The Vancouver Ballet Society, founding publisher of Dance International (DI) magazine, has made the difficult decision to cease publication of the electronic magazine featured on the DI website since January 2020. We are truly saddened by this decision, which is purely a reflection of the hard economic climate for publishing.
Dance International has been a flagship program for the VBS since 1977 when the then-quarterly print magazine was established. For over 46 years, we have proudly supported dance and dance writers in Canada and around the world through our Vancouver-based publication.
The first editor, Ruth McLoughlin, was followed by Leland Windreich and then briefly by John Warren. From 1985 to 2013 Maureen Riches became the long-standing managing editor. She was influential in advancing the magazine from the few black and white pages of a community-based publication to a richly-coloured, professionally-edited magazine with reports and features from around the globe and support from advertisers. In 2013, when Maureen Riches retired, we were fortunate to appoint Kaija Pepper, a highly respected dance writer, critic and historian as the new managing editor. We are grateful to Kaija Pepper for selecting a range of diverse material over her tenure and mentoring new writers. The DI website would not have survived the last several years without Kaija’s dedication, professionalism, and conscientiousness.
We are grateful to the many writers who have contributed features, reviews, and reports over the years, creating a rich history of dance that will provide valuable reference material in the years ahead.
At the end of January 2024 the Dance International website closed. Readers are directed to this website, where all DI’s digital material is fully archived.
~Maureen Allen, President, VBS Board of Directors
Editorial
The Dance to Come, January 2023
My wish for each month of 2023: that theatres be filled with dance onstage and audiences in the auditorium. May this lead to much inspired writing about our fascinating art form.
Most of that writing will be online, of course. Online success stories in recent years include the web version of Germany’s Tanz Magazine (which we covered here) and the European Springback Magazine, whose editor is our London correspondent Sanjoy Roy. I’m proud to include Dance International itself in the category of online success: we are entering our fourth year of web-only publishing.
Our stories are not just here on the website: DI’s social media manager, Heidi Hudson, has been posting excerpts on our Instagram page, a great way to get a quick fix of dance. We hope all our social media excerpts — we’re on Facebook and Twitter too — will lead to readers clicking links to the full stories, but the brevity of a good social media post is undeniably enticing.
Still and always, Dance International remains committed to supporting dance in print. Yes, the print landscape continues to shrink, and many mourned the demise, in September 2022, of Britain’s Dancing Times after an amazing 112 years. On the plus side, there has been a flowering of books in print, including several we reviewed last year: a collection of writing by Clement Crisp, the long overdue biography of Bronislava Nijinska, Leanne Benjamin’s autobiography, Built for Ballet, and Ahmad Joudeh’s memoir, Dance or Die. Our first review in 2023 comes from DI’s regular book critic Kristen Lawson, who tackles Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy, a page-turner for sure.
Being absorbed by a book you hold in your hands is a tactile experience like no other — and a really good break for our brains. Yet every new book today is available in some kind of electronic version, which is certainly handy and appreciated. In whatever format, any recommendations to send our way? ~Kaija Pepper, Editor
The Writing and Reading Life, January 2022
Over the 45 years that Dance International has helped put dance in the public eye, the publication has supported a range of contributors. We continue to welcome and work with emerging writers keen to share their insight into some aspect of dance. And, of course, we are always thrilled to hear from experienced professionals — a disappearing breed in the shrinking world of critical arts writing. (For more on that, read Michael Crabb’s Notebook: The slow erasure of a profession.) We also appreciate hearing from former dancers, who have contributed several beautifully written stories. (One is regular contributor Jennifer Fournier, a former National Ballet of Canada principal, whose piece, In Balanchine’s Classroom: The inspirational philosopher king, was published in February.) Sometimes, practicing dance artists find time to examine their own work for DI. (As Carolina Bergonzoni does in Inside Ed: Building relationship through community-engaged dance and Jenn Edwards in Life Moves: During the pandemic, Labrador City is the place to be.)
Even within our house style, the possibilities for journalistic reportage and other more creative contributions are endless. The common ground from which our writers operate is perhaps a love of dance and, equally, of fashioning words and ideas about their experience of the art form.
Whether you are a potential contributor or one of our loyal readers, I hope you enjoy scrolling through these pages. Let me know what you think, especially if something grabs you, whether in a positive or negative fashion. Help keep us on track in terms of what you’d like more of — our content has certainly changed during the pandemic. Theatre shutdowns forced a move away from covering shows — once companies are back onstage and operating as normal again, would a return to more performance reviews and previews be welcome?
As 2022 lurches forward, the Omicron variant of COVID is creating uncertainty ahead. But Dance International’s stable of writers, along with valued guest contributors, continue to find stories worth telling, and tell them with flair and passion, illustrated with our usual array of compelling photographs. We want you to enjoy the time you spend with us! ~Kaija Pepper, Editor
Life Moves, January 2021
Like everything digital, Dance International exists in an electronic universe free of local space and local time. Yet, through our network of writers and contacts with artists and organizations, DI is grounded in communities both at home and around the world.
Community spirit has never been felt as strongly as today. As the COVID-19 pandemic threatened not just our health, but also our artistic, social and economic networks, “kindness” became the new buzzword. Here in Vancouver, BC, provincial and federal government funders have been kind to many non-profit organizations, including Dance International, for which we are grateful.
As theatres shut down and shows were cancelled in response to restrictions on gatherings, the future of many artists and organizations has been at risk. The world of dance moved to the web, joining DI in the digiverse as we navigated our first year of dedicated online coverage (after over 40 years in print).
In response to the early days of lockdown, with a sudden dearth of performance-related stories, DI premiered Life Moves, a column that looks more broadly at the movement in life and art. Take a look at what’s been posted so far, and if you have a Life Moves idea, we’d love to hear it. Dancers and dance professionals — both former and currently practicing — are particularly encouraged to get in touch.
Inside Ed is another “new” column, relaunched online in November 2020. Designed as a platform for sharing expertise in any area and style of dance, Inside Ed was one of our print magazine’s gems, with contributions from a stellar line-up of contributors, and we’re happy to see its return.
At the dawn of 2021, we are all holding our breath for a good year ahead — and I am looking forward to sharing dance, here, with you. ~Kaija Pepper, Editor
