20 minute read
A Conversation with Sarah Wong
Writing our baggage into dance
by Shanny Rann
SR: I’m happy to have you with us on Dance Central for the first time, Sarah. Can we start by getting you to introduce yourself to our readers?
SW: My name is Sarah (she/her). I was born and raised here in so-called Vancouver, on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. I'm second-generation Chinese-Canadian and I identify as queer and disabled. I usually say I am an emerging writer, choreographer, then the last bit changes. Sometimes I say, I'm an interdisciplinary artist; in more casual settings, I say I'm a “general artist person”, which is my cheeky way of saying that I work across many mediums.
The place of dance
SR: How does dance fit in this conglomeration of art disciplines for you?
SW: I started dance classes when I was three years old. I am one of those people who started from birth. I was very lucky to have parents who gave me and my brother access to arts and culture, which was very important to them, because those were things that they found in their adulthood, which they had missed out on when they were growing up.
It is not always typical of a Chinese family to emphasize arts education. The majority of my dance studies happened at Arts Umbrella, where I trained for 14 years, completing my Diploma in Dance in 2018. I work across a lot of mediums, but my background is in dance, I grew up in it, many of my formative years were in a dance environment. It is the thing that I always return to…this part of me that is embedded in my history. That is where dance is in my life…but it is a love-hate relationship.
SR: Can you share a little bit about your dance training?
SW: My first dance classes were at community centres, but Arts Umbrella is where I started to pursue dance more seriously. My first dance teacher at Arts Umbrella was Kay Huang, who still actively works as a dance teacher and a performer. She is amazing and is still a part of my life.
Arts Umbrella is not a classical ballet school like the Royal Winnipeg Ballet school but at the same time, ballet is the foundation of what they do and formed the majority of my training.
As I got older, it became contemporary dance, which is a broad term that means a lot of different things—in the Arts Umbrella context, it was very much the type of contemporary dance that was derived from ballet.
SR: For readers like myself, who are not as familiar with the Arts Umbrella dance program, can you give us a run-down of what a day looks like for a student?
SW: I started out in the general school, which is an elementary after-school program. In high school, I did a half-day program called SpArts, which is the combination of sports and arts.
SR: Arts with the intensity of sports?
SW: I'm not sure who came up with that name. The program was run out of Magee Secondary School in Kerrisdale for students who are in intensive sports or arts programs. They go to high school for half a day, and then to their training place for the other half. Most of the students at Arts Umbrella go through this program. It was quite intensive because we would either be at school or Arts Umbrella. We had to maintain a certain grade average to be placed in the program. We were always on the go, and we would eat our lunch on the bus. After I graduated from high school, I continued with the Arts Umbrella two-year dance diploma program in partnership with Vancouver Community College. We danced for around 40 hours a week from Sundays to Fridays, sometimes more if we had performances.
SR: Only one day off on Saturdays?
SW: A lot of us would teach on Saturdays, so technically, we didn't get days off.
SR: Wow, that is really intensive!
SW: I once heard another alumni describe the program as being like bootcamp and I think this description is quite accurate.
SR: How did you feel throughout the two years? What motivated you to pursue this path?
SW: I actually didn't think that I would pursue dance past high school because throughout my years at Arts Umbrella, I was never the favourite. There was a lot of pressure at Arts Umbrella around casting. After many years of experiencing that, I didn't believe in myself, that I could actually pursue a career in dance. I could see that I wasn't as good as the others. What changed my mind was when I went to the summer program of the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, directed by Summer Lee Rhatigan, which sadly, doesn't exist anymore. It opened up my world in such an amazing way that there was a lot more kindness, compassion, and acceptance. I think because the scale of the school was much smaller, it didn't have all the politics of being in an institution that I was used to at Arts Umbrella. It made me realize that I could love dance again, that it didn't have to be competitive and cutthroat. So, I thought I'll do the diploma program and see what happens. I always wonder how different my life would be if I hadn't made that choice to keep going. My relationship to dance and to myself is still something that I'm trying to unpack and heal through my practice now.
SR: Thank you for sharing this openly. I share many of your sentiments. When I was in the SFU dance program, I was never the favourite too. Let us take a moment here to talk about the favourites—who are they? What do they look like?
