Dance Central Spring 2024

A Conversation with Jennifer Mascall

Dreaming Bigger than the Funding Model Page 4

Dance Central

The Archives of Karen Jamieson

Dance Page 12

A Dance Centre Publication

Editor's Note

Welcome to the Spring 2024 issue of Dance Central.

This year for International Dance Day, The Dance Centre tapped into the excitement of Olympic Games Paris 2024 by appointing Philip Kim, aka Phil Wizard, as our Message ambassador. Phil will be representing Team Canada in breaking, the latest addition to the Olympic sports this year. Blurring the boundaries between dance and sports, this urban dance style originated in the United States in the 1970s with roots in hip-hop culture. Leading up to the Olympics, Phil will be rehearsing at Scotiabank Dance Centre while inviting the breaking community into the dance hub.

Rachel Silver Maddock brings us an interview with Jennifer Mascall about the funding model that artists are not only being subjected to but also helping to shape through their collective efforts of improvising, surviving and most of all, creating. Mascall reminds us of the economic impact of arts despite the increased competition for grants and the increasing labour that is asked of artists in their applications.

Joining this issue as a first-time contributor to Dance Central, Charlotte Leonard writes about her archival work with Karen Jamieson Dance and the award-winning oral history and archival research project – Coming Out of Chaos: A Vancouver Dance Story (COoC). Both Jennifer Mascall and Karen Jamieson are instrumental in shaping the dance community of Vancouver through their prolific dance creations over the decades, and more importantly, how they tirelessly advocate for social issues and pave the way for the next generation of dance artists.

We thank all the artists who have contributed, and we welcome new writing and project ideas at any time to make Dance Central a more vital link to the community. Please send materials by email to editor@thedancecentre.ca. We look forward to many more conversations!

Shanny Rann Editor

Byron Chief-Moon [front] and Brian Solomon [back] performing Man WIthin at the Vancouver International Dance Festival, 2007 from the archives of Karen Jamieson Dance © Chris Randle

A Conversation with Jennifer Mascall Dreaming Bigger than the Funding Model

by Rachel Silver Maddock

Early in the morning on a sunny, bright International Dance Day, Jennifer Mascall and I got on the phone to discuss the important topic of funding and the challenges dance artists are facing in the context of increased competition and decreased resources. Jennifer is always so inspiring to connect with, and she has a wealth of wisdom on this topic having kept her company MascallDance alive and vibrant since 1982. Among other things, Jennifer emphasized the importance of community, of reaching new audiences, and most importantly, encouraging artists to dream bigger than the current models that exist.

Rachel Silver Maddock: The topic of funding is present in people's minds. You and I were chatting at Bloom the other week about how artists and companies are feeling the pressure with the increased competition for grants. (In March, Canada Council for the Arts (CCA) released the statistic that only 16.6% or 1,125/6,750 applications of the last round of Explore + Create applications received funding.)

Jennifer Mascall: It seems to me that in some ways the Council set themselves up for that by trying to embrace a new range of artists and putting in the policy that priority would be given to first time applicants. It might be hard on an applicant getting it— the excitement, courage, and momentum it gives you—and then to not get one for ages because you are no longer the first one. I

The African Dream poster © izofilm

wonder, to the recipients at this end, it felt like the repercussions of that and the actual effects on somebody's career were not totally thought through.

The COVID Relief Funds were a remarkable thing. For our company, it allowed us to upgrade Bloom (performance series), after doing it for 20 years, to work with artists that are not emerging. What happens is there is a kind of momentum that comes as you emerge, and then as you get into the decades of really honing your craft, it is different. It does not have the same kind of momentum. That is when artists really need to be supported to continue to do their work: to do some in private and bring out in public what they need to, but not to be always revving on momentum. They need to be able to have time to gather their thoughts and find what they really think about.

Artists of Dance//Novella © Racheal Prince and Brandon Alley

MascallDance The Impossible Has Already Happened © Jinki Cambronero

Dance Central

The Dance Centre

Scotiabank Dance Centre

Level 6, 677 Davie Street

Vancouver BC V6B 2G6

T 604.606.6400

info@thedancecentre.ca

www.thedancecentre.ca

Dance Central is published quarterly by The Dance Centre for its members and for the dance community. Opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent Dance Central or The Dance Centre. The editor reserves the right to edit for clarity or length, or to meet house requirements.

