Dance Central Fall 2022

Dance Central

Editor's Note

Welcome to the Fall 2022 issue of Dance Central.

I recently visited Scotiabank Dance Centre to meet my colleagues after being away from Vancouver for an extended period of time. Masks are still the reality, but hugs have returned. Since taking on this position as the Editor of Dance Central in the fall of 2020, I have seen my colleagues not more than five times. After all, it is a job that can be accomplished remotely without face-to-face interaction. Two years and eight issues later, I am glad the work carries on.

In this issue, my conversations with Karen Kurnaedy and Damarise Ste Marie, both of whom have traveled extensively, took me around the globe. I traveled with Karen back in time to Europe during the Golden Age of Weimar in the 1920s and Vancouver in the sixties when the Hanova sisters set up the first modern dance school in the city. With Damarise, I traveled into the future to Brazil, where she will be organizing a dance retreat with her long-time collaborators.

How wonderful that travel has returned, but perhaps with a renewed purpose after the pandemic. Without transnational collaborations and international exposure, performing artists might feel stifled, but how does one balance travel for work with our carbon footprint? This brings us back to the debate around Jérôme Bel’s decision to stop flying for the sake of the planet. How does such a decision affect different people geographically and at different stages of their career?

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

Irineu Nogueira © Jaap Kroon Fotographie

Tribute to the Hanova Sisters with Karen Kurnaedy

by Shanny Rann

Our Love Affair with Dance, Karen Kurnaedy’s book project completed during the pandemic, pays homage to her teachers, Magda and Gertrud Hanova, two groundbreaking dance artists, now almost forgotten, but who were instrumental in shaping the modern dance history of Vancouver since 1957. In our brief conversation, Kurnaedy vividly recounts her fond memories of the Hanova sisters, whose love for dance and philosophy of dance as an art form synonymous with life, deeply impacted her own life as a human being and an educator.

Note: Page number refers to excerpts from Karen Kurnaedy's book, Our Love Affair with Dance (2022).

SR: Congratulations Karen on your successful book launch at the Massey Gallery on August 9, 2022. Your book is a great contribution to Vancouver's dance history. In the opening pages of the book, you described your first dance lesson at The Hanova School of Modern Studies in Body Sculpture and the Classical Dance, which in your words, “change[d] my existence forever. And so, my life impacting relationship began that day with Magda and Gertrud Hahn” (4). What led you to that top floor of the small building in downtown Vancouver on that special day in 1965?

KK: As a young child, I always adored dancing and music and I happily grew up exposed to all of the arts through my mother, Pauline Wenn. At ten, I took drama classes with

Lillian Harper, who had shared space with the Hanova sisters at the Academy of the Arts on West Broadway. By this time, the Hanova sisters had moved their studio to the Seymour and Drake location. Lillian discovered my passion for dance and referred me to the sisters’ dance school. I remember wondering in my first lesson, “What are these people doing?” It seemed so strange, the warmup of undulating our spines, shaking our limbs, and the yoga poses but I quickly realized how special the classes were. The sisters lived for the dance and their mission was to assist students in finding their own movement and expression through their bodies.

In those first moments, standing on the precipice of awakening, I was overcome with the beauty of movement and dancing in a whole new way. I had a clear revelation that if I could embody this dancing and make it a part of me, I would be

The top floor where the magic happened

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

Nazanin Oghanian

Design Layout

Becky Wu

Contributors to this issue:

Karen Kurnaedy, Damarise Ste Marie

Photo credits

Front Cover: Karen Kurnaedy in I Will

Never Forget You on the Victoria BC mudflats. A tribute to Magda Hanova (1994) © Lynn Onley Bertram

Back Cover: Exploration of movement at Leviathan Studio on Lasqueti Island

© Damarise Ste Marie

Dance Centre Board Members: Chair

Jason Wrobleski

Vice Chair

Andrea Reid Secretary

Tin Gamboa Treasurer

Annelie Vistica, CPA, CA Directors

Judith Garay, Linda Gordon, Arash Khakpour, Rosario Kolstee, Anndraya Luui, Rachel Maddock, Katia Oteman

