Ancillary Project 2020 (2Nd Annual)

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J e d y n a k photo by: Dave Rogers

R E - C E N T E R I N G / M A R G I N S R E S I D E N C Y : Ancillary Project 2020 (2nd annual)

Essays by Anaheed Saatchi, Yana Schwannecke, Mariko Tanabe and Jennifer Aoki

Foreword by Aina Yasué and Angela Cooper

Edited by Jane Gabriels, Ph.D. Made in BC - Dance on Tour gratefully acknowledges that our work is situated on the traditional, ancestral and unceded Coast Salish territory of the Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm (Musqueam) Nations. Thank you.

Made in BC - Dance on Tour aimerait reconnaître que cet événement aura lieu sur les terres ancestrales et non cédés des peuples Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) et xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm (Musqueam). Merci. RE - CENTERING/ MARGINS, 2ND ANNUAL MIBC CREATIVE RESIDENCY ANCILLARY PROJECT 2020

A residency that centres the practice and concerns of BIPOC artists expands our collective understanding of dance as well as of ourselves. -Lee Su-Feh

Re - Centering/ Margins: MiBC Creative Residency Ancillary Project provides opportunities and professional development for emerging dance artists of colour to continue their creative processes and create contemporary performance works.

All applicants receive a small stipend, fee for mentorship, a modest amount of free studio space with a showcase opportunity of in-process dance works on Nov 5, 2020. Each of these emerging artists were asked to invite established artists to mentor them with creative feedback to help them realize their artistic visions.

Mentors include: Jill Henis (mentoring Jennifer Aoki), Natalie Tin Yin Gan (mentoring Juolin Lee), Chick Snipper (mentoring Marsisa Wong) and Lee Su-Feh (mentoring Simran Sachar, Sophia Gamboa, Sharon Lee).

The Made in BC BIPOC residency acknowledges how critical it is to explicitly support BIPOC dance artists within our community. The residency both holds space and provides visibility for marginalized artists. - Justine A. Chambers

I N D E X Note from Jane Gabriels, Ph.D., Executive Director ...... 3 Foreword by Aina Yasué ...... 4 Introduction by Angela Cooper ...... 6 When the Past Speaks to the Present (Yana Schwannecke)...... 7 Four Seasons for Creatures (Anaheed Saatchi)...... 10 Think of All the Women Who (Yana Schwannecke)...... 12 My Current Body (Anaheed Saatchi)...... 16 ADDENDUM*...... 18 We All Just Want To Do What We Like (Yana Schwannecke)*...... 19 We Need to Hear Their Voices (Mariko Tanabe)*...... 24 Reflections (Jennifer Aoki)*...... 27 Biographies...... 28 Funding ...... 32

For more info: https://www.madeinbc.org/creative-residency-ancillary-project-2020/

2 N O T E Jane Gabriels, Ph.D. and ED, Made in BC - Dance on Tour

Thank you everyone for your contributions to this project.

To offer some background context:

This Vancouver-based residency - now in its second year as we seek to fundraise for a third annual project - is inspired by years of producing a similar residency project in The Bronx, New York. In The Bronx, this long-standing residency has become a community-building project, contributing to dance and performance in the borough as well as supporting artists at crucial stages in the development of their works.

In Vancouver, this residency project helps support the city as a similarly creative site for new dance and performance works by locally-based emerging artists of colour.

These essays help support different kinds of reflection, as well as creative engagement and documentation of new dance works. photo credit: Marisol Diaz-Gordon

Writers are asked to connect with the dance artists creative Thank you all so much ! processes, while keeping their own voice, and the dance artists are bringing another creative person to accompany One beautiful synergy that emerged: Simran Sachar and their early processes before the work is complete. It's a big Marissa Wong were invited to share their work and task on both sides. We hope you enjoy the essays that have teach at Gulf Island Performing Arts School on Salt resulted. Spring Island, 2020-21.

I'd like to thank Angela Cooper for remaining in the mix of Thank you for reading this, and we hope you enjoy the the project and offering her skills as moderator at the essays! online public engagements, and offering her insights. A big thank you also to Aina Yasué for writing a foreword and All the best, offering more context for the works. Jane ◍ Thank you to Stéphanie Cyr for her design eye, building on the previous design created by Zahra Shahab. I'd also like to thank Juolin Lee who was involved in coordinating meetings, workshops, and rehearsals for the project participants.

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o t o h P F O R E W O R D Aina Yasué Contextualizing Re-Centering Margins 2020-21 in Since 1788, Asian peoples have lived in British Columbia BC History, Covid-19, and the Complexity of Writing as laborers in agriculture, railway construction, mining, Dance and other essential work. Yet, the history of BC is filled with exclusive policies which marginalized Asian MiBC’s annual ancillary project, Re-Centering Margins, peoples, such as the Continuous Journey regulation holds space for the embodied knowledge of participating (1908), Chinese Exclusion Act (1923), or the forced artists of colour to help privilege and re-center their work. displacement of Canadians of Japanese descent during In this second edition of Re-Centering Margins, this year’s WWII. Despite the contribution of labor, creativity, and project - by chance, as applications are open to all emerging cuisine by Asian Canadians, we must constantly prove dance artists of colour - focuses on writers and dancers of our right to belong. This is most clear in the rise of anti- Asian heritage. As writers Anaheed Saatchi and Yana Asian hate crimes in the context of Covid- 19. Schwannecke engage with the dance works of Jennifer Aoki, Juolin Lee, Simran Sachar with Sophia Gamboa and Sharon The pandemic has seeped into our everyday, limiting our Lee, and Marissa Wong, the current group of artists records mobility, our support systems, and our ability to work. A and adds to the artistic innovation, creativity, and political Vantage Point survey * shares 48% of non-profits in BC community engagement of the North American Asian are concerned they will shut down if our current diaspora. A diaspora which has been historically figured – situation continues. Theatre closings and/or partial, slow as Yutian Wong notes – as non-dancing bodies, who are re-openings can mean that tours of live dance and politically passive, and unimaginative – an idea which performances will continue to be postponed or cancelled continues to exist despite Western artists appropriating until further notice. Studios, performers, theatres, and Asian dance forms since the 1800s, such as modern dance teachers have had to adapt online, perhaps expected to pioneer, Ruth St. Denis learn how to digitize their work on their own. (Wong 4).

4 The list goes on. The resilience, strength, adaptability of As a reader, I too interpret the text, contextualized by layers dancers and their collaborators to continue their work of Asian Canadian history informing the present, and amidst such instability reverberates through my mind as I amidst a global pandemic that has me reaching (more than read the essays. usual) for creative sites of connecting and learning. As an immigrant woman of color, it is exciting to engage with These four essays point to the depth of collaborative collaborations between women of colour - with dancers relationships between writer and dancer in spite of the and writers taking up space that is not always there for pandemic constraints. As each writer reflects on the them, encouraging us to re-examine where we are situated dancers’ work, describing the process of meeting, speaking in time and place, through the art of movement and words. with and watching the dancers rehearse and perform, their ◍ writing emphasizes their own learning. In the introduction to her essay “Four Seasons for Creatures” collaborating with dancer Juolin Lee, writer Anaheed Saatchi notes, “We greet “UNRAVELING: Nonprofits, COVID-19, and the Fabric of BC one another from a distance … and strange unknowns float Communities.” 2021. The Vantage Point. February 8, 2021. in the space between us.” This moment illustrates the https://www.thevantagepoint.ca/unraveling. uncertainty, the gaps, the impermanence that is part of the lived experience of the writers and dancers in each essay. It tells us that the text is a partial understanding of the dance, Wong, Yutian. 2016. Contemporary Directions in Asian American informed by the writers’ own subjectivity as well as external Dance. University of Wisconsin Press. regulations placed upon bodies (in this case due to Covid- 19).