SW: A good anecdote for explaining what I experienced in my training at Arts Umbrella was an audition I attended in my graduating year for Ballet BC, held in Vancouver for the first time in several years. Previously, auditions were held in cities like Toronto and New York because within Vancouver, there was (and still is) an Arts Umbrella to Ballet BC apprentice pipeline. The two institutions have a long history of being interwoven even before they were officially affiliated. When I was in school, Ballet BC directors and dancers would come to our shows, including our rehearsals sometimes. Every show we did felt like an audition, and we were constantly being put on review.
This audition was held at The Dance Centre, where the Ballet BC studios were housed at the time. Every one of us had to print out our CVs and our headshot, pay the audition fee and put ourselves through the audition, which was only a formality because we already knew who would be selected—the favourites. A lot of us showed up, knowing we were going to be cut after the first round. Despite knowing this, it was still humiliating to go through. This experience was one of many which contributed to my complicated body memories at The Dance Centre.
It is interesting to see that most of my peers who joined Ballet BC after we graduated, many of whom have now moved on to dance at Nederlands Dans Theater, are white, thin, and beautiful by European standards. In fact, most of my peers were white. There were only three people-of-colour in my class, including myself, out of the eighteen dancers.
SR: How did you get admitted to the Arts Umbrella Diploma program?
SW: I always think that I only made it to the diploma program, because I had already been training at the school since I was a kid. It used to be that almost every student who went through the high school program would be admitted to the diploma program. It might be different now because every year the program gets more competitive. I didn't have to audition, but if that hadn't been the case, I don't think I would have gotten in. I got in just by the skin of my teeth.
SR: What did you do after you graduated?
A Year in Italy
SW: I spent a year in Turin, Italy doing another dance program called Nuova Officina della Danza (NOD), a workshop-based dance program. It is a lot more casual than what I experienced in Arts Umbrella. There is not as much competition and people come from different places with all levels of experience.
I wanted to be as far away as possible from everything I knew, because as scary as that was, I was existing in a bubble. I felt I didn't really know myself as a person. I was stuck in the familiarity of living in the city I grew up in, training in this institution where everyone has known me for years with assumptions of who I am and how I dance. If I wanted to get to know myself, I needed to go somewhere where no one knows me, where I need to adapt to a new environment and discover myself.
I started choreographing when I was in Italy. The program was relaxed and I don't think they were used to having someone like me who is very proactive, so they were excited by the enthusiasm that I brought towards choreographing on the students. I felt lucky to be supported there; in a way, it was the perfect amount of hands-off support, where they produced the show and I had studio space without them telling me what to do. That was great.
SR: Did you also choreograph at Arts Umbrella?
SW: Throughout my time at Arts Umbrella, the choreographers whom we worked with were mostly long-time company dancers from Europe. We were not exposed to as many young or local choreographers. I knew that I wanted to pursue choreography, but I wasn't quite sure if it would be possible.
We had one opportunity to choreograph. In my graduating year, they had a mentorship program with Crystal Pite. I choreographed a piece called steps in my graduating year with my friend, Adrian Maxwell-Campagna. That was the best thing I did in my time at Arts Umbrella because it was the one time I had agency in my experience with dance. The whole show was run by students in the diploma program; it was an empowering moment for us, coming together as a group, and doing something for ourselves, by ourselves. That is when I knew that I wanted to keep choreographing.
Dance Ghosts
SR: Tell us about your projects since returning from Italy.
SW: I moved back from Italy in the middle of 2019, so my time emerging into the Vancouver freelance community drastically changed due to the pandemic starting in 2020. As it did to many other performance artists, it caused me to rethink my relationship to live performance and to my body in general. Though most performance activities have since resumed, the changes brought on by the pandemic have definitely stayed within my practice, both because of personal creative interests and because as a disabled person, I cannot simply "return to normal."
These changes were very potent in my experience of doing 12 Minutes Max at The Dance Centre in May 2022. I applied because the mentors for that cohort were Ziyian Kwan and Aryo Khakpour, who are both people whom I've worked with and are friends of mine. When the show happened, I had an allergy attack and ended up performing a long-form poem over Zoom. Everyone else was in the theater. They had me displayed on a phone propped up on a tripod, on a chair, in the stage centre with a spotlight. It was like a meta performance. I was sitting right where I'm sitting right now (in my bedroom) and I was seeing everyone else in the audience.
