Cana­di­an Dance Assem­bly is inter­est­ed in uproot­ing harm­ful nar­ra­tives of resilience that exploit dancers’ abil­i­ty to endure unsus­tain­able work­ing con­di­tions. The Seed­ing Resilien­cy research project is an inten­tion­al first step along CDA’s long-term  goal of resourc­ing the recla­ma­tion of resilien­cy as an embod­ied-art-and-life affirm­ing capac­i­ty to heal and move through change. 

In June 2023, five dance artists and mem­bers of the Cana­di­an Dance Assem­bly team gath­ered for a res­i­den­cy on Mis­sisa­ki Toron­to Island at Artscape Gibral­tar Point. The cohort includ­ed: research artists Kali Kennedy (Iewen­no­taties), Atri Nundy, bee pal­lom­i­na and Ravyn Wngz; project archivist Jose Miguel (Miggy) Este­ban; CDA Project Lead and Facil­i­ta­tor Pam Tzeng and mem­bers of the CDA team Kar­la Eti­enne and Shel­by Wright.

 

For 5‑days the cohort immersed themselves in the questions:

• What does it mean to embody resilien­cy in the dance sec­tor?
• What are the exist­ing, emerg­ing and yet-to-be imag­ined prac­tices and resources need­ed to empow­er our col­lec­tive capac­i­ty to adapt and thrive rather than just sur­vive as dance artists?

 

Scrolling down this page, you’ll encounter multiple offerings that document the project:

• “Trace” by artist archivist Jose Miguel Este­ban. The film invites you into a med­i­ta­tion on the themes and ques­tions that emerged from the cohort’s research. 
• Q&A with project artist archivist Jose Miguel Este­ban 
• List: What the cohort did over the 5‑day research res­i­den­cy
• About the Artists
• A gallery of pho­tos tak­en by Kendra Epik on the final day of the res­i­den­cy
• A short­list of field notes by project lead and facil­i­ta­tor, Pam Tzeng

 

TRACE

As part of this project, Jose Miguel (Miggy) Este­ban was invit­ed to take on the role of artist archivist. Through this role, Miggy was tasked with the cre­ation of an arte­fact that could doc­u­ment what emerged from the groups’ time togeth­er. Act­ing as a par­tic­i­pant and wit­ness, Miggy cre­at­ed Trace, a film that “act[s] as a score for remem­ber­ing the lessons we learned, and as a provo­ca­tion for our dream­ing of future move­ments.” 

Audio only:

Down­load tran­script

 

Q&A with Jose Miguel (Miggy) Esteban 

We asked Miggy a few ques­tions to reflect on the process of doc­u­ment­ing the res­i­den­cy through the cre­ation of Trace.

 

How did it feel mak­ing this piece of doc­u­men­ta­tion? 

The process of cre­at­ing Trace became this beau­ti­ful moment of return. It evoked a lot of feel­ings and emo­tions as I remem­bered the joy of being togeth­er, while also long­ing to be back there. This piece became a way of mourn­ing our time togeth­er as I found myself  hav­ing a hard time return­ing to “nor­mal” after the res­i­den­cy.  Devel­op­ing this piece became a chance for me to cre­ate a por­tal back to the con­tain­er that we began cre­at­ing, build­ing, and nur­tur­ing. It has become a por­tal for me to reflect on and to recon­nect with the rela­tion­ships we began to fos­ter.

Con­sid­er­ing my respon­si­bil­i­ty to these rela­tion­ships, This process was very much shaped by the ques­tion of how to share what we explored while also pro­tect­ing the sto­ries that were told. How could I share the deeply per­son­al work that we did togeth­er while being held by an ethics of dis­clo­sure? How could I share the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and strength of our embod­ied knowl­edge through a com­mit­ment to con­sent? How could I share the pre­car­i­ous­ness of speak­ing about resilience, and speak­ing back to insti­tu­tion­al ways of being, in a way that is respon­si­ble to our rela­tions? 

 

What does it mean now and mov­ing for­ward?

I hope Trace can act as a score for remem­ber­ing the lessons we learned, and as a provo­ca­tion for our dream­ing of future move­ments.