Aina Yasué holds a Bachelor or Arts and Sciences from Quest University Canada, where she majored in Critical Dance Studies and graduated with Distinction. Aina has worked on Dr. Ahalya Satkunaratnam’s ongoing dance research project titled, “Persistent War, Constant Reflection: Movement, Sound, Inquiry of Body and Land”, which weaves together ancient Hindu Mythology and reflections on the Global War on Terror through storytelling with dance, film, and sound. Currently, Aina serves as a director for the Saltspring Community Alliance, a non-partisan and grassroots organization that organizes and facilitates public meetings on issues from climate change to racism in the community. She is also very excited to have recently joined Made in BC as a Community Dance Connector and member on the Board of Directors. She is passionate about exploring dance as an intersection between critical theory and community organizing centered on care.

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F O R E W O R D Angela Cooper

Made in BC - Dance on Tour has allowed me the gift of creating a work of art that reclaimed my culture as an Indigenousd Cree woman. Performing "Exoneration," in Angela Cooper is a multidisciplinary artist who is honour of my fifth generation Great Grandfather, Chief currently immersing herself in flamenco training, Poundmaker, allowed me the space to be seen, heard, revitalizing her Cree culture, and finishing her supported and feel professionally curated. It's small acts of Bachelor of Arts in Professional Communication. She democratization of art and creating space for culture is is grateful to be in artistic community, and would like fundamental towards creating a holistic bridge between to acknowledge that her development takes place on communities of high art and the social relevance of urban the unceded territories and land of the Coast Salish art. peoples–Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and I was also privileged with the gift of moderating the xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm (Musqueam) Nations. Angela was conversation of the recent artists from the Re- part of the Re-Centering/Margins ancillary project Centering/Margins ancillary project via Zoom. It was produced by Made in BC - Dance on Tour in 2019 and inspiring to create space for each artist to expound on their 2020. Her duet GLEAM was performed in Jennifer unique culture, lived experience, and to learn how they Mascall's project, BLOOM@Talking Stick (Feb 2020). wove these beautiful stories richly into their discipline and craft. BC has a rich, cultural, artistic, and wonderfully diverse community that enriches one's soul. It is thanks to the work of organizations like Made in BC - Dance on Tour that give us the honour of delving deeper into stories and sharing through art that builds healthy communities. Culture is art, and culture saves lives. ◍

When the Past Speaks to the Present

YANA SCHWANNECKE DANCER: JENNIFER AOKI

Photos by Chris Randle

I have never met Jennifer Aoki in person. I can only write based off what she has told me over the phone and through what I have seen in recorded videos and pictures. In a way I feel like I’ve been told a story, as if someone has passed it into my hands to hold briefly. And by the end of this written reflection, my hope is that I have passed it on for another to hold in their hands for whatever amount of time they want to spend with it.

My conversations with Jennifer have all been exercises in learning. Jennifer shared her experience with heritage as a fourth-generation Japanese Canadian with me. Her family history, which is the subject of her work, begins in 1942, during the second World War, with the attack on Pearl Harbor having already taken place. What followed from this Unfortunately, since Jennifer’s grandparents have passed event was the War Measures Act, under which any and all it isn’t possible to ask them more about their experiences Japanese Canadians who lived within 100 miles of the west during that time. Jennifer can only rely on the few stories coast in British Columbia were uprooted from their homes that she has heard. Having this heritage bears a into internment camps. Jennifer’s grandmother, who was particular weight for her, given that generational silence living in Vancouver, was taken to Hastings Park where the has left much unsaid about this history, while also women and children slept in the horse stables in unclean knowing that her very existence came to be because of it. conditions and with little food. This was a liminal place for transition as the persons kept here were taken to Hastings Park is associated today by many with the internment camps afterwards. From here, Jennifer’s Playland amusement park, farmer’s markets, and other grandmother was relocated to Vernon in Okanagan. entertaining things Vancouverites like to do on a Saturday afternoon. For Jennifer, this place carries Jennifer’s grandfather lived there and a letter from him to completely different associations, knowing that her her grandmother confirms that they met in Vernon, which grandmother slept there in stables after being forced to indicates it was from the internment’s systematic leave her home with just the possessions she could carry. displacement that they came to meet. He had belongings Parsing out and making sense of these past injustices is unjustly taken from him and his education was impeded especially important for Jennifer because they still due to his heritage. Jennifer’s grandparents were issued resonate today in the form of hurt, discomfort, and what was called ‘enemy alien registration cards’, despite unanswered questions. At the core of Fall Down Seven having been born and raised in Canada and not Japan. Times, Get Up Eight is an endeavour to understand These cards identified people with Japanese ancestry as a generational trauma and silence. For Jennifer, that began threat, othered and penalized just because of their race. with unfolding her heritage.

7 My exercises in learning continued with the subject of dance itself. I’m an illustrator and I use graphite, ink, and digital art in my practice. Language and conversation were vital vehicles for me to build a relationship to Jennifer’s work. I approached dance by looking at it as a medium for storytelling. In visual arts, where artists may talk about brush strokes, lines, and physical textures, dancers speak of their work as movements. In the past, Jennifer had done a lot of ensemble and collaborative work, doing what she described as an editor role. In this role she helped others to link and assemble their movements into a cohesive work of art.

Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight is a work-in-progress, solo project for her that has asked of her to be the author of her own movement, a challenge at first, that she took on with improvisations and cherry-picking movements from those experimentations. What I began to be aware of, as I was learning about dance, I found that the greater thing that I was learning about was Jennifer herself.

Jennifer approaches the subject of her dance and treats it with a palpable sensibility. At the start of her performance, she is alone in the room and crouched perpendicular to a folded bundle of fabric on the floor. Then she carefully folds and holds the fabric in her hands. The treatment of this fabric throughout her performance is always tender whether she is unfolding, flattening, or moving it. At times throughout the dance, Jennifer pauses mid-movement. She holds a suspended pose wherein she just breathes but it feels restless. She repeatedly comes back to the fabric by touching it, tapping it, and pressing her palms onto it. At times, she moves to be near it only to roll backwards, impeded or perhaps uncertain. Eventually , she finds herself able to rest on it, using it as a pillow, and releasing a sigh into the air from having found a place to finally stop comfortably.

8 At the end of Jennifer’s performance, she stands with the fabric. By unfolding and opening it up, she reveals that it is a Yukata, a garment, and it is adorned with orange and blue flowers. She carries it on her back, displaying it rather than draping it over herself, and walks around the space with it. Her body and her hold on the Yukata give the robe its shape, symbolizing her role as a conduit and carrier for this story. When I ask about it, she tells me that she feels connected to her grandmother through it.