Dance Foundation Board

Members:

Chair Linda Blankstein

Secretary Anndraya T Luui

Treasurer Janice Wells

Directors Samantha Luo, Mark Osburn, Sasha Morales, Andrea Benzel

Dance Centre Staff: Executive Director Mirna Zagar Programming Coordinator

Raquel Alvaro Associate Producer Linda Blankstein

Director of Marketing

Heather Bray Digital Marketing Coordinator Lindsay Curtis Membership/Outreach Coordinator

Nazanin Oghanian Lead Technician Chengyan Boon Comptroller Elyn Dobbs Development Coordinator

Anna Ruscitti

Venue and Operations Manager

Simran Ghesani

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.

able to satisfy an inner yearning that I’d had my whole life thus far. This yearning was to dance in a way that addressed my need to express my creativity through my body. Of course, I wasn’t able to articulate these feelings then as I can now. I was simply overjoyed in the recognition of discovering the elusive quality that I knew on some profound level I had been missing. (2)

When the Hanova sisters came to Vancouver in 1957, they were almost 60 but this didn’t hold them back. They opened the first modern dance school in the city and taught something quite unusual for the Vancouver of the late 1950s. They included yoga and Indian dance in their modern dance classes. Their modern dance style was European, inspired by Mary Wigman and Rudolph Laban, and reflected the Weimar German body culture, which mostly stressed a beauty, flow, and naturalness of movement. In the Golden Age of the Weimar Republic during the 1920s, the sisters danced with many famous schools of modern dance and ballet in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, Dresden, and Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia.

Relationship with her teachers

SR: You have had such a longstanding relationship that evolved over time with the sisters. In many dance traditions, the guru figure is almost a sacred one. How would you describe your relationship with your teachers?

KK: I was in awe of them when I was a child because they were like royalty. I did not question anything they taught as they spoke

about everything with such conviction. I learnt so much about modern dance history, music, and art from them. They were my mentors and I had huge respect for them.

As I got into my teens, I started taking private classes and joined their production group that performed around the city. After I finished high school, I traveled the world for a couple of years, and then was back with the sisters until I moved to Kelowna and Edmonton, for 13 years. When I finally moved back to BC in 1990, I was thrilled to start dancing with the sisters again. As adults, we had a different relationship. We became closer friends. They were still my revered dance teachers, but it wasn't as strict a relationship anymore. We choreographed so many beautiful dances together. It was satisfying for me to be with them because it was a very creative time. We had many performances and small gatherings in their studio. Now in their late eighties, they still loved to teach and share about dance and how we should all be dancing.

Magda was a lovely woman who liked teaching children. Gertrud wasn’t particularly fond of children, and she had no problem saying what she did not like. They were like the optimist and the pessimist, but they agreed with each other about everything. Sadly, Magda died of a stroke in 1992 at the age of 87. Gertrud outlived her by ten years, until she was 99. I continued dancing with Gertrud for many more years after Magda died and we had a very productive time.

I'm so glad they came into my life. I don't

know who I would be now without their influence. I might never have completed a doctorate or written about dance with so much passion and conviction. They will always be my esteemed teachers.

SR: It is a big milestone from your dancing years to writing this book. It's clearly a labor of love and a product of the many years of close relationship with your teachers. Why have you decided to write it all down?

KK: I wrote it all down because I feel that the Hanova sisters’ story is unique, but in some ways, represents many dancers of the past, whose stories have been lost. What they

Gertrud adjusting Karen's costume at the Creative Space studio in the mid-1990s © Karen Kurnaedy

accomplished, experienced, and created is part of the story of the modern dance we enjoy today, and these early beginnings need to be remembered. Karl Toepfer, Emeritus Professor of Theater Arts San Jose State University, who wrote the book Empire of Ecstasy: Nudity and Movement in German Body Culture, 1910-1935, (1997) points out that it was difficult to compile in-depth information about much of the Weimar dance culture and its dancers because there are only fragments left from this period. Much was destroyed when the Nazis came into power. They outlawed nudism and imprisoned artists, gypsies, and Jews. My teachers were Jewish. It was just their very good fortune that in 1932 Gertrud married an Indian man from Bombay and moved there and encouraged her father and sister to follow her, thus escaping being murdered.