Editor, Art Director & Layout

Shanny Rann

Copy Editor

Kaia Shukin

Design Layout

Becky Wu

Contributors to this issue:

Rachel Silver Maddock, Charlotte Leonard

Photo credits

Front Cover: The Impossible Has Already Happened MascallDance ©

Caio Silva

Back Cover: Members of the Carnegie Dance Troupe performing Stand Your Ground as part of Dancing on the Edge Festival, 2008 © Archives of Karen Jamieson Dance

Dance Centre Board Members:

Chair

Linda Gordon

Vice Chair

Andrea Reid

Secretary

Tin Gamboa

Treasurer

Mark Weston

Directors

Jennifer Aoki, Yvonne Chartrand, Judith Garay, Arash Khakpour, Anndraya Luui

Dance Foundation Board

Members:

Chair Linda Blankstein

Vice-Chair Andrea Benzel

Secretary Anndraya Luui

Treasurer Janice Wells

Directors

Samantha Luo

Dance Centre Staff:

Executive Director

Mirna Zagar

Associate Programming Director

Raquel Alvaro

Associate Producer

Linda Blankstein

Director of Marketing

Heather Bray

Digital Marketing Coordinator

Lindsay Curtis

Development Manager

Catherine Butler

Membership Coordinator

Kaia Shukin

Outreach Coordinator

Yurie Kaneko

Technical Director

Victoria Bell

Comptroller

Elyn Dobbs

Venue and Services Manager

Crystal Lai

Founded in 1986 as a leading dance resource centre for dance professionals and the public in British Columbia, The Dance Centre is a multifaceted organization. The Dance Centre presents an exciting season of shows and events, serves a broad membership of 300 professional dance companies and individual artists, and offers a range of activities unparalleled in Canadian dance. The Dance Centre is BC's primary resource centre for the dance profession and the public. The activities of The Dance Centre are made possible bynumerous individuals. Many thanks to our members, volunteers, community peers, board of directors and the public for your ongoing commitment to dance in BC. Your suggestions and feedback are always welcome. The operations of The Dance Centre are supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Province of British Columbia, the BC Arts Council, and the City of Vancouver through the Office of Cultural Affairs.

With the COVID Relief Funds, the artists that I spoke to said it was the most unbelievable thing because they could stop their [other jobs]. One of the artists who is working with us is working three jobs just to pay the rent! To be able to stop that and work on their art... they had money to rent a studio, and they made more art. I do not know what work Statistics Canada has done but I think the production of art escalated in that period.

RSM: Yes, I have heard from other folks in the community that they try to hang on to the “emerging artist” title as long as they can, because it offers them more opportunities for funding and residencies. After “emerging” when you get into something else (what some people have called “mid-career”) there are less options. The issue that I am seeing is exactly that: people are working two, three jobs outside of dancing, which makes the making of art the last priority, rather than the first priority for their energy because it is so expensive to live here. My question is: how can government funding or other funding better support artists so they can prioritize their art?

JM: I am working with a young artist now. When she mentioned to me that she liked doing administration, we were able to hire her when we were not working with her as a performer. She is working with us every day learning administration of the dance company. At the same time, it just feels ridiculous that she and I are sitting doing administration all day, when really, we should be in the studio all day. There is that kind of dilemma. However, I feel like as many

artists as possible need the survival skills of administration.

At the same time, it feels like in the past five years (since just before the pandemic) there is a certain kind of accountability and reporting that has increased. There are demands being put on artists that are not being put on people in other fields that require us to write and report and calculate and count in ways that simply take us away from our work. It is a demand that does not recognize how much time it really takes to both produce an idea and the procedures for how that hunch or unknown idea would be realized.

To spend time counting numbers, counting people, and adding this and reporting on that, and stating values before you really lived your value, it feels like it is distracting artists from their real purpose which is to perfect the skills and improvisations that allow them to survive in the world. The thing that we offer the rest of the world is to know how to step into the unknown, work there, and know that something will come out of it that will inspire.

RSM: Yes, that really resonates. The amount of time that goes into these applications is huge. Sometimes the questions they ask, for example, “how does your project intersect with decolonization practices?” hit on really critical issues but may not be directly

The thing that we offer the rest of the world is to know how to step into the unknown, work there, and know that something will come out of it that will inspire.