As a score, this arte­fact offers a time and space for return­ing to all that we learned from our move­ment with the land and with each oth­er dur­ing the res­i­den­cy. It offers prompts that share some of these lessons, fur­ther invit­ing audi­ences to be moved by them. More­over, it invites us all to ques­tion how we move for­ward through the traces of knowl­edge that we car­ry with us.

It would have been easy to say “okay, we did this thing and we move on.” Instead, this piece invites us into the dif­fi­cult work of return­ing. It resists the devel­op­ment of a pol­i­cy, and refus­es being turned into a check­list of things we need to do now. It escapes the fix­ing of what hap­pened by instead pro­vok­ing us to ques­tion what more can we learn from our expe­ri­ence of being togeth­er. 

The piece means so much to me because I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to think through doc­u­men­ta­tion as a cre­ative process. Rather than being dis­ci­plined by West­ern insti­tu­tion­al expec­ta­tions of the archive (and its colo­nial reg­is­ters), I had the space and time to engage in doc­u­men­ta­tion as an artis­tic act. Rather than attempt to cap­ture all that we had explored in a “final prod­uct,” I offer this arte­fact as an entry point for audi­ences to pur­sue their own rela­tion­ship to our ques­tions, to our move­ments, and to our rela­tion­ship to the land. I hope that Trace can inspire new begin­nings to the con­tin­ued ques­tion­ing of what it means to embody resilien­cy.

 

What does embody resilien­cy mean to you now? 

What I’m hold­ing on to now is the ques­tion mark…what is resilience, and what is embod­i­ment? What has opened up for me is the oppor­tu­ni­ty to dream oth­er­wise. Embody­ing resilien­cy is the desire to dream and man­i­fest dif­fer­ent ways of being togeth­er. How do we under­stand our acts of cop­ing, sur­viv­ing, thriving…just being amidst injus­tice? By think­ing through embod­i­ment, I sense an abo­li­tion­ist impulse and inspi­ra­tion that calls on us to cre­ate a dif­fer­ent world. Resilience is assert­ing a dif­fer­ent way of being. And embod­i­ment invites us to return back to our prac­tices of dance and move­ment as a source of cre­at­ing oth­er­wise. How are we already doing this in our prac­tices? How are we already doing the work of imag­in­ing dif­fer­ent worlds by assert­ing our dif­fer­ent ways of mov­ing and being in rela­tion to each oth­er? 

 

Is there any­thing else you feel is impor­tant to share?

I want to share my appre­ci­a­tion for the co-cre­ation of this role. When I was brought onto this project, I was invit­ed to think through how we might do this work of archiv­ing dif­fer­ent­ly. I am grate­ful that I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring in my own cre­ative prac­tices of writ­ing-as-dance and dance-as-writ­ing, shaped by prac­tices with­in dis­abil­i­ty arts and cul­ture (par­tic­u­lar­ly through inter­pre­tive and mul­ti­sen­so­r­i­al ori­en­ta­tions to cre­at­ing audio/image descrip­tion). I am grate­ful that the Seed­ing Resilien­cy Project offered me the space to refuse being okay with the ways in which we’ve been trained and schooled into under­stand­ing our­selves in rela­tion to sin­gle sto­ries of dance and the danc­ing body. And I am grate­ful that the cre­ation of Trace pro­vid­ed me with the time to dream of por­tals to our being else­where.

What the cohort did over the 5‑day residency

• Cre­at­ed a group agree­ment by dis­cussing “what makes you feel val­ued as an artist?” and from that the cohort root­ed them­selves in “a com­mit­ment to meet our­selves, each oth­er, the land and ele­ments.”
• Cre­at­ed a group alter­space
• Brought in books to cre­ate a shared library 
• Pam shared a Body Acknowl­edg­ment Prac­tice and we explored it as a col­lec­tive prac­tice.
• Move­ment research with the land.  Co-cre­at­ed a somat­ic move­ment prac­tice focused on Mir­ror­ing the Ele­ments on the grassy field out­side the stu­dio and on the beach and with the water.
• Par­tic­i­pat­ed in 3 work­shops to serve as spark points for our research:
  • Resilien­cy for Lib­er­a­tion Work­shop with Lumos Trans­forms
  • Con­flict Trans­for­ma­tion Work­shop with Kai Cheng Thom
  • Sum­mer Sol­stice Cir­cle Ses­sion with Christi­na Porter, host­ed by Dodem Kanonhsa and Native Cana­di­an Cen­tre of Toron­to.
• Indi­vid­ual reflec­tion and group con­ver­sa­tions about “ what is open­ing for you?”
• Had solo time, spent time at the beach, gath­ered for meals, played games in the evening, and rest­ed.