Gertrud at the Hanova Bombay Dance School in the mid-1940s © Karen Kurnaedy

Their story is also one of Jewish survival before and during WWII. In the early 1930s, the sisters were forced to flee the Nazi takeover of their homeland, Czechoslovakia. They fled to India and spent sixteen years in Bombay, where they participated and were witness to the revival of Indian classical dance during the 1930s and 1940s. The sisters continued to again build new lives, moving to London, England in 1949. They finally settled in Vancouver, Canada in 1957, where they taught modern physical culture and dance for almost forty years (ii)

What I would like to emphasize in my book is that the Hanova sisters celebrated the dance arts joyously their whole lives and dance enabled them to continue to see the beauty in the world despite war and persecution. Having to flee Europe, they turned a terrible situation into something productive and wonderful. When Gertrud moved to India, she took her family heirlooms and memorabilia and trunks full of her costumes. As soon as she got to Bombay, she started making connections and performing. Magda came with her husband about a year later. The sisters had a very successful modern dance school in Bombay for fifteen years and performed with famous Indian dancers of the era. My intention for this book was to “celebrate the sublime and nuanced inner and outer experiences achieved through dancing and leave a significant historical record of two dance artist’s accomplishments” (i).

SR: Is it a dream that you have had for a long time to write this book?

KK: Yes. Over the years I have written a few articles about them, and I mentioned them in my doctoral dissertation but on reflection and with all the material I still had, I felt they deserved a much more complete and detailed narrative which would do their story justice. In 1992 before Magda died, I started interviewing them and making copies of their photographs and newspaper articles. They were both enthusiastic about a biography and a record of their lives being left for posterity.

SR: The photo collection in your book is impressive.

KK: Yes, I was always fascinated with the detail they kept of each era of their lives in photographs. As a teen, if I was visiting their apartment, I loved looking through their albums. I still have that feeling of amazement and

enjoyment when I look at their pictures today.

SR: Was it common to have access to cameras and to take so many photos back then?

KK: In the early 1910s and 1920s? Definitely. According to Toepfer (1997), photography became the preferred medium for transmitting the new image of dance. In his book, he talks about how dancers did not want to film their work because they did not want someone to see it and steal their choreography. So, dance artists made postcards with photographs and that was how they advertised and publicized their work.

Women as Artists

SR: Through the lives of the Hahn sisters, readers could go on a ride and imagine what life was like from the early 1900s to 2002 as a

Gertrud and Karen at the India Gate restaurant in the mid-1990s © Karen Kurnaedy

dancer. In the Vancouver context, your book illuminates the local dance history from 1965 to 2002 as it has never been told before. You also delve into topics like feminism and the life of women as artists. Do you think also because they were women, their stories have largely been obscured?

KK: I think publishers will always focus on the famous so as to sell books. So, the question of their stories being obscured as women is probably not true. Their fame as dance artists was in their younger years in Europe and India. The sisters’ careers as performing artists were long over when they came to Vancouver. Their life in Canada flourished as dance teachers and they were quite low key as time went on. I think the woman as artist in 2022 seems to have a higher profile and more power but as more women speak out, we hear that men are still very much running the media and the arts. I reflect that for thousands of years

women were not allowed to be artists of any kind. So, we are making some progress, ha, ha. If you were a dancer in Paris before 1920, you were considered not much more than a prostitute. When the twenties came along, and fashion changed, women's images of themselves changed. The new body culture in Europe enabled women to see themselves differently and to celebrate the body in dance, choreography, and photography in new and innovative ways. It was a huge shift in culture that the sisters were part of.