Jennifer also uses her voice in the composition of the dance and says “Toshiko” repeatedly at the beginning of the performance. This phrase appears with the only context being the performance itself and the woman who says it. It is repeated by Jennifer in the silence of the room through multiple inflections that convey a spectrum of emotions. What I feel is, Jennifer’s emotional response to the story is contained verbally but surfaces in waves when she performs. The fact that she is working through pain, confusion, and even loneliness is communicated by her voice as she reiterates this word, as well as when her body shows us glimpses of struggle with herself and her environment. The vocal component is present only at the start after which there is a musical accompaniment that ebbs and flows in tandem with Jennifer’s movements. Through changes in tempo or volume we learn more about what the dancer is feeling and communicating. The tandem between the dancer and music is less like a push and pull but more like opening the window wider to glimpse into a past that we cannot access directly and are distanced from.

The question of how to glimpse into this past which is by nature a part of Jennifer but is also made inaccessible by time is a major question for her when she takes this subject on. Her grandmother, she decides, should be the portal to establish a deeper connection to this history that she can channel into the performance. There was one moment in time, where Jennifer described her grandmother to me as her North Star which is a beautiful illustration of both their bond and Jennifer’s creative process. I’ve evaded the meaning of the word Toshiko, but I come to it now. Much like how Jennifer carried the Yukata which gives her the feeling of her grandmother’s presence, she also carries her grandmother’s name as her middle name, Toshiko. While Jennifer’s subject matter shines a light on systematic discrimination and how injustices like these affect entire families for generations, I can’t help but see a message of love and resilience embedded in it as well. Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight adds a page to a much longer book which honors the struggle of her family. With her work Jennifer embodies the idea of positive resonance which is letting the past echo within and around her, through which, we can and do understand ‘Toshiko.’ ◍

2 The ever-spritely Juolin obliges and tells me excitedly about the discoveries she’s made in her investigations of movement and art. Her energy is like the buzz of dragonfly wings. Juolin is writing a novel, I think as a reflection of the way artists from different mediums can mirror processes, and share their struggles, purpose and breakthroughs. I am writing a novel for the first time, and listening to an emerging dancer activates my need to surrender to the process of creating. I am able to see that Juolin does not take a single building block for granted in her work and thanks her teachers along the way. I am reminded that to make art is to advocate for our intrinsic need for community-based living.

Photo by David Raymond Long term projects are demanding of our energies. We cannot know for certain what the end result will look like, but we are constantly Four Seasons for Creatures wondering: will we be happy with it? Are we meant to be “happy with it”? Will it be enjoyed by ANAHEED SAATCHI whoever consumes it? Understood? Will “the DANCER: JUOLIN LEE point” have been made clear to them? 2020 stripped us of our bashfulness around being in The First Meeting love with the process of making art, re- The trees are still emblematic of fall and the air is warm centring brazen declarations of love for how the enough that I can afford to forget my scarf. I bear the wind on the work is done. ride down the hill from Fraser Street to cruise onto the path to where Juolin is sitting on a park bench waiting for me. We greet Juolin surrenders to her own curiosity. I eagerly one another from a distance and mime hugs by wrapping our arms listen. She is not writing a novel but she is on a around ourselves, sheepish smiles and strange unknowns float in journey that has multiple centres and multiple the space between us. We make our way to the open grassy area of truths. Dude Chilling Park and sit amongst the physically distanced groups of people spending the late afternoon outside. Seated directly on the grass, my notebook at the ready, mirrored by Juolin’s own notepad and pen two metres away, I listen to the young dancer The Work In Progress Live Taping talk about her work in collaboration with Made in BC. The next time I see Juolin, I am witnessing An energized Juolin Lee begins by articulating everything at once. I an iteration of her work for the second annual am immediately enamoured. Her springwell of energy is ancillary residency project with Made in BC replenishing me: the artist in love with their process in its light and (MiBC) – Dance on Tour entitled Re- shadows and the spaces in-between. She strikes me as someone Centering/Margins. Weeks have gone by since whose source for creativity is reflected in almost everything they our meeting in the park and I am nervous and experience. I ask, for the sake of my own process, if she could start a excited to be able to attend a live taping of the bit smaller. What is this project specifically and who are the piece at Studio 45W. players?

Screenshot from Han Pham’s video screenshot from Han Pham’s video

I watch a creature greet the audience with a curious gaze What we do in the winter builds us towards the sapling that trickles into pleasure and then folds in and out of we see in Juolin as the piece evolves. Enlivened, she itself. Juolin begins her solo inverted, hips stacked on laps dewdrops, she drinks in the process, she evokes shoulders, followed by her legs straight up into the air. the springtime and grows, from rooted feet, up into the The movement is at once a mirror to the audience as well space. I watch her dance the promise of summer and as hyper-personal in feel. We have had our worlds warm the space creating lines like new leaves on sturdy inverted by a virus and I wonder if Juolin’s starting pose flower stems. I remember how a body feels warm in is an adaptation to a new era— or, is she reminding us sunshine, muscles loose and joints lubricated – we that there have always been many ways of beginning a swim in the summertime. I see the ebb and flow of the dance? seasons in Juolin’s performance.

I hear the creaking of bone in ankle joints. Juolin’s feet, She beckons us not to limit our own possibilities and calves and legs paint the curves of an ‘s’ methodically. limitless identities— our own inherited traits. Juolin She does not right herself until I have grown accustomed encapsulates different entities for me, for the camera’s to the hypnotic shapes, I find I am swaying along when I lens and for the magnum opus of movement and dance. am caught by Juolin’s gaze and she tracks her eyes We mustn't forget the cyclical nature of things, the between me and the floor, the floor and the ceiling until return to autumn and to our deliberations. The she is righted. She creates a cadence that builds in tempo impermanence of anything but Time. We are not who and energy as the solo expands and her body opens into we were before this year. We have always been attuned the space. Juolin is the creature, the artist, playing in her to each other and Juolin has me remembering. She body and in the air around her. The beginning is smiled in that first moment of the solo and, like that disjointed, her creaking bones like cold wind and her legs first moment in the park, I remembered joy.◍ like trickling streams layered with frosted leaves reminiscent of winter. The enigmatic onset is followed by a deepening and a sense of discovery.

11 photo by: Dave Rogers Think of All the Women Who

YANA SCHWANNECKE DANCERS: SOPHIA GAMBOA, SHARON LEE, SIMRAN SACHAR Photos by ...... Writing this essay came to me in the midst of quarantining I talked to the dancers individually in part before viewing and social distancing. I live in Germany while the dancers the performance and after. These conversations were had that I am writing about live in Canada. Even without to primarily tell me more about their stories to help me COVID, video calls and e-mails would have been the develop an informed interpretation of their work. But primary means of communication between us. Despite the secondarily, I also began thinking about my own time difference and the reliance on technology to conduct experiences, identity, and body more intentionally. I was our conversations, I didn’t feel any barrier between myself told by the dancers that they weren’t just creating this and the dancers. While Sophia, Sharon and Simran have work for themselves; they were doing it for women different stories to my own, I felt a secure presence of everywhere and, in that, they were doing it for me too. common ground.

