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April 29, 2003

People will always argue about which our ancient ancestors did first, dance or make music. However, given that even the act of producing sound by drumming a stick on an empty skull requires and presumes equally rhythmic movements of the human body, I would tend to argue in favour of dance.
      Either way, dance has been a human activity since prehistoric times and we may therefore reasonably assume there has been dancing in the land we now call Canada for as long people have been here. From this perspective, professional dance is very much a newcomer, as is theatrical dance, in the sense of one group doing it for the entertainment of others who sit and watch.
      Dance was an important part of the life of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples long before the arrival of trans-Atlantic explorers. Under the impact of centuries of colonization and immigration, Canada’s indigenous peoples struggled to retain even a tenuous hold on their rich dance heritage. Given the often hostile indifference of European settlers to the Aboriginal cultures they disrupted and displaced, it was inevitable that indigenous dance forms would have little impact on the later development of what for many years was considered to be the dance mainstream in Canada. However, by the end of the 20th century, with changing attitudes and imaginative initiatives, the established and evolving traditions of indigenous dance performance had once again become an important part of the culture of many of Canada’s Aboriginal communities.

Dance historically has had many motives and goals – ritual, recreational, social, therapeutic, seductive and artistically expressive, among others. It is useful to note that even today, a lot more amateurs dance for social and recreational reasons, often with enormous skill and dedication, than are paid to do it on stage in darkened spaces.
      “Professional” is a loaded and not always helpful word. It guarantees neither aesthetic merit nor material self-sufficiency. Sadly, there are too many “professionals” working in the chronically under-resourced Canadian dance community who cannot make a full living at it and are thus compelled to take supplementary and not always desirable employment.
      It would be naïve for anyone but a total outsider to ask why dance people would tolerate such a situation. The reason, of course, is because they have made a commitment. Dance for them is not a job but a calling. “Professionalism” therefore probably better describes their attitudes and focus in life than the fact that they might get paid.
      It is important to recognize the centrality of the dancing body in all of this. Dancers are the heart of the matter. Without them every other part of the profession would be redundant. Yet, ironically, dancers are often the least well served in terms of pay, working conditions and occasionally even respect.
      But why this commitment? What makes dance people so delightfully, crazily passionate about what they do? Most dancers will admit that it hurts, almost all the time, even when they are having fun. They also know that their performing careers will likely be over while musicians of the same early middle age are still piping merrily, writers still scribbling the next great novel, tenors hitting high Cs and actors declaiming and emoting in their endearingly self-absorbed way. The answer to this puzzle is complex.
      Dance can never be adequately defined or described. However, without getting into the mind/body argument, it is surely an emanation through a dancer’s entire being of something that cannot be framed in words. Often that something is so profound that either dancing it or seeing it danced can be a transforming, indelible experience. The movement does not have to be highly technical or spectacular. It does not have to conform to any particular code. It does not have to relate a story or even attempt self-consciously to express a specific emotion. It simply needs to be real and in the moment. In Canada, where we are privileged to enjoy exposure to an extraordinarily varied range of dance forms and traditions – from ballet to butoh to bharatanatyam – this universal quality of dance is evident all around us.
      Of course, dance is not always cathartic nor walks a spiritual high road. If it did we would doubtless soon become immune to its power. So it is probably just as well that there is dance whose goal is simply to excite and entertain through an exhilarating display of artistically organized athleticism or technical finesse. In dance there is room for almost everything because when the body moves in time and space it can think and play and sing and worship and celebrate and mourn and tell tales and honour our heritage – in fact, do virtually anything.