Through reading the Hahn sisters’ story we may reflect on the many positive changes for women that have occurred throughout the 20th century and especially ponder that the stigma and barriers for women becoming artists of all kinds has diminished. But additionally, the Hahn sisters’ story reminds us that many of the same conflicts, such as misogyny, racism, and continuous warfare still exist in the world today, and still need brave women to stand up and live the lives they desire without feeling they must conform to constrictive social norms. The woman as artist has been a forerunner, a powerful instigator, and catalyst in challenging traditional ideas of how women should live their lives. By emphasizing and acknowledging the personal histories of women as artists, we can appreciate that these stories are key to understanding the past in a fuller and more intimate way and to inspire others to forge their own individual, artistic paths for today and the future. (iii)

...dance enabled [the Hanova sisters] to continue to see the beauty in the world despite war and persecution.

The sisters strongly identified with the new era of freedom for women in the 1920s. Their parents were open-minded and liberal and supported their being dancers. The war unfortunately disrupted everything, and the family escaped to India. But this turned out to be an amazing experience for them and the Eastern perspective on dance and exercise was illuminating. They embraced the Indian dance arts and wove this knowledge into their European dance philosophy creating the unique Hanova style and method.

Integrating Dance in the Classroom

SR: At the Vancouver Hanova Dance Studio, you mentioned students were not there to become professional dancers, but to unlock

their creativity and seek inspiration. “As students, we were always encouraged to create our own movements and choreography and through these movements find within ourselves a confirmation of our inventiveness, a release of emotion, and a mode of expression" (14). This is very different from the training in conservatories or universities where if you major in dance, you are geared to become a professional dancer. Of course, not everyone becomes a professional dancer, but there is the pressure to become one. Is it not liberating that at the Hanova school people were celebrated for themselves, including older dancers, up to 85 years old? Such a liberatory space with a pure celebration for dance is still lacking in our modern education.

KK: For most of my working life, I was an

Gertrud and students at Stanley Park. Karen,14, is seated behind Gertrud in 1968 © Karen Kurnaedy

elementary school teacher, which I really enjoyed. My mother inspired me and had a preschool near the University of British Columbia for 35 years. She had a very handson pedagogy of celebrating the child in all ways which I emulated. I mostly taught Grade Four and Grade Five. At this age, children are still open to creating and enjoying literature, dancing, and all of the arts without censoring themselves. I incorporated what I learned from the Hanova School into my classroom, which is that you might not become a professional artist, writer, or dancer when you grow up but experiencing these art forms is part of a complete education. As Laban said, “We are all dancers, we all have a dancer within us.” If you are never given the chance to try dancing, you might think dancing is not for you.

Through the Hahn sisters’ deep conviction that dance is a transformative art form, which all people should experience to feel truly alive, the sisters not only trained dancers who went on to professional careers, but most importantly, joyously shared their message with hundreds of dancers who would never be professionals. Nevertheless, these dancers experienced and felt the deep and satisfying merits of creating dance works and dancing as an artistic experience. The Hahn sisters believed that through the art of movement we may experience a profound discovery of ourselves. (i)

I also worked with teachers at Simon Fraser University where I was a faculty associate for two years and I taught a course about how to integrate dance and music into the regular classroom for the post-baccalaureate program

Magda and Gertrud during Magda's birthday in December 1991 © Karen Kurnaedy

for three years. I think the public school system needs more dance teachers and teachers who will dance with their students.

SR: It reflects your embodied methodology.

KK: Yes, perhaps more a philosophy in which dancing is seen as an art form for all people to experience and enjoy, not just for the highly trained professional and performer. As I age, I continue to dance and love every minute. Dance has brought much joy to my life.

SR: That is great. It is so evident that your love for dance has carried you through such a rich and fulfilling life.

KK: Thank you Shanny. I appreciate this opportunity to talk about the Hanova sisters and their love affair with dance.

SR: Thank you so much for your generous sharing. I have thoroughly enjoyed our conversation today and I am sure readers will enjoy your book as much as I did.

Karen’s work as a writer includes publishing several essays, articles, and books about dance and dance education. Karen received her Bachelor of Education with distinction from the University of Alberta and also earned a Master of Arts and a Doctorate in Philosophy from Simon Fraser University. Her teaching experience includes thirty years in the Coquitlam School District, being a Faculty Associate and instructing in the Graduate Diploma program at Simon Fraser University. Her interests lie in promoting and implementing new ideas for the dance arts, dance history, somatic movement practices, and dance education.