12 Sophia, Sharon, and Simran are three women from different Sophia is the first to speak, and immediately she cultural backgrounds who share experiences as women introduces the main subject, “When I think about confronted by struggles around the body, their expression, women…” In her spoken word, she addresses the and their freedom. Their perspectives and voices are violation by men in the Philippines, calling up the individual and unique; what unites them is the longing to transgression of invasion and colonization onto be free. Their work in progress, The Secrets We Hold, Filipino women, the ‘comfort women’ of World War II. comments quite vigorously on femininity and living while When Sophia thinks of women, she thinks of herself restricted by patriarchy. Presented as a video recorded in and the long lineage of surviving women who had to be one take, the movements that they perform are improvised resourceful and sacrificial, finding ways to still be and the audio track is a recording of their voices faithful to a world that seems to be rigged against them. monologuing their written stories. As women, the three of them have more in common than they do in difference. Sharon champions her natural self, the body that was given to her, while also being beguiled to denounce that same body that she wants to love in favor of whiter skin. She weighs the consequence of giving up the natural self to be somebody different against the social benefits of being more accepted, a dilemma that is prominent in South Korea.

Lastly, Simran hammers the point down that in her Indian culture, being born female is already a disadvantage. She describes a tradition of marriage as a generational perpetuation of cultural dominance. “I wonder what my mom thinks of violation. What did her own mother feel when she had to lose her daughter to another family […] knowing she would be violated?” When Simran asks this, she expresses awareness of being trapped in a cyclical system surrounded by other victims of the same cycle and her anger and frustration seem to be stuck, having no one to blame.

For me, one of the strongest impacts of the performance is the dancers using their own voices and words to tell their stories. Sophia used the inflection of her voice like pulling back an elastic band, building and building with her speech before giving us snap after snap. Sharon’s voice begins softer but shifts quickly, unexpectedly even, to be forceful, assertive, yet still delicate and bright. And Simran, I felt a profound melancholy in her words, even when she’s sassing and disparaging the culture of dominance that she grew up in. It would be easier to spit on the world but with their

photo by Daniel J Collins personal resilience that they embed into the performance, they declare that they’re not going give up so easily.

13 The movements reveal even more about each dancers’ distinct personality, and what struck me is that the movements were improvised through an exercise in listening to each other. Each dancer had an equal part to speak and be at the forefront while the other two supported the feeling of the story being told. They trusted and claimed space when it was being given, thus the movements worked together, building and layering on top of each other. In a separate interview, when Sophia spoke to me about listening being the center of their process, she seemed to apply a general truth to it, “Women instinctively supporting one another is based on a principle maybe… The principle is listening [and creating spaces for that to happen].”

photo by Dave Collins

Multiple creative layers come together in this performance to establish it as a space for listening as Sophia described. The video of the work takes place in a bedroom that has a warm atmosphere both through the lighting and hominess of the environment. It feels like a sleepover which feels like solidarity. There is a shorter sequence during the performance in which Sophia, Sharon, and Simran stand in front of a mirror and smear away lipstick that has been written on the mirror to say “violation”. This reminds me of scenes from popular culture where the girls’ bathroom is depicted as a place of community and support, a space specifically for the alliance of women. The rosy colour of the lipstick and Sophia, Sharon, and Simran’s place in front of the mirror feels familiar to me as a woman having had experiences with my own friends in bathrooms, watching them apply makeup and chatting together. What feels unfamiliar however, is the word “violation” written in the red, waxy material and the slow but purposeful smearing of it; dirtying the mirror and their reflections in it to the point where all one can make out is a crimson aftermath. It looks like a wound. photo by Vanessa Lefan

14 The performance actually starts with the three women lying down with their feet swaying in the air. Bubbles of laughter come from the dancers that quiet down with knowing hushes only to well up and burst again. I find myself associating it with a garden because the three women are planted side by side, but each have their own room to sprout up and move with lightness, their legs drifting back and forth like tall neighbouring flowers. This scene is repeated at the end of the performance, book ending the entire work and potentially changing the meaning and interpretation of the laughter. Even through pain, trauma, and injustice, women feel the pressure to laugh through it and keep a smile on their faces. The image of their legs swaying in the air surrounded by peals of laughter is a specific gesture to me that evokes something about femininity, womanhood, and how women aren’t allowed to be serious unless it’s playful.

A huge part of my quarantining and ‘making it through the pandemic’ process has been listening to music, especially new music by women. Yes, I was one of those people that had Taylor Swift’s album Folklore on repeat during the entire month of August. Apart from that, Hayley Williams’s new album, Petals For Armor, took me aback as it is chiefly about the experiences of women and it is handled with photo by Cheyanne Ngo ferocity, rage, caution, and hope. The ninth track, “Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris,” draws a parallel between growing flowers in a garden and women which fits weirdly well together with the dance that I’m writing for. Part of the song goes, “Think of all the wilted women | Who crane their necks to reach a window | Ripping all their petals off just 'cause | He loves me now, he loves me not |.” There are phrases here and throughout the song that resonate together with what I’ve learned through the three dancers. There is an infinite scope of what women are put through and put themselves through to please others without ever really pleasing themselves. Sophia, Sharon, and Simran's performance wakes us up to the possibilities that there are for us to bloom and thrive, and that these stem from a power within ourselves that we all possess. ◍

15 My Current Body

At this point in time, my mantra is just saying ‘Allow’ ” -- Marissa Wong

Essay by Anaheed Saatchi Dancer: Marissa Wong

Is my left side out of balance? Are my hips rotated forward? Is it bad to cross my legs?

My laptop keyboard is probably giving me wrist issues. My right wrist is twinging.

I set a timer to uncross my legs in twenty minutes. How much time is left? My chest is collapsed and I straighten it but it makes me notice that my neck is jutting forward. I tuck my chin.

Now, I stare at my screen through blue blocking lenses, feeling strained just holding my head, and I’ve forgotten what I was writing. I have to ignore the niggling synapses to keep going. I don’t trust myself enough to sit without pain and I don’t trust myself enough to move without neglecting my work.

I disassociate. I listen to film scores to try and focus. If photo by Keagan Archer Hastie there is a moment’s pause, I must be careful not to let myself sink back into my body because it will tell me to get a standing desk for the thousandth time. In order for me to be creative, to be able to keep creating these pieces that can make an impact, or make a shift in Link those words and find it, push through. Find it. Writing is someone who is in my audience.” We can agree that energy expressed through language. I take a deep breath. process and product are meant as compliments. Their interplay can be where we find solace from the Who put this structure into my body? Did I? Who gave me creative’s particular brands of doubt. this narrative? My body and I are at odds. My body does not support my writing. In her dance, Marissa is erasing lines of friction from her movement. She explains that as we relate to stress In conversation with Marissa Wong, we discuss 2020 and we express patterns in our bodies. In 2020, she tells me the intersections of art born during a pandemic. Marissa is that we are being confronted by our patterns. With a impassioned and currently in a process of creation that background in ballet, Marissa challenges the formality has her shedding layers, “It’s such a raw and really and forms that have been imprinted in her movement. vulnerable journey for me to go on but it’s really [about] As we discuss the creative process she explains, “When setting these boundaries...

16 I am creating a piece— especially as a woman, especially as a person of colour— I am not just creating this trauma piece that’s happening on stage”. For Marissa, it is crucial that the art she presents does not follow the pattern of burnout, “It’s just this idea of orgasm that we’re really trying to go for. You keep going, you keep going, you build up the show and then it ends. And then things get cut off and you’re going: ‘Ok, what happens now?’”