SR: That is so interesting! I remember at the height of the pandemic years, I was moderating 12 Minutes Max virtually, the performers were at The Dance Centre and everyone else was zooming in. You reversed that relationship by being the only online performer/participant.
SW: I have a really hard time dancing at The Dance Centre because of what I call my “dance ghosts.” Every time that I would go to the studio, the memories, the dance ghosts would just be so overwhelming that they would literally freeze me up and cause my body to decide not to dance. So, I did what I always do when I don't know how to dance, I started writing. I ended up performing a poem called I feel like I've been here before. It was about the specific memories of that space and all those things, those voices that were coming out for me. When I was researching that poem, I was also coming into my identity as a disabled person.
Last year I started to learn more about the disabled community and to identify with the label of being disabled. Prior to that, I have had different chronic illnesses, but I didn't necessarily feel I wanted to, or could identify that way. A lot of that is largely because of internalized ableism from society, but also specifically to being trained in dance, where we're taught to view our bodies in a certain way, and to believe that our bodies’ greatest potential is in reaching these extremes, really exerting ourselves in a physical way.
I had to go through a lot of unlearning, of seeing my body that way to just know that the experience I was having with being disabled wasn't a sign of weakness, or something I had to be ashamed of.
Dance West Network Re-Centering/Margins Creative Residency
SW: I recently edited the booklet for the 2022-23 4th Annual Re-Centering/Margins Creative Residency. Dance West Network produces an annual booklet of essays to go along with the Re-Centering/Margins residency, which specifically supports BIPOC dance artists. The intention is to support the choreographers’ processes and to produce more writing about dance that is for artists by artists. This year's booklet commissioned four pieces of writing - by Bee Kent Colina, Misha Maseka, Aryo Khakpour and Cole Alvis - all of whom were given the liberty to connect with the residency artists and speak to their process in a genre and form that aligned best with them. The booklet is available online as a free PDF or by print-on-demand.
I have participated in this residency over the past 3 years - first as a dance artist, then as a writer, and then as an editor - so I have quite a comprehensive experience of the project from multiple angles. The first time I participated in Re-Centering/Margins for the 2020-21 season, I was a dancer in Katie Cassady’s piece which we also performed at The Dance Centre as part of a double bill with Marissa Wong/The Falling Company. In that process, I became friends with Christian Vistan, who was the writer for Katie Cassady’s piece. For the 2021-22 season, I ended up being the writer for the Ancillary Project, which occurs adjacent to ReCentering/Margins, and wrote a piece about the work of seven amazing dance artists.
The Re-Centering/Margins Residency usually selects three artists, but all the other applicants still receive support through the Ancillary Project. I haven't heard of many other organizations doing that, where they have enough resources to go to everyone. The Ancillary Project is for those applicants who don't get the full residency, but still get offered some studio time.
I am grateful that Dance West Network not only supports many different kinds of artists within Re-Centering/Margins, but that they have also been so supportive of the ways artists like myself are eager to shapeshift and take on new roles to expand their practices. The annual residency booklet is always a labour of love and care that I feel truly exemplifies these expressions of multiplicity. I am proud to be this year's editor, championing the work of both dance artists and dance writers.
Writing our baggage into dance
SR: You mentioned when you cannot dance, you write. Do you think the skills are transferable? I think it is rare to be able to express oneself through dance and writing. Why do you think it is that very few dancers write? Or very few writers dance?
SW: I personally think that the skills are transferable, but it is true that it is not common. Maybe most people will choose one thing and just stick to it. I choose everything all at once.
SR: Everything everywhere all at once!
SW: Yes! I enjoy working in a very multidisciplinary way where I can dip my toes in different places, connect with different communities, let myself adapt, or be responsive to how I'm changing. I don't want to say I've moved away from dance, sometimes I just need space. Writing gives me that space.
I have been taught that our job as dancers is to transcend the need for words. I have always wanted to talk about dance and have deeper conversations about the work we were engaging in and the kinds of performances we were seeing, but no one wanted to engage in those conversations with me during my training. I was always shut down; they didn't want to give me a voice because our body is supposed to be our voice and that we can just say things with our body. Yet, there are things in me that need to be named, especially thinking about political contexts and about lineages, where the dances come from, the histories and all of that. There is a consensus amongst dancers that we don't need words because we have our bodies; in reality, they are two different things.
