spring 2022
MENAKA THAKKAR A tribute to Canada's Indian classical dance icon
Display until July 6, 2022 / $11.95
V I C T O R I A A C A D E M Y O F B A L L E T . C A
2022/23 AUDITION TODAY FOR S UMMER & FULL YEAR PROGR A MS
HAZUKI KISHIDA BRIDGE PROGRAM STUDENT PHOTO: DAVID COOPER
Bleiddyn del Villar Bellis Director
contents
Petiteau / Photo courtesy of Atlantic Ballet of Canada; Renée Mak / Photo by Angie Nguyen of Scopo Photography; Khiyla Aynne, 10, and Lucius Dechausay on set for CBC’s The Move / Photo courtesy of Dechausay
Volume 25 Issue 2 spring 2022
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DEPARTMENTS
CURRENTS
FEATURES
4
Masthead
W HAT’ S O N ?
F EATURE PROF IL E
6
Your Notes
9
22
7
Editor’s Letter
8
Contributor Notes
Event Previews
N E WS
CoMotion Festival Set to be Biggest Disability Arts Festival in North America 13
Alex Bulmer, festival curator, said it's important to break down the medical model of disability by serena lopez HISTO RICA L MOM E N TS
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What Is Blackness?
Two cultural leaders unpack what being Black and African means to them by kj dowdie F IRST P E R S O N
15
TRI BUTE
18
Menaka Thakkar
Canada was the prolific dance artist's garden, and her seeds changed the cultural landscape by dhriti gupta
B O DY
16
Long and Strong
17
Ask the Chiropractor
Improve your hamstring flexibility with strength training by surabhi veitch
Dr. Stephen Gray answers your questions spring 2022
CIRCUS A RTS
26
Rebuilding the Big Top
Can circus truly become a national art form? by dylan schoenmakers KID TA L K
34
Tiny Showgoers
Bringing artistic experiences to kids is essential to a healthy arts ecology, but access is uneven across Canada by kallee lins
Freeing My Body
After generations of shame conditioning, I’m rejecting the restraints placed on my ancestors’ bodies by maura garcía
ON THE COVER
From Moncton With Love
Olga Petiteau, of Atlantic Ballet of Canada, on immigrating, injury and her newfound appreciation for rest by dhriti gupta
POSTSCRIPTS TIPS
The Dance Teacher (Not the Doctor) Is In 44
The role of the educator is not to offer medical advice by geneviève renaud LOV E L ETTERS
45
There Is Always a Spot
Florence Abel has been teaching dance in her home for more than 60 years by gwendolyn mitchell POETRY
46
Chezzetcook (an excerpt)
A poem about the body, memory, DNA and how we move through them by george stamos MENAKA THAKKAR A tribute to Canada's Indian classical dance icon
thedancecurrent.com
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feature profile
From Moncton With Love Olga Petiteau, of Atlantic Ballet of Canada, on immigrating, injury and her new-found appreciation for rest by dhriti gupta
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the dance current
SPRING 2022
This page and opposite page: Petiteau in Atlantic Ballet of Canada's Piaf / Photo courtesy of the ballet
B
efore the curtains open at the Fredericton Playhouse, Olga Petiteau is alone onstage. She tilts her head towards the sky and asks for guidance from the woman she will be portraying, whose pencilthin eyebrows matched the ones Petiteau carefully painted over alternating layers of foundation and glue earlier that evening. It’s May 2014 and Petiteau is drawing on hours spent reading Piaf, un mythe français by Robert Belleret, Piaf’s own Au bal de la chance and watching La Vie en rose starring Marion Cotillard. She forces her spine to abandon years of ballet training, hunching into the posture of the older woman in her mind’s eye. She hobbles forward before stopping behind a chair in the middle of the stage. Taking a deep breath before the curtain opens, she screams into the darkness. The lights come on to reveal Petiteau sitting in the chair, wrapped in a pink satin dressing gown, clutching a gold glass. Gentle piano chords accompany the mournful tune of a cello as she launches into a 72-minute performance encapsulating the intense whirlwind that was the life of France’s national chanteuse: Édith Piaf. Following the singer’s iconic story, Piaf is just one part of Igor Dobrovolskiy’s vision for the Atlantic Ballet of Canada as a “theatre of movement.” As artistic director of the company, Dobrovolskiy is focused on curating an original repertoire that sets Atlantic Ballet apart from larger companies across the country. “We decided to create a small company with high standards,” he says. “It’s not formal choreography; it’s choreography that tells a story.” “It’s most important to us to create a new production – not copy the Nutcracker or Swan Lake 1,000 times.” Dobrovolskiy was in the early stages of formulating Piaf in 2013 when Petiteau joined the company, and he knew right from her first day that he had his lead. As he watched her at the barre during class that day, the decision immediately clicked for Dobrovolskiy. “She’s a perfectionist,” he says. “She’s very dynamic.” “When she dances, you believe that is Piaf [herself].” For Petiteau, a role is never just a role. “When you perform someone’s character, someone’s life, you can’t just be yourself pretending to be the person,” she says. “You’ve got to engage in it and become the character.” Research and homework are essential to Petiteau’s process. Once she’s been cast, Petiteau unpacks the technical theory, watches interviews on YouTube, reads multiple biographies and