Our Love Affair with Dance by Karen Kurnaedy

A record of the Hanova sisters' lives is one of many important personal narratives to be read in order to understand the history of the modern dance we enjoy today.

Karen McKinlay Kurnaedy is a second generation settler living on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded occupied territory of the Kwikwetlem First Nation in Port Coquitlam, BC. She is a dancer, writer, and educator. She began her dance training in the 1960s at The Hanova School of Modern Studies in Body Sculpture and the Classical Dance (the first modern dance school in Vancouver) where she was forever imbued with the spirit of Duncan, Dalcroze, Laban, Wigman, and Menaka.

Digital and paperback available.

A Conversation with Damarise Ste Marie Sensing Bodies retreat in Brazil

by Shanny Rann

Sensing Bodies is a 10-day artistic retreat in the south of Brazil, happening from February 28 to March 9, 2023. Participants will gather in Gamboa, a beautiful seaside community near Florianópolis to explore and share dances and rhythms. Sensing Bodies is open to all who are inspired by bodies, movement, creative process, and performing arts. The program is a festival, a creative process, a retreat, a confluence, and a magical meeting place, as a response to our hearts’ desires for connecting and relating in new and ancient ways. Damarise Ste Marie, the producer of this retreat, talks to Dance Central about what inspires her and why we should join her in Brazil next year.

SR: Hi Damarise, please introduce yourself to our readers.

DSM: My name is Damarise, and I live in Vancouver I grew up in Kamloops and did a lot of my dance training out in Toronto and Quebec City. I love creating joyful movement experiences for people from as young as two years old up to ninety-two years old. I work in the public school system teaching dance, I also do community programs, workshops, residencies, and retreats. I am going to share with you my newest, shiniest project, the Sensing Bodies retreat.

RETREAT

SR: I love how you call your project a retreat. It has that connotation of bringing dance, movement, and healing together. The word

retreat puts us in a relaxed mode right away, people really need it during these times. We don’t hear much about dance retreats. There are more yoga retreats. I think what you are offering is something unique to the wellness world.

DSM: It is about a combination of community energy, which is what dancing does. Retreat is about nature, time, and space away. I am not calling it intensive because when you are young, you go into a dance training program to enter the profession. Retreat has a different focus. It could be open to people who are seasoned professionals, and also those who are attracted to wellness. How all these people come together, share their own knowledge, and learn in different ways, is what really excites me.

SR: Tell us about the inspiration behind this project.

New folk dances for new spaces, co-created and danced with joy © Damarise Ste Marie

DSM: I always work intuitively. I have worked with this constellation of artists before. Their work is very joyful and that is the centre of my work too. It is about connection, community, and relating. It is also a response to what we have been through for over two years of not connecting, being isolated, and alone. It is time to connect in new ways, to think about health, well-being and community in bigger ways and see how we can reconnect culturally, create connections, rather than staying in our own spaces.

FACULTY

SR: Tell me about your retreat faculty.

DSM: I have five faculty: two of them are

from Canada, and three of them are from Brazil. The Canadians are Ruth Douthwright and Kevin O'Connor, who are best friends and long-time collaborators. I met Ruth when I was living in Toronto, I was taking her weekly classes and I always felt so good after them. Ruth works with folkloric dances from Eastern Europe. She's also a contemporary dance artist and community instigator. Her formative education in folkloric, sacred dance, and storytelling continues to influence her research and practices. She is now developing support for breast cancer patients using dance improvisation methods based on her personal and ongoing journey.

Dr. Kevin O’Connor is a multidisciplinary artist working as a choreographer, dancer,

Kevin exploring ideas and materials around fascia, structure, power, relationship, and imagination © Kevin O'Connor

improviser, circus artist, and installation artist. He finished his PhD in performance studies at UC Davis, where he researched the emerging 21st century human biology named fascia, through a critical feminist science studies lens. He examined anatomies, body performance capacities, interventions, and imaginations in relation to science studies, including the material-bio-cultural tissue called fascia.