Not surprisingly, given Canada’s colonial history, the professional dance scene that first emerged here sprang from European roots. Classical ballet was performed in la Nouvelle France as early as the 17th century. By the early twentieth, with a network of railroads connecting Canada’s major centres, the country became part of a North American touring circuit that featured some of the brightest international dance luminaries. From the ballet world came Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, and Leonide Massine along with such leaders of the new wave as Ruth St. Denis, Doris Humphrey and Martha Graham. These modernists were often dismissed as “barefoot ballet dancers” by the traditionalists. In turn, the barefoot brigade would have sooner used pointe shoes as offensive weapons than footwear. It took a long time before the ballet-modern divide within what can broadly be called the Western dance tradition began to melt away. When it did, it permitted the exchange of valuable insights and the emergence of contemporary troupes that do not even care to attach formal stylistic labels to what they do.

Also unsurprisingly, dance teachers were doing good work in Canada before there were local professional companies to offer employment. Boris Volkoff, the feisty Russian émigré who settled in Toronto, opened his first studio in 1931. In Vancouver, the inspirational June Roper launched her academy three years later. In Montreal, Gérald Crevier followed not long after.
      By 1936, Volkoff had organized a student troupe and presented them in Berlin. Three years later he founded the Volkoff Canadian Ballet, which thus vies for the legitimate claim to be Canada’s first true ballet company. Its rival was a little group in Winnipeg, established almost at the same time by the recent English immigrants, Gweneth Lloyd and Betty Farrally.
      In those days, nobody had any money for anything. There were no arts councils, no corporate sponsors and only a handful of patrons who, besides buying tickets and making the occasional modest donation, could also be relied upon to paste up posters, act as ushers, mop the floor and bake cookies for the after-show party.

Royal Winnipeg Ballet - Sleeping Beauty Dancers: Jennifer Welsman and Reyneris Reyes Photo Credit: David Cooper