In a live taping, I was able to witness a work in progress with the Re-centering/Margins Ancillary Residency Project. In her movement, Marissa played with and satirized different ways of exerting energy on stage. I was inspired most by the interruptions to lines my mind was trained to complete. The effect was a burbling laughter that Marissa eventually released into the space as she reached deeper into her solo.

There is no doubt Marissa can complete beautiful lines and produce elegant and aesthetic brilliance. I know from our conversations, however, the veneer of dance is not what photo by Belen Garcia draws her as an artist in her current iteration. She is in a process fuelled by this year, by ancestry and by the potential of better serving herself and serving community. Marissa’s own movements, and subsequent pauses, became reminders for me to breathe. Her dance embodies a flux

and connectedness to one another as expressions of art. photo by Belen Garcia

After witnessing her work and holding a few conversations with Marissa and other artists, I can move beyond an with Marissa, I realize (and will likely forget again in order intellectualized interpretation of 2020— I can move to be reminded) that my work, too, can be an integration of into a visceral understanding of loss as deeply connected breath and movement on paper. I rarely relinquish control to space and movement, or of creation as a shedding of to find my words through a ripe curiosity. In community layers and a conversation with others.

Understanding Marissa’s investment in her own process, one of abandon and fearlessness, one of fortitude and dedication to self and to the form of dance, I have been able to reconcile with the page. The denouement to this year might last the rest of our lives. A universe expanding and contracting, we pull at the threads wound tightly through our bodies, linked to breath and movement. Watching Marissa perform releases my breath and I am less tightly wound. My timer goes off and I am moved to laughter.◍

photo by Belen Garcia 17 ADDENDUM

Inspired by the April 1, 2021 online conversation between dance artists and writers involved in this project*, three artists have written additional essays for this booklet:

Yana Schwannecke, Mariko Tanabe, and Jennifer Aoki.

All of this writing is an unfurling of the threads of this project as the connections and inspirations that continue to develop.

We hope you enjoy the work !

*Thank you Deux Mille Foundation for your support

18 We All Just Want To Do What We Like Essay by Yana Schwannecke

I took the blinds off in my kitchen. They were left there by the previous tenant and frankly had never been properly cleaned and looked kind of discolored and gross. I put them away into my storage room so now at all times of the day anyone could look right into my kitchen through the fairly large window. It’s really remarkable how society has managed to shame people for practically everything. “Oh, you’re still a virgin?” Shame. “Oh, you have monolid eyes?” Shame. “Oh, you like watching animated movies?” That’s weird, you’re an adult. Shame.

So much of what we may feel bad for, whether that is our music preferences or our fashion sense or our occupation, makes us feel shame that is completely unconstituted.

Can we just stop shaming each other?

The pandemic has forced us to spend a lot more time alone and at home. There are so many ways to recognize this pandemic as absolutely horrible and dangerous. That includes people losing their lives, loved ones, employment, stability, and security. At the beginning of the pandemic, if I was asked “how are you” I mostly had negative things to say. I would react with “is anyone okay right now??” As the new status quo was being established, 2020 was full of shock and awe about how some people were choosing to treat the pandemic. Now in 2021, I feel this sense of being desensitized. There are just some people who refuse to wear masks, no matter what. There are people who will demonstrate in front of the Reichstag here in Germany about wanting their ‘freedom’ back. There will just be those idiots like “Jana from Kassel” who will compare herself to the anti-Nazi fighter Sophie Scholl, for standing up against COVID mandates here. Especially from listening to Sophia, Sharon, and Simran, I’ve become more aware of how differently people experience ‘freedom’, if at all. It is inconceivable to me that some people are so adamant about believing they are losing their rights and their freedom because the government is trying to get them to act safely in a pandemic. True loss of freedom looks much different. When your identity, when the essence of your being, your natural and unbridled self feels like a mistake, something that other people will want to hurt you for- put you in danger for… that is what oppression really is. People have different experiences of freedom inherently because of different experiences with oppression. The oppressed can’t be free. The unoppressed can’t even handle being told to put on a mask.

Now being in 2021, having gotten through 2020, if you ask me how I’m doing these days, I would say I’m doing good. What I’ve landed on recently, is that dualities can take place even in the worst of situations. What I’ve been using to explain this, is something that I talked about with Jennifer Aoki. Her grandparents lived through the Japanese internment in Canada.

19 It was a time when Japanese people in Canada were discriminated against strictly because of their race. It is through the internment that Jennifer’s grandparents came to meet. So, while she knows the internment was horrible and wishes it didn’t happen, she also knows she exists because of it. For me, the crux of that is how I feel about my life right now in this pandemic. Good things can come out of the worst of situations. In fact, good things are absolutely crucial in the light of bad situations because they give us hope. During the pandemic, I’ve been listening to more music. I’ve picked up new hobbies like learning a third language which I couldn’t have done before because I didn’t have the extra time. What I have to sacrifice like social meetups or having in-person university classes is a small price to pay for the things that I can gain at the current moment. I have the privilege to enjoy myself through these things in a situation that is at best, uncomfortable and at worst, deadly for many people.

Having far less of a strict schedule to hold to really works in favor to my nocturnal self. It feels natural to me to be awake and active at night. It’s very, very difficult for me to maintain a ‘normal’ sleep schedule from 11pm to 8am. Every time I try, my cycle gets pushed back and back, bit by bit until it’s 4am again and I’m still wide awake. This has gotten me countless comments over the years from my family members who all disapprove. It has always felt hurtful to me, to criticize me for something that I struggle with. My old roommates, a couple that I lived with in Vancouver, called me ‘creature’, like an animal that lives in the darkness. I felt like the word ‘creature’ dehumanized me, because it was rooted in something that I do differently from most other people. I reckoned it wasn’t malicious, but I had been conditioned enough to wonder if I was supposed to feel bad about how I tend to live. There are apartments right across the street and if the people there find me weird for dancing in my kitchen at 4am - which they can look into because I got rid of the blinds - then I’ve decided not to care, when in the past maybe I would have.

I do love being out and about in the park or at the beach during the day, but the night is different. The night has a different energy. And depending on where you are, that energy can be just as contagious as the energy from the Sun. I love walking down a street full of people in the nighttime, where the shops are still open. You can grab a drink or a slice of pizza. That is one thing, that COVID has taken from us that I miss. But still, I find myself these days at 2am or even 5am, still awake but dreaming. I dream about where I want my life to go, what I want to be. And I’ve realized recently I want to be more than I am.

That’s why I’m learning Korean as a third language. I would love more doors to open to live in Asia again or to make new friends from completely different cultures than my own.

I lived in Singapore as an expatriate from when I was 3 to 6 years old, then again from 14 to 18, and lastly I spent six months there in 2020. Parts of my childhood and adolescence were spent there because my dad works for a global business. It’s made us move a few times. And last year, what was supposed to be a 3-week trip to see my dad, turned into a six month stay when I couldn’t get a flight back to Germany due to the pandemic. Growing up in an Asian country was really giving and exciting on multiple levels, starting with day-to-day things like eating great food all the time. But also, it’s nice for me to be places where whiteness isn’t treated like it’s the center of the universe. Nevertheless, there are things that, in the past few years, I see differently about my time in Singapore- and first I want to address that word: expatriate.