Jennifer Mascall somatic teacher © Yvonne Chew

applicable to the project that someone is working on. I was having a conversation with an artist recently who is a member of a minority group working on a completely different issue that simply felt like, “I shouldn't be the one addressing this.” They felt pressure to change their project to mold their art into something that the Council was really interested in reporting on and valued

JM: There are a lot of formatting and content things that are irrelevant to us. For us to answer a question like that, we might not be able to do it in 21 words, or whatever they say is the designated way they need for their homogeneity of reportage. I think that is a problem. We need to be able to speak when we have the thought and speak in the ways that

we can speak rather than be shaped by a grant application, which we then twist ourselves into to get the money.

I see that in this period of huge change, the work that has to be done is the talking about what are the intersections of different mediums and populations, and what are the intersections of how we are going to live as Canada? Maybe not as Canada, but as Turtle Island. How are we going to live in this new world? I feel like that is the work of the next time period. That is a priority for everybody in the world. I think because nobody has the answers it would be circumspect for the grant to not be open enough to acknowledge that they do not have the answer. We do not have the answer, but this is what we propose to do to help us add to the pot

The Impossible Has Already Happened © Caio Silva

of the answer that will make the new culture.The funding system needs to be more responsive From the artists' side, those thousands of new artists have so much power if they chose to use it—to say we look at these non-profit societies and they are not the right shape for what I want to do. Can we please change the system? All those young people can say this is not working, please do not push us into existing systems that are not really working

RSM: I really love what you said about how artists are always looking forward; artists have always been the ones that envision a new world. We are at an interesting crux in the history of our country of figuring out how to go forward and artists need to be supported in being able to think with complete freedom and in an open-ended way.

JM: The statistics since the pandemic are mixing art and culture with sport, but in Canadian Art in 2018, they had this remarkable article on StatCan that showed that artists had eight times more direct economic impact than sports, and that the impact of the culture industries outpaces agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting. The impact on the finances of the country was like six billion dollars, not counting education or government organizations. One of the triggers that many artists feel is that people laugh when they hear about how the statistics are showing artists have an enormous impact. It is permeating an assumption that is not true. [This disbelief] is not acknowledging the vitality and financial impact that we, as artists, have brought to the country, which is so bizarre when you realize

how much we do with so little money. It is really shocking, the language that comes into common parlance that denigrates art.

RSM: So far in our conversation, we have talked about the funding model and how it can serve us better, but another part of the equation is artists being able to maneuver and being pliable and being able to work within this system, even as you know, we want to change it. Is MascallDance pivoting to react to the current funding environment or what is your vision for that?

JM: I think what has influenced my thinking is having spent four years researching water to make The Impossible Has Already Happened, which was a co-production with New Zealand. We created the piece and toured it in New Zealand. Then, we came back to Canada and reworked, remounted, and toured it here. Throughout the pandemic, while we were trying to get it to the tour, we were researching it. It feels to me that the model of making a dance, performing and touring is too narrow to embrace

Artists have always been the ones that envision a new world.

the need for work with the environment. We as artists could partner with anybody to help expand, educate ourselves, and show the skills that we have of invention, dreaming and visioning of new possibilities with the environment. That is where my vision is going.

RSM: Apart from government grants, where else can people go for funding?

JM: We are doing an audience development called Privilege at Home. During the pandemic, to give a chance for people to watch in their homes and for dancers to perform, we put a piano in a pickup truck and worked with Rachel Iwaasa—a concert pianist who runs the Queer Arts Festival. They sat at the piano in the pickup truck, and we drove to people's places (apartment buildings, co-ops, places on the street) and the dancer got out of the car and Rachel played Beethoven for five minutes while the dancer danced and then we drove away...It's often gone to the places of people that don't go out to art. They bring their neighbors, people come out to see, and it is the magic of the five minutes, just a bite and a taste. There are many ways we need to reach people for whom art would be magic. That is what leads to other funding

RSM: I love the idea of micro art; rather than everyone going to the same place for the same thing, using the communities that we're already a part of. As someone who has survived in the arts for many decades and continues to make work and thrive, do you have any advice or encouragement for younger artists and emerging companies

as they try to create solutions and not lose motivation?

JM: I realized that my legacy, if I have one, comes from my ability to survive. My ability to survive comes from my practice of improvisation. I began my career as a solo improviser. I have always improvised, in fact, I consider choreography to be simply the boundaries that you propose within which an improvisation takes place. The boundaries can be between one beat and another, or they could be between the beginning of the performance and the end of it.