practises facial expressions in the mirror before bringing her unique interpretation of the role to the studio. “I feel like I’ve done as much acting as dancing,” she says. Petiteau has always been drawn to the emotional nature of ballet. Born in Paris, she was encouraged to pursue all sorts of activities as a child: dance, gymnastics, music and swimming, to name a few. But when it came time to choose between pursuing ballet or gymnastics professionally at the age of 12, Petiteau chose ballet, even though her teachers told her she was “too athletic” to make it big. “I loved the movement and the freedom…. It was very important to me to perform, to make people feel different emotions,” she says. Petiteau then auditioned to train in a more open-minded environment at Académie américaine de danse de Paris, learning from teachers and directors from around the world before landing her first contract in South Wales at age 19. In Europe, she toured with Ballet
Cymru, Vienna Festival Ballet and Les Ballets classiques de Paris before moving to New Brunswick to work with Atlantic Ballet of Canada nearly a decade ago. “Work doesn’t scare her at all,” says Stéphanie Audet, Petiteau’s best friend and colleague, who signed with the ballet at the same time. “Her mind is so full of positivity that nothing could ever stop her.” She also says that she sees Petiteau as someone who’s entirely committed to her art, who will never hold herself back. “She’s perfect in her own way, just by being herself.” Petiteau’s expansive career has blossomed because of her perseverance, hard work and innate curiosity. But even while taking on dream roles within a supportive company that’s helped her thrive, she’s had to overcome obstacles and learn to dedicate time and energy towards her own well-being.
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PETITEAU NEVER THOUGHT that Canada, let alone New Brunswick, would be where she pursued her career. While she was interested in working for a company in North America, flying across the world for an audition just wasn’t feasible for her. But when she came across Atlantic Ballet of Canada’s website, Petiteau was pleasantly surprised to see that there was not only no audition process but also no height or other physical requirements like many other companies – all they required was a CV, photos and links to recent work. Taken by Dobrovolskiy’s unique choreography, Petiteau decided to send over her materials, even if nothing came of it. “It’s not like me,” she says about applying without much planning. “I had a little star, something to guide me.” Then something did come of it: the company emailed her an offer for nine months of work. Before she knew it – after having to decide if she would accept within two days because of a junk mail mishap – she was in Moncton with two suitcases. Her family, friends and boyfriend were more than 4,000 kilometres away. Living in Moncton took some getting used to, particularly the snow and the cold temperatures that could dip to -20 C, or lower. Petiteau thedancecurrent.com
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circus arts
Rebuilding the Big Top Can circus truly become a national art form?
D
espite Kayla Jeanson’s interest in circus, the art form
seemed abstract. She was mesmerized by Cirque du Soleil on TV as a child, and again in her teens when the company toured to her hometown, Winnipeg. But the gravitydefying artists seemed magical, inhuman. “I didn’t see circus around me as something that one could do,” she says, noting that there were no circus schools in her area that she knew of. “When I would go see the circus, they were way over there.” She gestures to a distant place, her voice floating up as if describing something dreamlike. In 2018, working as a dance and video artist, Jeanson saw a videographer job posting for Cirque. It seemed like her calling. It was exactly the work she was doing for dancers: using film to support the creation process. She got the job and moved to Montreal. The first production she worked on was Alegría in 2019, a revamp of the original 1994 show. Coming from the dance world, Jeanson remembers “Stepping into Cirque du Soleil for the first time was a bit of shock to the senses, mainly, I think, to my ears.” In the massive studio, with its tall ceilings and multiple artist stations, sounds echoed: the see-sawing teeterboard smacking, artists calling out and spotting, riggers hoisting and lowering equipment. Seeing the raw physicality – so different from Cirque’s polished, graceful productions – made something click for Jeanson: these weren’t otherworldly creatures. They were just people. “Very dedicated, hard-working, talented humans. But they’re still human.” Going backstage at the big top, meeting artists and hearing about their own paths to circus, it all seemed more approachable. It was when Jeanson realized that maybe circus was something she could try too. Because companies like Cirque du Soleil established the country’s reputation as a circus powerhouse, it’s easy to overlook the contemporary art form’s relative youth in Canada. When the National Circus School opened in Montreal in 1981, it was the first professional circus school in North America. Now among the world’s best, it remains one of a handful of professional Canadian schools, which are mainly located in Quebec.