What is an expatriate? If you google it, simply put, an expatriate is a person residing in a country other than their native country. However, that’s not really what people mean when they say expat. An expat is often a professional or skilled worker who is sent by their company, university, or government to work in a foreign country. In Singapore, these expatriates can be of other Asian decent like Indian or Malaysian for example. They can be black, although that is less common. And they can be white like my dad. White expatriates are so pervasive in Singapore, that you’ll find dozens of International Schools like the school that I went to, where the student body is comprised of mostly white expat kids. Singaporeans don’t go to these schools but rather go to schools run by the government. Education there is structured differently and sometimes offered in Chinese instead of English. Singapore’s strong education system with rigorous exams is, from what I’ve heard, a hallmark of pride for the country. From these observations I surmise that in Singapore ‘the expatriate person’ stands opposite to ‘the national person’ and this points to a culture of segregation that is facilitated by systems such as schools and education.

The term ‘expatriate’ is strictly barred from certain occupations and in my opinion, certain races. The social and cultural understanding of this word connotates something specific both in terms of race and class. These language systems are used to ‘keep people in their place.’ It would be unthinkable to refer to the construction workers in Singapore, who come from neighboring countries like Cambodia or Bangladesh, as expats. It would be unthinkable to refer to the Filipino and Malaysian women in Singapore, who serve as maids while leaving their own families to earn money for them, as expats. Instead, foreign construction workers are referred to as ‘migrant workers.’ And since recently it isn’t correct anymore to say ‘maid’ but rather, these days ‘helper’ sounds more appropriate. However, there is something to be questioned about changing the title of a social job position without changing any of the work involved, the rights, income, and status. I honestly wonder what Sophia Gamboa would say about the Filipino women who take care of someone else’s child just so that they can feed their own? And that they only get Sundays off…

21 Even in Asia, the privilege of whiteness is very much present and its very felt by anyone who is sensitive to it. What also occurs to me is that even among Asian ethnicities, a racial and social hierarchy is established as part of the society. There are people who work for the people, who sacrifice themselves and their comfort for a livelihood. While simultaneously, at least in a place like Singapore, you can’t make a day trip into the city without seeing at least one fancy sportscar. “Well,” people say. “Someone has to do the work that no one wants to do.” Or “in any structured society someone will always be at the bottom.” Yeah... Sure, both these statements are technically correct as things are. But of course, they come with an unsaid caveat. “Someone has to do the work that no one wants to do and someone will always have to be at the bottom... as long as it’s not me.” So instead, let it be the people who are stuck in cycles of poverty, let it be the people who don't have the same access to education, health care and wealth because they are systematically unable to do so. Kelly Osbourn infamously once said on The View, “If you kick every Latino out of this country [the US], then who is going to be cleaning your toilet, Donald Trump?” The argument, “We need immigrants because we don't want to have to clean our own toilets or build our own buildings” is not the hot take the proponents of this viewpoint think it is. It's still, very clearly, racist.

My dad loves living in Singapore. It’s a great place and he even wanted to become a permanent resident, however, his application was rejected. At least in some sense whiteness has its limits. My dad did say however, if he were richer, he probably would have been approved. Class privilege can help where whiteness stops, I suppose. There has been political discussion about the purpose of sending foreigners to Singapore in corporate places of employment that Singaporeans could occupy themselves. Knowing that this viewpoint is valid, I’m all the more thankful for the years that I was able to spend there. I know very well that it is an uncommon experience, one of privilege and bounty. I won’t and can’t comment further on the racial and social hierarchies present between Asian populations in Asia because its not my place. Doing so would feel like walking into a friend’s house and criticizing their furniture, tidiness, and choice of wallpaper. All the while my own house is still a mess. There have been too many white people moving into places and putting their voices where they don’t belong, rearranging the furniture, tearing down the walls entirely. I may be half-Asian due to my mother’s side, but I’m also white. If my experiences and my privilege are dictated primarily by how I look and present, and that is as white, then what does being half-Asian mean? How does it even matter? When I’m on the phone with my mom and she is telling me that she wants to move back to China because the West has become more dangerous for Asians, I can’t relate to her experience at all. I can’t even speak her native language. So, when I say I want to go back to Asia, is it possible for me to find a sense of belonging there, and in turn in my half- Photos by Luca Camaiani, Art Direction by Melanie Choi Asian-ness? Last Photo by Melanie Choi

How do you grow something that is a part of you that no one can see? ◍

22 We Need to Hear Their Voices Essay by Mariko Tanabe

Last February, Dr. Jane Gabriels sent me a personal invitation to attend the online showing and conversation between emerging dance artists and writers involved in Re-Centering / Margins 20-21, Made in BC (MiBC) - Dance on Tour’s Creative Residency Ancillary Project. This ancillary project, now in its second year in tandem with MiBCs primary residency, provides opportunities and professional development for emerging B.C.-based dance artists of colour.

Being of Asian descent myself, a third-generation Japanese Canadian, I have direct experience of being a ‘person of colour’ in Canada. My grandparents immigrated to Vancouver in the early 1900s and both of my parents were born and raised in Vancouver. They shared many fond stories of what it was like growing up in B.C. until the internment of the Japanese Canadian population in British Columbia in 1942. They were forced to leave their homes and sent to prison camps until the end of the war. All homes, farms, businesses, and personal property were confiscated and sold by the government to pay for their internment. They lost everything. After the war, Japanese Canadian citizens could not return to B.C. and were given the choice to migrate east of the Rocky Mountains or to migrate to Japan. Many of them had never been to Japan and considered Canada to be their homeland. This is a painful and often unrecognized part of Canadian history, along with the racism and marginalization of all people of Asian descent even as Asian immigration to Canada, which began in the late 1700s now accounts for over 6 million, according to Statistic Canada in May, 2021, making up nearly 18% of the Canadian population.

I was born into a home that was shrouded by the grief of my parents and grandparents from the internment of the Japanese Canadians and the loss of any place of belonging in our newly developed community in Don Mills, Ontario. The knife of racism cut through my heart as I entered the public school system wanting to connect with my classmates. These and many other experiences of being othered led me towards this lifelong search for healing, a sense of belonging and to finding my purpose in this life. As an adolescent I discovered the joy in dancing that was a vehicle to free repressed emotions and overcome pain in the moment. I see now that I was carrying the weight of our intergenerational trauma deeply in my bones and heart. The effects of this weight has affected some loved ones deeply and caused further loss in my family.

At twenty-two years of age, with the reluctant approval of my parents, I took the plunge and moved to New York to dedicate myself to a life in dance. I truly believed that dancing has saved my life. I am so grateful. I was able to immerse myself completely in training, and spent twelve years as a member of the Erick Hawkins Dance Company, performing, developing choreography and teaching in Erick’s philosophical and aesthetic realm that valued the natural beauty and effortlessness of the human body dancing, along with passion, intensity and acute listening through the senses. It was a rich experience that impacted this formative stage of my artistic Photo of the internment camp at Slocan BC taken by Mariko’s path. maternal grandfather, Eiju Miyake who served as the dentist at the camp. (1942)

23 After seventeen years in New York as a professional dancer and emerging choreographer, I moved back to Canada in the late 1990s. I began receiving funding, my works were being produced and I began touring in North America, Europe and Asia.