In our administration and our artwork, we continually make decisions for us as a group that will lead to longevity. Developing the skills of improvisation from any point of view is what

Privilege@Home © Milo Carbol

allows for longevity because we have to adapt to things that are just inconceivable again, again and again. I am working with two young artists. It is so much fun because it seems to them that I have things to tell them about, and they have ways of being that I learn from. Intergenerational partnering is what will help us build community and allow us to survive.

RSM: That is such a wonderful place to land.

Rachel Silver Maddock (she/her) is an independent dance artist, choreographer and arts writer guided by artistic curiosity. Currently pursuing her M.A. (Contemporary

Arts) at SFU, she lives and works on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations as a settler of British and Icelandic descent. Her work explores relationships between the self, the land and each other in the complex environment that is called Canada. She has presented choreography and performed with artists and companies locally and in the UK since 2013.

Jennifer Mascall breeds a culture of improvisation. MascallDance makes spaces that welcome thought experiments and invent ways to perceive and re-perceive dance. Mentoring all generations is a mutual growth. Both craft and wisdom develop through perseverance.

Savannah Walling and Karen Jamieson in Coming Out of Chaos, 1982 © Chris Randle

The Archives of Karen Jamieson Dance

by Charlotte Leonard

The archives of Karen Jamieson Dance (KJD), where I have worked as an archivist for the past three years, is both a performing arts archive and a living and evolving entity. It is growing, changing, and being continuously shaped by use and access, as well as time, money, and other resource factors. In this sense, the KJD Archives provides a case study to illustrate what is meant by the notion of “archives'' in the context of an active, non-profit performing arts organization. Through this examination, I hope to offer practical advice to those interested in getting a handle on their own archives, and to demonstrate how the work of KJD, particularly in recent years, has been closely tied to accessing and reflecting upon archival materials.

The Creation of the Archives

Founded in 1983, Karen Jamieson Dance Society has generated countless records of administrative, artistic, and cultural value, and continues to do so to this day. Materials pertain to Jamieson’s early career, Terminal City Dance, various awards and accolades, and the upwards of 100 choreographic works created over the past 40+ years. However, amidst changes in management, funding, and emphasis on the creation of new works, the handling of these bulk of records was not a top priority, and so they languished for several decades – in filing cabinets, boxes, off-site storage, and under the choreographer’s front porch through the rainy Vancouver months.

The first activity to give shape and substance to these materials was undertaken by Managing Director, Pamela Tagle, who pursued funding

for digitization of VHS tapes through arts grants being offered in 2005, prior to the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. This application was successful, and rescued years of precious footage from further damage and degradation by creating digital copies that live on. Having video evidence of Jamieson’s work throughout the years in an accessible format was an important step in chronicling her significant legacy and impact. In conjunction with a website, these materials helped to convey to the public a sense of the company’s history, as well as clarity and context around the direction it was moving in.

The next innovative idea Tagle had was to recruit students from the University of British Columbia School of Information (UBC iSchool) Work Experience Programs to come and develop the archives further, while gaining experience towards their coursework and future careers.

This next phase of the KJD Archives creation saw a total of six UBC iSchool student work placements, of which I was number four. These placements – some paid Co-op positions, others for-credit internships – brought about the organization, documentation, and digitization of the records of all types of media, as well as the creation of several far-reaching and informative projects.

This student-led process began with the creation of multimedia inventory lists, which were based on existing library cataloguing systems, rather than archival principles. In many ways, this initial approach to the materials has served

the company well, as instead of arranging by provenance (where the materials originated from) or the order they were found in, the choice was made to organize by choreographic works. This approach would not have been viable if the order of materials, their particular groupings and relationships to one another, had carried significant informational value, but as Tagle had re-filed everything, she assured all incoming students that this was not the case! With this freedom, we were able to make the collection findable, and usable in a way that reflected the work of Karen Jamieson chronologically, rather than attempting to preserve the messiness of several decades of different recordkeepers.