Artists, Organizers, & Witnesses

 

Ravyn Wngz “The Black Wid­ow of Bur­lesque” is a Tan­zan­ian, Bermu­di­an, Mohawk, 2Spirit, Queer and Tran­scen­dent empow­er­ment sto­ry­teller. Ravyn is an abo­li­tion­ist and co-founder of ILL NANA/DiverseCity Dance Com­pa­ny, Black Lives Mat­ter Cana­da, & the Wild­seed Cen­tre for Arts & Activism, A Cana­di­an Best Sell­ing Author,Nobel Peace Prize Nom­i­nee (with Black Lives Mat­ter) and Top 25 Women of Influ­ence in Cana­da recip­i­ent of 2021. Ravyn is com­mit­ted to erad­i­cat­ing all forms of anti-Black racism, set­tler colo­nial­ism sys­tems of oppres­sion while nur­tur­ing Black and Indige­nous sol­i­dar­i­ty and heal­ing in com­mu­ni­ties.

 

Kar­la Eti­enne is a dis­tin­guished grad­u­ate in cul­tur­al man­age­ment (HEC Mon­tre­al) and envi­ron­men­tal sci­ences (UQAM) as well as a marathon run­ner in every sense of the word. She has trav­elled the plu­ral­i­ty of roads and path­ways which lead to a deep­er and more accu­rate appre­ci­a­tion of what today con­sti­tutes the strengths and the poten­tial of our artis­tic and cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ty in Cana­da. While being more gen­er­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Nya­ta Nya­ta, the dance arts orga­ni­za­tion she has led along­side its founder, Zab Maboun­gou, since 2003, Kar­la Eti­enne has, in fact, unfail­ing­ly devot­ed her­self over the years to advanc­ing the cause of inclu­sion – through bet­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tion – in the arts, at all lev­els of prac­tice, man­age­ment and dis­sem­i­na­tion, with­in the insti­tu­tions and orga­ni­za­tions man­dat­ed to work in this area, includ­ing, among oth­ers, the Regroupe­ment québé­cois de la danse, the Con­seil des arts de Mon­tréal and the Con­seil des arts et let­tres du Québec. Draw­ing also on her expe­ri­ence acquired with­in var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions (includ­ing ENvi­ron­nement JEUnesse, Regroupe­ment des femmes en envi­ron­nement, and Mai­son d’Haïti), Kar­la Eti­enne uses her skills as a direc­tor, coor­di­na­tor, writer and facil­i­ta­tor to advance Canada’s artis­tic and cul­tur­al devel­op­ment.

 

Pam Tzeng is a Cana­di­an-Tai­wanese artist that lives and cre­ates where the Bow Riv­er and Elbow Riv­er meet, Mohkin­st­sis in Treaty 7 Ter­ri­to­ry, also known colo­nial­ly as Cal­gary. She is an active chore­o­g­ra­ph­er, per­former, cura­tor, and pro­duc­er of the live and con­tem­po­rary and is cur­rent­ly Artist in Res­i­dence 2019–2021 with Dancers’ Stu­dio West.

Pas­sion­ate about con­tribut­ing to a healthy arts ecol­o­gy in Alber­ta, Pam works as an arts pro­fes­sion­al and active­ly engages in ini­tia­tives that fos­ter equi­ty and diver­si­ty. She has had the plea­sure of serv­ing her local and provin­cial arts sec­tor as Artis­tic Asso­ciate Pro­duc­er and Mar­ket­ing Direc­tor with Spring­board Per­for­mance, Dance Cura­tor for the Ignite! Fes­ti­val, Direc­tor on the board of the Alber­ta Dance Alliance and pro­vid­ing her ser­vices in mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy and vol­un­teer coor­di­na­tion to non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions like Three Left Feet Move­ment Cre­ations.