My body had gotten tired after all those years of dancing the Erick’s company, and I was called by the rumblings of my heart to create my own dances and movement language. I began to connect with my ancestors through my movements, and many of my early solos expressed a longing for connection and a prayer for transformation of this intergenerational and collective trauma, especially for the female lineage of my ancestors. More recent research has uncovered many cycles of loss, repression and pain through some of the women of my origins. My movement research deconstructed all the training and dance forms I had studied and loved, including Erick’s method that we taught at our company school, Ballet, Graham technique, Flamenco, Traditional Japanese Dance, Middle Eastern Dance along with a lifetime of yoga and some martial arts. After much exploration, I Photo of Mariko Tanabe in the solo 'Gliding the Volcano' that is a ritual began to discover movements that would release deeply prayer for the losses of her female ancestors - created by Mariko Tanabe hidden stories from my body and transform my state of and Benoit Lachambre. Photo: Michael Slobodian consciousness to create and perform my dances.

I was able to cultivate a movement language that This has been a highly intuitive process over a period of spoke from the history and knowledge of my body and over twenty-five years that was first based on the body of began creating and performing my solos as I prepared my life’s work and then informed by my intensive study to set out on my own, leaving Erick’s company and my of the somatic work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen known life as a company dancer forever. Looking back now, I as Body-Mind Centering®. This work explores the realize how fortunate I was to receive these consciousness in our bodies through the different opportunities and support within the mainstream systems of our body (the organs, endocrine glands, blood, dance community that has been primarily dominated nervous system, etc.) It also takes us through the stages of by white people across the board. This includes our developmental process, from our DNA spirals and choreographers, dancers, journalists, presenters, the conception, the genesis of our bodies in utero, the journey funding bodies and most academic dance institutions. of our birth and the archaic templates of our inherent This situation is heavily embedded and normalized in neurocellular patterns that unfold as we discover gravity, the systems of our culture. As a person of colour, it was space and our environment and we learn to crawl, to humbling to recognize how I began to see ways that I stand and to walk on two feet in this world. These have come to internalize some of the minimizing blind patterns are the fundamental templates that support our spots towards the marginalization and racism in our earliest developmental process that enables us to learn country, and the daily impacts of our colonial history. I how to move, to perceive and relate to our environment have since learned that it is actually quite common and to other beings. among people of colour living in this country who are

engaged in situations of employment or other places

24 where whiteness is the gold standard and blending in is perceived to be associated with success. I felt sickened to see this uncovered and to witness it in myself. It was a shock and I needed to take some action. I began to engage in anti- racist study groups, many other BIPOC discussion groups and research to inform myself and began to unravel this pattern to build my path towards healing, social activism and how to hold a larger space in my practice that is conscious and that includes the needs and voices of people of colour and other marginalized persons within our whitewashed culture of privilege. I feel there is so much to learn and this journey has been a way to connect with deeper layers of our shared humanity. There has been much grieving, suffering, confrontation, and the exploration of some unknown territories. As a species, it seems we are at the threshold of some tremendous challenges that will require major changes in the ways in which we relate to each other, in our ways of being on this beautiful planet.

Along with the suffering caused by the pandemic, there have also been some silver linings. Suddenly, boundaries were being crossed by greater access online to discussions and presentations of the work of many artists of colour across Canada, and beyond. What a treasure! When I received the invitation to attend the meeting of the artists and see their work, I recognized that it was a rare opportunity to experience the research and explorations of these emerging dance artists and writers of Asian descent from British Columbia. I felt drawn to attend.

The dance artists Jennifer Aoki, Angela Cooper, Juolin Lee, Simran Sachar with Sharon Lee, Sophia Gamboa, Marissa Wong in this year’s Ancillary Residency Project spoke from their current lives and experiences, their relationships with their homelands, as well as the impacts of intergenerational experiences carried from their ancestors. Themes in their work included issues with the body and the longing to have whiter skin, the cyclical violations of women through traditional practices, patriarchy and sexual abuse, the need for connectedness and to serve the community during a time of crisis, the search to cultivate a visceral understanding of movement beyond the intellect, and the desire to connect with the experiences of a deceased ancestor through ritualized movement, language and historical research. The contributions of the two writers Yana Schwannecke and Anaheed Saatchi, who witnessed the process of the dance artists and brought further dialogue in the spirit of collaboration and peer mentorship. They shared their narratives of the creative process in their writing, and their essays added another dimension to the rich body of works from the residency. Our work comes to life when we are witnessed. I was mesmerized by the unique universe of each artist and inspired by their inquiries and artistic visions. It gave me hope to feel their resourcefulness and resilience through the times of a global pandemic with such political and social turmoil.

Made in BC - Dance on Tour then invited me to give workshops to these emerging artists. I held space for their inquiries and shared my research into the portal of the body, ancestral lineage and creative process. When we gathered together, I was no longer experiencing us as “artists of colour,” but as dedicated artists who are searching to give a voice to their history and experiences, to connect with others and incite change through their art. In the larger picture, I feel that these conversations are a beginning that can move things forward towards a deeper integration of our past and offer a place to experience and process the collective grief that we carry. Connecting in this way with emerging dance artists of colour spoke to a larger universe than I had been gifted before in other gatherings throughout my career. For the first time in a while, I could see us playing a greater part in shaping the future of Canada.

It has been like a breath of fresh air to access the work and engage in conversations like this one - with artists of colour across the country, across the borders, and in culturally sensitive spaces. I realized how much I had been missing their contributions to the shared spectrum of our culture. I have wept tears of joy to be touched by the collective memories, stories and visions of those who have been denied inclusion in our current mainstream culture, or silenced. Their voices are needed to heal our collective past, and to enable us to create a new more vibrant culture for the future generations.

25 After all of these years, I have come to discover that the consciousness in our bodies is actually a portal that can connect us with the history of the ages that is stored in our living cells, that can unite with the consciousness of place and the wisdom of the natural world that supports our life’s process. We are a part of the natural world, and not separate as our culture of individualism has enforced. And I believe that this portal can connect us beyond ourselves to ancestry, the spirit world, and collective wisdom. By tapping into this greater wisdom we can go beyond what we think we already know to the memories and wisdom of what has been inherited, what is alive in the body, and to receive what is transmitted by others and held in the space Mariko with her mentor Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. around us. I plan to continue exploring intergenerational photo: Ellen Oude Lansik trauma and healing for each of us as individuals, and for us as a group of intergenerational dance artists of all backgrounds. I want to move beyond the current binary narratives of race, superiority, and exclusion.

The marginalization of artists of colour in our communities impoverishes us all. The voices and creations of artists of colour bring forth dimensions of our human experience and consciousness that are marginalized in the whitewashed North American culture. These voices are part of the whole of who we are as a nation and represent fundamental dimensions of our shared humanity.

I believe that all humans would benefit from reaching into themselves, into their cultures and ancestral histories - no matter what colour you are, or what part of the world your people have come from. Over the time that our ancestors have been on this earth, along all lineages, there have been the traumas of war, natural disasters, genocide, and the loss of culture and community at some point; victims and perpetrators, and the repetition of these cycles throughout the ages. Yet we are still here on this earth. We are gifted with this lifetime and have the chance to uncover and embrace who we are, where we come from, and to find ways to acknowledge and grieve the harm that has been done. It may take many generations.

