

hidden me, that has smothered me.

Under.

And sometimes moving holds me still.

I am an expanse,

Tightens the binds.

A distant snow storm,

Tells me I am wrong.

I am ugly.

An army, falling apart— Mutiny.

If the truth of me is ugly, Ugly is magnificent.

I rage against the balance and the beauty.

I rage against the structure and the form.

Ugly is freedom.

I rage against the idea of what I should be.

Ugly is

I rage against the people who would

I’m not going to be pretty for you, if the cost is denying my soul.

Hold me, Control me.

Violence is not who I am, But sometimes when I dance it is.

I move and it is violence

Mitchell Larsen is a is a Queer, genderfluid creator and performer working in Saskatoon.