Pam is co-cura­tor and founder of to the AWE, a recur­ring risk-based mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary per­for­mance series. She shares her pas­sion for embod­ied liv­ing as a ther­a­peu­tic move­ment edu­ca­tor, teach­ing GYROTONIC© & GYROKINESIS© Meth­ods and Yamu­na Body Rolling.

 

 

Atri Nundy start­ed learn­ing Bharatanatyam at Sam­pra­daya Dance Acad­e­my under her teacher
Lata Pada at the age of 4. After com­plet­ing her arange­tram in 2005, she con­tin­ues to work as a
teacher at the Acad­e­my and as a Com­pa­ny dancer and chore­o­g­ra­ph­er at Sam­pra­daya Dance
Cre­ations. While train­ing in Bharatanatyam, Atri was for­tu­nate enough to be able to train in
var­i­ous dance forms. This com­bi­na­tion has giv­en her the inter­est to explore beyond the
tra­di­tion­al realms of Bharatanatyam. She appeared in Glaciol­o­gy in 2018 chore­o­graphed by
Brandy Leary (Anan­dam Dancethe­atre) and pre­sent­ed her own work-in-progress of Sequence at
Wind Down Dance curat­ed by Allen and Karen Kae­ja and Michael Cald­well. Although she
con­tin­ues to prac­tice tra­di­tion­al reper­toire, her curios­i­ty for devel­op­ing dif­fer­ent move­ment
vocab­u­lary has giv­en her a renewed sense of joy. She has recent­ly pre­sent­ed Mind­ful Chat­ter, a
trio chore­o­graphed by Nundy and com­mis­sioned by Anadamdance The­atre in April 2022. She,
along with her co-chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Tan­veer Alam, pre­sent­ed The Tagore Project in the Spring of
2022 at Sam­pra­daya Dance The­atre. She has tak­en part in a series of out­door per­for­mances
dur­ing the sum­mer of 2022, par­tic­i­pat­ing in Michael Caldwell’s 2 x30 duets, in Pad­mi­ni Chettur’s
Chalk­ing at Sum­mer­works and pre­sent­ing an excerpt of The Tagore Project at this year’s Dusk
Dances at With­row Park.

 

Kali Kennedy (Iewen­no­taties) is a Kanien’kehá:ka con­tem­po­rary dancer and per­for­mance artist
from the Six Nations of the Grand Riv­er Ter­ri­to­ry. Kali Kennedy’s dance jour­ney began at the
age of 2. She went on to dance com­pet­i­tive­ly for 10 years until the age of 16 when she began
focus­ing on con­tem­po­rary dance and specif­i­cal­ly Indige­nous con­tem­po­rary dance. Notably, Kali
Kennedy has per­formed as the young Rita Joe in the mul­ti-media pro­duc­tion I Lost My Talk
pre­sent­ed by the NAC, Crown Lands’ End of the Road music video to hon­our MMIW and most
recent­ly starred in Dri­ves The Com­mon Man’s Annie pre­sent­ed by Imag­i­na­tive. Cur­rent­ly, she is
recon­nect­ing deep­er into her Kanien’kehá:ka cul­ture by learn­ing the lan­guage and teach­ing
dance to the next gen­er­a­tion.

 

 

Jose Miguel (Miggy) Este­ban is a dance/movement artist and edu­ca­tor based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Miggy is cur­rent­ly a PhD can­di­date at the Depart­ment of Social Jus­tice Edu­ca­tion at the Ontario Insti­tute for Stud­ies in Edu­ca­tion, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, where his
research is ori­ent­ed through dis­abil­i­ty stud­ies and dance/performance stud­ies to reimag­ine edu­ca­tion­al prax­is. Influ­enced by dis­abil­i­ty arts and cul­ture, Black rad­i­cal tra­di­tions, Indige­nous sto­ry­telling, and queer per­for­mance, his dis­ser­ta­tion project engages in embod­ied prac­tices of impro­vi­sa­tion to re-inter­pret cur­ricu­lum as a chore­o­graph­ic site for inspir­ing ped­a­go­gies of/through dance. Through the con­flu­ence of his aca­d­e­m­ic and artis­tic prac­tices, he is cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing a per­for­mance piece that ques­tions the sight/site of dance by embark­ing on an embod­ied return to his Fil­ipino roots, nav­i­gat­ing mad and queer routes through per­son­al mem­o­ries, col­lec­tive his­to­ries, and the search for spaces of (un)belonging.