Members of the Carnegie Dance Troupe performing Grounded in Community: Carrying it Forward as part of the Heart of the City Festival, 2023. [L-R] Swallow Zhou, Heather Blais, Henry Wong [back], Rianne Svelnis, Lance Lim [back], and Deborah Charlie © Chris Randle

In the early days, as with many archives that were made up of inactive records needing to be processed, there was an emphasis on taking inventory of what was there and in what format. Several inventory lists of digital materials were made, and eventually, a catalogue of all analogue textual records was created. These lists were further developed to create the finding aid we have today, which is a list of all the materials we have relating to each piece. Once again, this document is non-traditional in that it does not represent boxes and files lined up neatly on shelves, but rather files and groupings of records assembled according to choreographic works and general administrative categories in a simplified, accessible way.

The Life of the Archives

The KJD Archives have been arranged over the years in such a way to serve the unique needs of the company. This organization is not rigid, and is designed to support the company’s activities, and provide access without barriers.

Some of these uses of the archives include crafting social media posts, newsletters, and other promotional materials, and populating and updating the website – the main resource for information about Karen Jamieson’s life and legacy, and an important vehicle for providing updates to members of the community, as well as funders.

The archives also facilitate scholarly engagement and the creation of new works and publications. We receive research requests for both academic and personal reasons, from scholars,

artists, past collaborators of the company, and dancers from KJD’s Carnegie Dance Troupe who are applying for grants or jobs. The Carnegie Dance Troupe is composed of multidisciplinary artists and participants from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside community who may not have access to all the necessary resources to complete an application, therefore we also offer assistance with building portfolios and resumes, and providing materials by burning DVDs or uploading media to Youtube. In most cases, the researcher is interested in a specific piece of work or multiple pieces, and therefore, the arrangement by choreographic works responds to this tendency and enables findability.

The archives have also been leveraged in more recent years to support KJD’s creative work, by serving as the inspiration and material for new projects and providing primary source materials as evidence and content for retrospective endeavours. An example of this is KJD’s ongoing Body to Land Project, which looks back at significant works and reconsiders them in the present day. The current work under investigation is Stone Soup, a 1995 touring piece that tells a rich, landbased story of respect, asking permission, and reconciliation. Using documentation from the archives – performance video, photographs, textual records – and newly captured interview footage, a conversation takes place that reveals the significance, both past and present, of the cross-cultural work that KJD has engaged in throughout the years.

Through this work, the archives have taken on a life of their own and have become central

...the role of archives—emboldened by people—[was] to tell stories, provide material for reflection, and make connections.

to the company’s transition from a primary focus on the creation of choreographic works, to community outreach and engagement, retrospective and legacy projects, and transmission of the company’s mission and values to the next generation.

In order to facilitate this vibrant life of the archives, certain tasks have been necessary. As previously mentioned, organization, a sense of order, digitization, and written documentation have all provided the KJD Archives with enough structure to support the activities of the company without risk of information loss or opacity.

The KJD Archives are structured into three distinct record groups: Administrative Records, Choreographic Works, and Dance in the Downtown Eastside. From there, each individual file is named, its contents described, and, if there’s time, each item! Item-level description is not yet a reality at KJD; however, having a good sense of intellectual control over materials at a higher level has proven adequate for the needs of the company and researchers.

The Passing on of the Archives

Projects are one of the main ways that the KJD Archives are transmitted to the broader community.

A significant example of this is our first oral history and archival research project – Coming Out of Chaos: A Vancouver Dance Story (COoC). COoC reflects upon and tells the story of the 1982 collaborative performance work, Coming Out of Chaos, to unravel its influence and its place in the emergence of contemporary dance in Vancouver from the 1960s to the present day. My role as the archivist was to assist the project’s Creative Director, Emma Metcalfe Hurst, by doing archival research, writing, and helping to create and populate the resulting website - kjdchaos. ca, which was awarded a City of Vancouver Heritage Award for Living Heritage in May of 2023. COoC was also presented at several conferences locally and internationally, and went on to win the Art Libraries Society of North America’s Worldwide Books Award for Electronic Resources in 2024.

This project allowed us to not only use but build upon existing materials, with the creation of oral history interviews and through networking with local individuals and archives to capture and share information. Central to this project was the role of archives – emboldened by people – to tell stories, provide material for reflection, and make connections. The project is divided into narrative chapters telling the story of Coming Out of Chaos and its resounding impact on the Vancouver dance scene. Throughout these chapters, the archival materials provide context, aids for remembering, and visual support. In the fourth and final chapter, the

discussion of the piece’s impact switches to address the embodied archive, referring to the transmission of Jamieson’s choreography to a new generation through mentorship to recreate a section of the piece, with archives close at hand for reference and reflection.