Throughout my dance training, I kept hearing the phrase, “Leave your baggage at the door”, which captures this expectation for us to dance in a seemingly apolitical context like in a vacuum, that is not emerging from the histories that we walk through. All the dance writing that I do, I want the baggage to be there. That baggage is not a burden; it is our lived experiences!
SR: It is almost as if dance is made to be the antithesis of words, a conflicting relationship… in fact, there is a lot going on between texts and movement.
SW: I'm doing a degree in art history at the University of British Columbia (UBC) now. There is so much writing about visual art but very little about dance. I'm interested in archival practice and documentation of dance; how I view my writing practice is that it allows dance as performance to live on and to take on other lives.
SR: One way to make dance not ephemeral is to write about it. What role has your family played throughout your artistic journey?
SW: My dad is a writer. He worked as a journalist, and he is just about to publish a book that he has been working on for over a decade about the history of jazz music in Vancouver. He has a big influence on my writing. He was always the one to edit my school assignments. I learned how to edit through him; I would sit with him at his computer, and he would go through my assignments for my English classes. He would write little things and tell me where to put a comma, so on and so forth.
SR: No wonder you are such an immaculate editor!
SW: I'm almost obsessive!
SR: That is the quality of a good editor. If you don’t mind me asking, what does your mom do?
SW: My mom is an accountant - though she is still the most creative and crafty person I know.
SR: Attention to details runs in your family, eh?
SW: Yes, definitely!
Rewriting the Myth of Dance
SR: Dance brings with it the connotation that all is rosy and good, but what we experienced has been exactly the opposite of that. Dance as a wonderful thing is a myth that needs to be rewritten. What is undeniable is that we are all entitled to have a relationship with dance regardless of who we are.
Those 14 years of dance training have not been easy for you, but I am sure it planted a huge seed in you. It is premature to know how or when this seed will germinate, what is certain is that dance is so embedded within you that it permeates everything you do, whether it manifests in the form of dance, it forms a crucial part of your identity.
I really appreciate your honest sharing because we only hear about the success stories of dance. Not to say that you are not a success story, because then again, who are we to define success for you? It is hard to reconcile when we have a deep and personal relationship with dance, yet we are constantly judged by the so-called gatekeepers, who tell us we are not the favourites and that we are simply not good enough for it.
I would encourage you, just as I would myself, to not give up if we so wish to continue on this path. The fact that we are still working with dance means that dance is tied to our being—we believe we can, and that we have a lot to give back to dance.
SW: I hear everything you're saying. I agree that it is an amazing thing that we are still in dance despite all the forces that have tried to push us out of these spaces. By us being in dance, whether that is writing about dance or dancing, we are contributing to changing what dance is and what is considered as dance. That is important to me and I'm glad that we're doing that.
SR: Thank you, Sarah, for your time and sharing your journey with me. I feel really privileged to be able to hold this space with you today.
SW: Thank you for holding the space. It always feels good to have these conversations and to find common ground because when I was going through my training, I felt alone. Since moving back to Vancouver, meeting all the great people who are here, especially queer and BIPOC folks in the freelance dance community, I've found much kinship. It is nice, thank you so much for being part of that.
Sarah Wong is an emerging writer, choreographer, and interdisciplinary artist based in Vancouver, Canada on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəyəm (Musqueam), Sḵwx wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (TsleilWaututh) Nations. Her work emerges from lived experiences as a queer and disabled 2nd generation Chinese-Canadian, focusing on archival processes and accessing embodied intergenerational knowledge to trace relationships between identity and lineage. Her practice makes space for the multiple, creating work that spans improvisational performance, site-specific installation, textiles, poetry, film, and zines. She is devoted to cultivating practices of care, creating and facilitating spaces for bodies to rest. Sarah’s work has been presented in Vancouver by Arts Assembly, UNIT/PITT, Vines Art Festival, New Works, Number 3 Gallery, Hatch Art Gallery, The Dance Centre, dumb Instrument Dance, and Boombox, and internationally by Mosaico Danza Interplay Festival (Italy) and Sàn Art (Vietnam). sarahwong.ca / @swongski
Article Cover Image: Sarah at age 8 taking ballet class at Arts Umbrella's Granville Island studios. Photo by Sarah's dad, Chris Wong, 2006.