He is also a cranial sacral therapist, and he brings that perspective to his workshops. Kevin works at the intersection of arts, sciences, ritual practices, practice-as-research, and improvisation theory and practice. He is involved in a decade-long artistic collective instigated with Ruth Douthwright and Billy Jack called Sweet Labour Art, exploring participatory de-colonizing performances within polluted watersheds in Ontario.

Kevin and Ruth will have a co-teaching class, called Togethering: Sweet Labour Art Practices at the retreat. The class includes dancing with fascia, social and folkloric dances, dance improvisation, crafting eco-somatic imaginaries, working with objects, dancing with ancestors, situating storytelling practices, woven together into a messy whole. These practices emerge from 15 years of community art collaborations along the polluted D’eshkin zibi river in what is now called London, Ontario. One key component of their work will ask how dance improvisation practices can offer different methods for listening without

understanding and cultivating response-ability to our ecological entanglements with others.

BRAZIL

SR: Before you introduce the Brazilian faculty, I am curious about your connection with Brazil.

DSM: It started in Quebec City. I wanted to train because I had just finished dancing school but did not have very much money. There was a samba school in Quebec City that offered me a work-trade program. I would help with registration and help with social dance classes as a partner and in return, could take some classes for free. My initial training in Brazilian dances started there.

I spent three months in Brazil in 2015 and again in 2016. Then in 2019, I attended a

It is time to connect in new ways, to think about health, well-being, and community in bigger ways...

retreat by Irineu Nogueira in Brazil. I met Irineu at a six-week workshop at École des Sables in Senegal. Irineu is a Brazilian artist, producer, and social entrepreneur whose approach incorporates eclectic references and experiences, combining contemporary dance techniques with the diversity of Afro-Brazilian culture to create a unique methodology for the body. I thought that his classes were great and had a lot to offer, so I brought him to Quebec City and created a whole residency for him. It was the first project that I organized. Irineu wanted me to bring his drummer, Alysson Bruno, who does Afro-Brazilian dances with his own blend of new and old, ancestral, and contemporary African-based dances. Alysson will also be at the retreat in Brazil, doing a workshop called Musicality of Movement with body percussion to connect the symbology of the dances of the Orixás with their musicality, creating communication between music and dance to tell a story with the movements.

The location of this upcoming retreat is a place that I've already been to in Brazil a few times actually. Gamboa is a small fishing and surfing community one hour's drive south of Florianópolis, near the town of Garopaba. I know a woman there, Camila Seeger from Chile, who's a dancer, movement educator, and body awareness facilitator. She plays through contemporary dance, somatic and eco-somatic research, creative collaboration, and local production. Camila will be doing a workshop called Dynamic Experiences, a

somatic experience into dynamic motion to observe and practice connections between the parasympathetic nervous system and the dynamic motion that offers us spacetime and a huge spectrum of intensities to play with. She is also helping me with the coordination work in Brazil.

CULTURE

SR: There seems to be a lot of folk-dance elements in this retreat, which is quite unique.

DSM: Traditionally, folk dances come from the place where the people are living. They are inspired by the land that people are on and the elements that they are in. One of the essentials of folk dancing is that it comes from the community. Ruth and Kevin are interested in how the space informs the dance. With this community of people who will be at the retreat, what kind of dances would be coming up? What is emerging as a result of being in this space with these people?

SR: Dance can be a loaded term to unpack. For example, folk dance takes on a different meaning in Canada as compared to Eastern Europe, where it is much more integrated into the lives of people across generations.

DSM: In Canada, the community aspect of folk dancing is not as strong as it could be. There are cultures within Canada that may have a stronger connection with community dancing, but I feel there are a lot of people who are afraid of dancing in our culture. In Brazil, I have

A giant folk dance taught by Ruth, with concentric circles - inclusive, joyful, dynamic, rooted in land and community © Ruth Douthwright often seen young children in dance classes. If an adult is going to a dance class, it's okay to bring their young child instead of taking them away to childcare. So, this is how the generations will continue dancing. Everyone thinks Brazilians are such good dancers. It's because there is access and exposure to it from a young age. Dance is integrated in people’s lives in a way that is not quite the same in Canada.

is. For this retreat, there will be people from Brazil and Canada who are coming together with their own ways of relating to one another. I think starting with dances and rhythms creates that bridge right away for us to have goodwill, for us to connect with our hearts, and for us to have the intention to accept and understand other people, even if we don't understand them, to be able to accept that it is just the way that another person is doing something.