According to Karen Jamieson, “What is exciting about Coming Out of Chaos: A Vancouver Dance Story archival project is that it places the lens firmly and with intention on the Vancouver dance community at a certain period of time, on a very specific era. We see interconnections and entangled roots. We are made aware that artists – certainly

KJD Archivists past and present, Clare Asquith Finegan, Emma Metcalfe Hurst, and Charlotte Leonard, posing with the City of Vancouver Heritage Award for Living Heritage, 2023 © Pamela Tagle

dance artists – don’t operate in a solitary state, but are constantly influencing and being influenced by the entire matrix, the ground out of which they are emerging and growing from.” Taking this idea a step further, KJD hosted a live event in the Fall of 2021 that presented a documentary film about Terminal City Dance, followed by a conversation between Karen Jamieson, Savannah Walling, and Terry Hunter – the original members of the collective, whom the film featured. Terminal City Dance was an experimental performance collection, featured in the first chapter of COoC as part of the story of dance in Vancouver and its many interconnecting and branching points. The idea behind this event was to exemplify embodied archives in a live setting, through the real-time sharing of stories, memories, and impressions, occasioned by archival materials but transmitted through the lived experiences of those who were there.

These different examples of memory work involving archival materials demonstrate how we extend the term archive to apply to various activities that involve the collection, preservation, and transmission of knowledge more broadly. We find this extension is natural when it comes to dance archives, wherein so much of the knowledge and content is in the sharing and doing, rather than the static record. Through my involvement in this project, I’ve come to greater appreciate and understand the nature of archives as living entities, capable of emoting, memorializing, and telling stories that will transcend time. However, as other living beings, they cannot exist in isolation, and must

be continuously seen, heard, and interacted with to evolve and shape the discourse.

The need for collaboration and discussion around archives is also relevant with regards to Indigenous Traditional Knowledge (TK) in our holdings. We have sought to open our archives up to dialogue and collaboration through our implementation of Local Contexts Notices. These Notices, which appear on our website as icons with attached text, are developed by Local Contexts – a global initiative that supports Indigenous communities with tools that can reassert cultural authority in heritage collections and data. They act to notify visitors to our website when we suspect attribution to a particular work is missing or incomplete and state that we are open to collaborate in correcting any missing information and ensuring respectful handling of materials. For more information, please see localcontexts.org. Inhouse, we have also written our own Traditional Knowledge (TK) Policy to act as a guiding document for how we manage Indigenous TK in the archives, and for future collaborations.

We have also been able to share materials and data originating from our Dance in the Downtown Eastside program by working with other related repositories. We began working with the University of British Columbia in 2021 to transfer a sampling of all of our Carnegie Dance Troupe materials to UBC cIRcle and the Downtown Eastside Research Access Portal (DTES RAP). This involved creating metadata for each dance piece and the associated items, and providing full credits and attributions to everyone involved, which is something that we

...[the nature of archives] cannot exist in isolation, and must be continuously seen, heard, and interacted with to evolve and shape the discourse.

always strive for. At an earlier point, we were also successful in receiving funding through the Irving K. Barber BC History Digitization grant, which allowed us to digitize a large number of our VHS tapes and house them on Arca Digital Repository – a platform that creates opportunities for sharing BC digital scholarship and heritage. The outcome of both initiatives was improved reach and access to the work of KJD, and greater discoverability for those who might be unaware, unlikely to contact the archives directly, or unable to visit in-person.

Conclusion

KJD’s approach to its archives centres around access, use, respect and acknowledgement. As such, we make every effort to extend the archives online and out into the community through various projects, data-sharing, collaborative initiatives, web-based outreach, and events. We provide as detailed a picture as possible of the whole of the archives through our public-facing finding aid and

seek to provide as much context, credit, and archival materials as we can through our website and artist directory. KJD is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year with an event based around – you guessed it, our archives! See kjdance.ca for more information about this event and other upcoming projects and performances.

Charlotte Leonard is an archivist, librarian, reader, and lover of all things dance and movement. She holds a Masters in Archival Studies and a Masters in Library and Information Studies from the University of British Columbia, as well as an Honours BA in English Literature from Concordia University, Montreal. She is passionate about grassroots archiving for non-profit organizations, personal archives, and facilitating access to information. In addition to being the Archives Manager for KJD, she works as a full-time archival consultant in Vancouver, B.C.