Lloyd and Farrally’s Winnipeg Ballet struggled on in this hand-to-mouth manner even after the company was formally incorporated as Canada’s first professional dance organization in 1949. By then, however, something important had happened.
      In 1948, Volkoff and the Winnipegers joined forces in what may be taken as the first expression of an emerging Canadian dance community. They organized a national ballet festival. Even though a near disastrous Winnipeg spring flood prevented the attendance of Kay Armstrong’s Vancouver troupe, Volkoff’s company and the Winnipeg Ballet were joined by Polish-German immigrant Ruth Sorel’s modern troupe from Montreal for the first in a series of six catalytic Canadian Ballet Festivals.
      The ballet festivals were enormously significant in establishing a sense of pride and a friendly, co-operative spirit among the mostly amateur troupes involved. This Canadian spirit of sharing and celebration so impressed the visiting American critic Anatole Chujoy that several years later he succeeded in triggering a similar movement in the United States – the American Regional Ballet Association.
      The second Canadian festival, in Toronto, helped spur the ambition of local balletomanes to form their own, as they envisaged it, truly “national” company. A year later they invited the British dancer/choreographer Celia Franca to lead their efforts and the soi-disant Canadian National Ballet was launched in 1951. The following year ballerina Ludmilla Chiriaeff abandoned the privations of post-war Europe to seek a better fortune in Canada and settled in Montreal. There she founded what in 1958 became Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. Now Canada had three professional ballet companies and while their roots were European they acquired their own Canadian inflections.
      In Winnipeg Gweneth Lloyd, her company’s principal choreographer until the mid-1950s, pursued a populist path, intent on showing that ballet was not all frippery or intended for a snobbish elite. Lloyd’s Shooting of Dan McGrew had folk rolling in the aisles. Her Shadow on the Prairie captured the lonely heartbreak of pioneer life and was preserved for posterity by the National Film Board. The populist tradition at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, as it was known from 1953 on, continued through the 30-year leadership of artistic director Arnold Spohr. His search for exciting new work to give his company a distinctive edge included a wonderfully fertile relationship with Canadian choreographers Brian Macdonald and later Norbert Vesak.
      Franca’s soon retitled National Ballet of Canada aspired to international standards and therefore embraced the traditional classics as its core repertoire, but also incorporated the work of ballet innovator Antony Tudor and fostered the work of emerging Canadian choreographers, notably Grant Strate.
      In Montreal, Chiriaeff also developed a distinctive profile for her evolving troupe, choreographing or commissioning works that often reflected the values and heritage of her adopted province.
      A decade or so later, these three professional Canadian ballet troupes, each now with its own school, were joined by a number of modern troupes who drew their inspiration either from European or American ideas. The modern dance revolution was already well past its first phase and so Canada’s pioneer modernists had a variety of sources to tap. By the late 1960s there were professional modern troupes in Montreal (Le Groupe de la Place Royale), Toronto (Toronto Dance Theatre) and Winnipeg (Contemporary Dancers).
      Like the big ballet companies, the modern troupes also assumed an educational function and together contributed to a bright flowering of dance in Canada. This coincided with an intense period of international interest in the art form – the so-called Dance Boom – and with a new sense of pride in Canada’s accomplishments as a nation. The rebellious 1960s were fertile soil for an art form of the body, of both ideas and sensuality.
      Key to this growth was the availability from 1957 onwards of public funding at the federal and increasingly at the provincial and municipal levels. While the private Ford Foundation helped drive the regional and explosive growth of dance in the United States, here that role was assumed by the Canada Council. While America preferred in large part to devolve responsibility for support of the arts to private individuals and foundations in return for huge tax write-offs, Canada preferred a more centrally directed approach that embraced issues of fairness, regionalism and broad public access through touring grants.
      It was the Canada Council that, unintentionally, triggered the creation of our first national dance service organization by convening a 1972 meeting in Ottawa to discuss the community’s evolution. Those attending came away so charged by the experience of meeting and sharing ideas with their peers from across the country that in 1973 they founded the Dance in Canada Association with a broad mandate of service, communication, education and advocacy.
      As with the Canadian Ballet Festivals of the 1950s, Canada was once again in the international vanguard. The Dance in Canada Association (DICA) was in many ways a model for Dance UK and Dance USA, both founded almost a decade later.
      As the Canadian dance community diversified and expanded, regionally and artistically, so too did its need for funding. DICA, like the Canada Council, often found it hard to satisfy such a broadly-based constituency. There were even times when the competition for scarce funding led to internal bickering. In 1977 several of the longer-established companies decided they needed a more focused organization to serve their particular needs and formed the Canadian Association of Professional Dance Organizations (CAPDO).
      DICA continued to publish its quarterly magazine, lobby governments and convene peripatetic annual conferences that, until the funding crunch of the mid-1980s, brought sometimes hundreds of delegates from all sectors of the profession together to discuss important issues, attend workshops and dance in or watch now legendary marathon performances. In 1987 this led to the launch of a more rigorously curated Canada Dance Festival in collaboration with the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. After DICA had withered away in the late 1980s, the festival was left as its permanent, now biennial, legacy.
      DICA was born in a period of optimistic expansion but arguably was less successful in adapting to the challenges of a recessionary economic environment. It inspired the formation of several provincial dance service organizations such as Dance Ontario, Dance Saskatchewan and Le Regroupement québécois de la danse. From their regional perspectives, these regional groups often seemed more immediately relevant and useful to their memberships. In tough times, the importance of supporting a national organization and a strong voice for the larger cause is often easily forgotten.
      By the late 20th century CAPDO had also fallen into abeyance although the staff of its member organizations still maintained an informal network. The example of national cooperation was carried on through CanDance (the Canadian Network of Dance presenters), while the special needs of dancers facing the reality of finite stage careers were addressed by another national organization, the Dancer Transition Resource Centre (DTRC), founded in 1985.