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the dance current
SPRING 2022
Meanwhile, recreational circus schools, along with artists and companies, are active across the country from British Columbia to Nunavut and Newfoundland and Labrador. En Piste, the National Circus Arts Alliance, counts more than 500 in the industry among its membership. In Canada, Quebec has led the circus renaissance. Following the National Circus School and Cirque du Soleil’s roots in the early 1980s, more contemporary circus companies appeared in the province over time. TOHU, a training, creation and presentation hub for circus arts, opened in 2004 and shares an established circus district in Montreal with the National Circus School and Cirque du Soleil’s headquarters: the Cité des arts du cirque. What makes Montreal and Quebec amazing, says Annie Dugan, artistic director of Edmonton-based Firefly Theatre & Circus, is that investments in circus have created a robust industry with coaching, training facilities, prop and costume artists, agents, managers and circus festivals. “They’ve got the whole entire ecosystem,” she says. “It’s like a machine that just makes these beautiful artists and sends them off to Europe on tour.” But Quebec’s circus success hasn’t translated nationally. For Canadian artists, circus hasn’t always been – and sometimes still isn’t – an accessible career option, with barriers including differences in regional funding, training opportunities and access to circus networks. These national disparities prevent artists and the art form from flourishing widely. Canadian circus artists all have the same needs, says Nadia Drouin, project manager at En Piste, “But the territory, the ground in which they’re going to be able to bloom, is different. It’s not nurtured in the same way.” The benefits of nurturing it are many. For Jeanson, circus has profoundly influenced her approach to creation. She talks about choreographing from the inside out, inhabiting movement and letting that physical curiosity drive the narrative and emotional arc of her work. “Creatively, oh my gosh,” she exclaims, “it’s night and day.” So what would it take to encourage circus development across the country and for circus to become a truly national art form?
Annie Dugan in Firefly Theatre's Operation EVAsion / Photo by Marc J Chalifoux Photography tktk
by dylan schoenmakers
tktk
thedancecurrent.com
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poetry
Chezzetcook (an excerpt) A poem about the body, memory, DNA and how we move through them by george stamos
Blowing,
In Great-Grammy’s potato-dirt basement,
calm hands won’t burn, she says.
but they said you can only go there in a dream.
slowly. I went there. But then, fire's not breathing very well at all,
Walked across the field, into the hole, down the steps,
like me,
smelled the potato-dirt piles,
sometimes a frantic rabbit's foot thumps hard inside its tight ribs.
squatted down by the inner window to the damp ground, and unsealed the wet wooden hatch.
And what can you do but run and run into the summer sunshine,
Opened the window to watch fluorescent liquid threads stream by,
maybe use a beach towel as a cape and dance it up all around with that
yellow, turquoise, red, orange, white and green rivers, floating.
rabbit’s beat,
Multicoloured DNA wires of a telephone line hit by lightening,
swinging it up into the sky.
lighting up the cool dirt powdered floor.
Sometimes still; you hide away and listen as you wait for them to go.
She asked me to choose my river strands, to build my own braids. My hands reaching into the glow the way she fed fire.
NOW.
Calm hands won't burn, she says,
There are great places to hide!
slowly,
Behind piles of fading lobster traps, with their smell of salty death.
choose wisely, she says.
under sweet blackberry and soft rose bushes, especially when it rains and she makes those jam jellies. In the musty wooded hay troth where mama cow came to kiss me, where we hypnotize each other.
Read the entire poem online >> thedancecurrent.com
George Stamos is a dancer, choreographer, filmmaker, writer and educator.