By Kathleen Smith For dancer/choreographer Syreeta Hector, the solo work Black Ballerina is the distillation of years-long personal research into identity, family history and how to be an artist in a society that tends to tamp down both. Created largely pre-pandemic, and two years in the making, Black Ballerina poetically gathers the threads of Hector’s
By Sheenagh Pietrobruno When COVID-19 darkened and emptied the four performance spaces at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre, the executive producer of NAC Dance, Cathy Levy, swiftly engaged with the Centre’s lively digital stage. Levy invited dance artists across Canada to apply to present their shows through #CanadaPerforms on Facebook Live, a relief effort launched by
By Jenn Edwards In big cities, if you’re a dancer and dance instructor, you’re a dime a dozen. When my partner, Philip McDermott, and I arrived in Labrador City last year, with contracts to teach the entire schedule at the only studio in the small mining town, people we’d never met stopped us on the