 

 

Bee Pal­lom­i­na is a dance artist mak­ing and per­form­ing in work for stage, instal­la­tion, film/video and pup­pets. Her prac­tice includes move­ment, care, and the every­day. She is an artist, edu­ca­tor, and mom.

We also want to extend grat­i­tude to Lumos Trans­forms, Kai Cheng Thom, Christi­na Porter, Dodem Kanonhsa and Native Cana­di­an Cen­tre of Toron­to.

 

Gallery

(pho­to cred­it: Kendra Epik)

 

Field notes by Pam Tzeng, project lead & facilitator

Hel­lo! Here is a short list of per­son­al field notes and insights not yet reflect­ed in the above offer­ings. I share these from my roles as the project lead and facil­i­ta­tor of Seed­ing Resilien­cy, as well as, from my lens as a dance artist.

What guid­ed this project was a com­mit­ment to cen­ter­ing rela­tion­ships and hon­our­ing the wis­dom, agency and needs of the artists involved. This meant resist­ing the pres­sures of urgency and per­fec­tion (eas­i­er said than done!) and cre­at­ing space for col­lab­o­ra­tion and feed­back.

The lived exper­tise and mul­ti­plic­i­ty of intel­li­gences of dancers is awe-inspir­ing.

Let the wis­dom of the land and that which is held in our bod­ies be our teach­ers.

The expe­ri­ences of dancers are impor­tant. Shar­ing sto­ries is pow­er­ful med­i­cine and helps us to remem­ber that we are not alone in the chal­lenges we face in our prac­tices and work as artists.

Engag­ing in com­mu­nal learn­ing out­side of the field of dance and the arts inspires new under­stand­ing and pos­si­bil­i­ties for refram­ing and explor­ing resilience in dance.

Pac­ing our work with a spa­cious yet focused time­line allowed CDA to work deeply, inten­tion­al­ly and grow as a team. It afford­ed us the time and atten­tion need­ed to re-imag­ine and cre­ate inter­nal process­es and doc­u­ments that align with CDA’s core val­ues and com­mit­ments. Trust, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, account­abil­i­ty and readi­ness to request and offer each oth­er sup­port made it pos­si­ble to car­ry out the project in a sus­tain­able way. This allowed us to be present, ground­ed and inter­nal­ly resourced when engag­ing with the artists.

Prac­tice, prac­tice and con­tin­ued prac­tice helps to build our abil­i­ty and agili­ty to respond to unex­pect­ed changes and/or chal­lenges with care. Prac­tis­ing slow­ing down. Prac­tis­ing check­ing-in. Prac­tis­ing con­sent. Prac­tis­ing con­sis­ten­cy and account­abil­i­ty. Prac­tis­ing trans­paren­cy. Prac­tis­ing “clar­i­ty as kind­ness” as a dear friend and men­tor JD Der­byshire says. Prac­tis­ing being with emer­gence.

Cre­at­ing the con­di­tions for dancers to feel wel­come, safe and empow­ered to “come as you are” takes rigour, care, mutu­al respect, deep lis­ten­ing, flex­i­bil­i­ty and the ongo­ing exer­cise of con­sent, con­sent, con­sent. When we can attend to the needs of dancers, what is pos­si­ble is vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, mutu­al­i­ty, reci­procity.

I hold, cel­e­brate and dance in rev­er­ence for all that the artists gift­ed to this project. The seeds of inspi­ra­tion and ground­ing that have been sown through their research and man­i­fest­ing this project will guide CDA’s path and com­mit­ments mov­ing for­ward.

 

This project was made pos­si­ble with a grant from the Cana­da Coun­cil for the Arts