By the 1980s, the landscape of Canadian professional dance was already being significantly reshaped by broad political, economic and social changes. The slow erosion of a predominantly bi-cultural, English-French, social hegemony has led us to a richly diverse culture – more a kaleidoscope than a mosaic – in which the artistic heritages of many different peoples are given due respect and enjoy genuine appreciation. Specific national dance traditions and broadly ethno-regional forms – Korean dance, Afro-Caribbean, Ukrainian, classical South Asian dance and many others – are celebrated for their own sake and combined in intriguing ways.
      The financial challenge of sustaining conventional company structures led to the failure of some and the emergence of a new, highly adaptable breed of “independents” -- dancers who formed a pool from which enterprising, even self-producing choreographers could draw to assemble temporary companies for specific projects. The Fringe Festival of Independent Dance Artists, fFIDA, founded in 1991, is now a thriving annual international showcase for everything from flamenco to belly dancing. Its recurrent cross-disciplinary themes and poly-culturalism aptly captures the changed face of Canadian dance today.
      Although the big three ballet companies still draw large audiences and have been joined on the national scene by such smaller troupes as Alberta Ballet, Ballet British Columbia and Ballet Jörgen Canada, the academic code that underlies their movement can no longer be considered the mainstream. Nor, for that matter can any other rigid traditional code. Today’s dancers and choreographers are eager to explore and embrace a limitless range of movement traditions, reaching beyond ethnicity and geography to explore a whole world of possibilities, often adapting them into fresh expressive forms in a process of cross-pollination and fusion.
      The changed economic environment has not made life easy for artists in Canada, a country now caught between the still paternalistic funding traditions of Europe and the market-driven neo-conservatism espoused by our American neighbours. Progressive increases in the amount of charitable contributions donors have been able to turn into tax write-offs were supposed to unleash a flood of private giving, but the habits of a lifetime cannot be altered in a few years, and many Canadians still believe that paying their taxes is sufficient.
      The corporate sponsors who were supposedly going to make up for cuts in government funding retreated into their shells as soon as recession hit. Most arts organizations lack the liquidity or cash reserves to deal with sudden economic shifts.
      Now, as the world economy struggles to free itself from one of the worst market slumps in decades and governments retain a tight leash on expenditures, artists of all kinds find themselves competing with such compelling social causes as education and health care for scarce corporate and foundation dollars. Ingenious as they have been in finding ways to cut costs and boost earned revenue, there is a realistic limit to the distance even the most enterprising arts organization can travel before it has sold its soul for a mess of commercial pottage. Almost all our performing arts organizations, dance included, are under-capitalized and, in return for scraps, are routinely expected to justify their importance and contribution to society, as if their existence can only be defined in utilitarian terms.
      Under the cold glare of utilitarianism it is not necessarily easy to say precisely why a painting, a novel, a piece of music, a play or a dance is “important”, certainly why it is as important as hiring more health care workers or school teachers.
      We can quote any number of studies that claim to reveal the spin-off economic bonanza caused by even a small public contribution to the arts. What is less easy to quantify is the broader but arguably more important “quality of life” issue. Often you do not sense the real value of something you took for granted unless you lose it.
      It has taken more than half a century to weave the now rich fabric of Canadian dance and the results are extraordinary. Canadian dance artists, choreographers and performers, are at work around the world. No country can boast a more varied spectrum of dance forms.
      And so we arrive at today, and the emergence of the Canadian Dance Assembly, a new national service organization for the profession. Its arrival is timely and necessary since the challenges and opportunities facing the profession today are as great as they have ever been.
      Whether through misplaced modesty or sheer neglect, Canadian dance has not been as vigilant in trumpeting its successes as it probably should have been. The absence of a broadly-based national organization for the sharing and exchange of information and the mobilization of concerted lobbying efforts has placed dance at a competitive disadvantage.
      There are many pressing issues that need addressing at a national level, from employment security and working conditions to injury prevention and career transition initiatives. A national assembly has the potential to foster and implement innovative “out of the box” strategies in everything from touring and fund-raising to fruitful co-operative ventures with other arts disciplines.
      It seems odd that a country that blazed trails for national dance movements and organizations in the 1950s and again in the 1970s should now, so to speak, be re-inventing its own wheel. The important point is to make it a better wheel.