Oftentimes, we might see culture as flowery things, but culture is a lot deeper than that. It's about how we are with each other. Each cultural group is with one another in a certain way. Since we are human beings, it happens through our bodies. When we gather together as people from different backgrounds and walks of life, then sometimes we need to pause, slow down and consider what the culture of this new group

SR: It gives me a whole new understanding of what culture can be. Now that we are slowly emerging from this pandemic, this great isolation period, where we keep our bodies to ourselves, how do you envision it to be different from what you have experienced before the pandemic when bringing all these diverse bodies together? What do you think would be the most different aspect post-pandemic?

DSM: I don't know how it will be. I have an idea that there might be both more joy and more grief because we have been through a lot. To be together again is a big feeling. I think that a way I could meet that possibility is to take care of the container that I am creating for the faculty and the participants; to create space to slow down, to set expectations, to direct people if they need support, as the producer and director. I plan to start and end each day with a short embodiment practice, so participants feel a sense of gathering and grounding, so we are all in tune with one another.

JOY

SR: You connect to people easily, and you straddle across cultures, generations, and movements easily. What is the thing that

enables you to be so fluid across boundaries?

DSM: Joy. What I do is based on joy. Everybody connects with joy. They really want joy in their life. It's not an intellectual process but a connective experience. That's where I'm coming from when I go places.

I want to feel joy with you, and I want to connect with you. That's my intention.

SR: You obviously wear many hats, which role resonates most with you?

DSM: I feel like a connector and a creator of space. When I feel inspired, it is important that I do it. If after this retreat, I don't have any inspiration to do another retreat for the rest of my life, I won't do it. I don't need to produce art or artistic experiences to keep my career going.

Touch, space, relationship and responsiveness - how we negotiate connection through improvisation

Exploring tensegrity, relationship and entanglement through playing and examining the children's game Cat's Cradle

Damarise Ste Marie

Damarise Ste Marie

SR: In our culture of mass production, artists are often overworked and pressured to be producing all the time.

DSM: If it's not inspiring me to produce, what's the point? There is much pressure to hustle and to have output, to prove that you are still a professional artist but that's not how I live my life. It's more about what's the next thing that my heart is going towards.

SR: With such an attitude towards joy, listening to our intuition, and connecting to our bodies, dancers could have long sustainable careers. Often, it's that pressure of having to constantly produce that causes dancers to burn out, even before their careers have ended.

Do you see the possibility of holding this retreat in Canada in the future?

DSM: There is a possibility but I'm not thinking about any details as the future can be too much for me. I am focused on what I'm doing now. I see this as a pilot program for cultural exchange. I'm well-positioned, skilled, and experienced to bring people together from different places with different backgrounds. I have traveled a lot and I am able to connect with people easily. I can hold space and organize. Let's see what happens!

SR: Are there any last words that you'd like to share with readers?

DSM: Join us! We have two sliding scales for registration. One for the global north and the other for the global south. This is for equity with participation. The retreat is in Brazil, half the faculty are Brazilians. It's about community and cultural exchange. We need to create space for everyone who wants to come. One needs to be able to get there and to pay but it shouldn't be contingent upon being from the global north. One should be a Brazilian and still be able to afford it. So do join us from wherever you are!

More information about the Sensing Bodies retreat can be accessed through sensingbodies.com .

Damarise Ste Marie is a dancer, teacher, producer, and choreographer. Since completing contemporary dance training in 2012, she has been studying dances of the African diaspora, specifically in Western and Southern Africa and Brazil. She teaches, directs, and produces dance/ movement projects in Vancouver where she is based. She also facilitates creative arts programming for children in First Nations communities throughout Canada. She is currently doing studio research in Vancouver for an interdisciplinary group performance project involving singing, dancing, and drumming. Damarise teaches in studios, community centres, and schools across Canada and internationally.

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