Collective grief requires the support of the community to heal, and a culture that supports this process. If we can begin to acknowledge and heal the past, then we may be able to move forward with the full bounty of our hearts and souls, bodies, and minds towards the legacy we are leaving for the future generations to come. This is my prayer for us all. ◍

*Acknowledgements Many thanks to the vision of Jane Gabriels for her ongoing commitment to supporting marginalized artists and dance in our communities.

I wish to express my gratitude to Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, who has been a great inspiration, teacher and mentor. I also wish to honour all of the teachers and visionaries that have come before me, whose contributions have enabled my path, guided by the wisdom and support of my ancestors on this beautiful planet that we share.

26 Reflections (after participating in Mariko Tanabe's online Somatic Workshop) Essay by Jennifer Aoki

Settling into the back of my brain I sense a rippling calmness wash over my body, from head to toe.

Unclear pathways, broken promises, and questions without answers.

Subtly and softly my body responds as I yield into the rhythmic pulse of blood.

Stories held in creases of palms.

I see your hands in mine. ◍

27 2020 Ancillary Project DANCER BIOGRAPHIES

Jennifer Aoki is a North Vancouver-born Nikkei contemporary dancer, choreographer, and indie filmmaker. Her dance training includes a B.A. from Simon Fraser University and a scholarship opportunity to EDAM. From 2010 -2012, she co- directed Triadic Dance Works, a collective that performed in Vancouver, Seattle, and Berlin. While in Europe in 2013-14, she created a work that was performed at Nah Dran (Berlin). Jennifer co-direct’s The Body Orchestra, a collective of freelance dance artists with work showcased at Fringe Festivals across the country. Her choreography has been showcased Dancing on the Edge, 12 Minutes Max (Seattle), Vine Arts Festival, To.Be.Announced, Winter Celebrations Festival, and Art for Impact. She has danced in works by Tomoyo Yamada (Clala Dance Projects), Jenn

Edwards, Company 605, Meredith Kalaman, Machinenoisy, Body Narratives a i c n e l Collective, Jamee Valin, Patricia Alison, among others. Choreographic residencies a P n a i t

s and partnerships include MiBC- Dance on Tour, The Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, a b e S y The Dance Centre, SFU Woodwards, Mascall Dance’s BLOOM series and Marc’s b o t o h p Madness. Jennifer's affinity for collaborative and interdisciplinary methods have led her to create two short dance films, We Can Still Go Viral and Shifting Spaces. JENNIFER AOKI Jennifer believes dance is a powerful method of communication and uses it as a means to engage with the community and create a sense of connection. Currently, she works on freelance projects with Small Stages and the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, and continues to work on her heritage-based projects.

Born in Changhua, Taiwan, Juolin Lee relocated to Langley, BC at age 13. Currently she is in her fourth and final year at Modus Operandi Vancouver Contemporary Dance program, under the direction of Tiffany Tregarthen, David Raymond and Kate Franklin. Through M.O. Juolin has worked with Shay Kuebler, Vanessa Goodman, Paras Terezakis, and Company 605, amongst others. Juolin feels grateful to live and play on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. As a dancer she is fortunate to collaborate with and perform in work by Zahra Shahab, Emmalena Fredriksson and Arash p

Khakpour. Juolin is excited by the potential of dance as a tool to continuously h o t o

b y

unpack her idea of self, and to shine a light on what is hidden in the subconscious. T a k u m

She is on a quest to further deepen her understanding of her Taiwanese heritage, i

H a y a s in part by reclaiming her Chinese Folk Dance background, and applying the h i l

coexistence of force, beauty and precision within the form to her contemporary movement practice. JUOLIN LEE

28 2020 Ancillary Project BIOGRAPHIES

Simran Sachar is an emerging artist, choreographer, and teacher, second generationEast Indian immigrant born in Canada. She’s been dancing since she was 3 years oldin: Ballet, tap, modern and contemporary. At 18 Simran began learning about hip hop, heels, and has started exploring other street styles in depth such as: Waacking. Simran is grateful to always be a student in various dance forms. She is a melting pot. The biggest responsibility of an artist in her eyes is: to be the storyteller, the one who tells the truth. Rather than labelling her movement to a single dance style, she recognizes the multiple places her foundation stems from and therefore never abandons foundation, but rearranges it. She believes there is always an underlying reason, beyond technique or training, to why people

move the way they do, and that reason has to do with the lives they live. She has trained

s n i l l

o and performed in multiple shows across New York City, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Calgary, C

J l e i Toronto and most recently: Manila. She is an alumni of various creative programs and n a D

: y collectives across North America such as the world-renowned: Gypsy Project. Her latest b o t o h achievements include performing at Fringe Manila, with Immigrant Lessons as an p interpreter in their latest work titled: Origins. Simran has created various full-length works, SIMRAN SACHAR and is in the processof her most recent solo, titled “This is What Makes Us Girls.” She is most recently a 2020 commissioned artist with FORM Vancouver, for her newest full length film: LUNACY. Her recent film entitled: “No Alarms” was chosen to be presented for “Isol-art,” by Teddy Tedholm and Sara Richman.

Sophia Gamboa: On the blazing soils of southern Manila, located within the islands of the Philippines, music and celebration was an everyday practice of freedom where Sophia “Sosa” rooted 13 years of her life. She grew up inspired as she witnessed how much music was surrounding her. Captivated by the soul and the stories she was able to tell through them, she always felt free. A natural born artist, leader and a powerhouse dancer who also spent half of her life as an immigrant in Vancouver, Canada, she molded and cultivated her skills and love for art as an escape to break through all the pressures of fitting into the western society. Along the way, she became one of the original members of a dominating

fashion/dance/art collective in the west coast Canada: Immigrant Lessons. Since then, she

a i c n e

has broken through all the barriers of what it means to be a street dancer and a high caliber l a P

n a artist. She is a dancing phoenix on the rise. A force to be reckoned with both in the freestyle i t s a b e

battle scene and on stage. Her passion for culture has gotten her to work with some of the S

y b

o t

best up and coming artists of this generation. Whether it is performing on big stages, o h working on set for Disney, or a featured dancer in music videos, Sosa will always bring it to p you as if she's the main event of the show. In time, she will give back and create home SOPHIA GAMBOA dedicated to the street kids of Manila to inspire peace, love, unity and having fun.

29 2020 Ancillary Project BIOGRAPHIES

Sharon Lee is an emerging professional artist who has trained with the best in the street dance community and industry. Always actively seeking opportunities to learn, train, and create has opened many doors to Sharon’s knowledge and movement. In Vancouver, she has trained under Kim Sato, and is one of the original members of twofourseven company. Sharon has also trained in New York with Buddha Stretch, Henry Link, Poping Pete, Caleaf, Majory Smarth, and so many more. She’s also trained in Los Angeles, and in Europe with many known industry choreographers. With Sharon’s background in training, it has lead her to work with local and international artists and

p choreographers such as A Tribe Called Red, Mandy Moore, Christopher Scott and others. Her talent h o t o

y has also opened doors to perform at many high profile events such as Juno Fest, Fringe Manila,TED

T a k u

m talks, and Takashi Murakami’s preview Art Gallery Night/Birthday Bash. When Sharon is not training i

H a

y and/or performing, she partakes in many local and international house battles and events. As well as, a s h i l

she tries to travel as much as she can to expand her knowledge and connection within the street

dance culture. SHARON LEE

Marissa Wong is a Vancouver-based dance artist who has the privilege to create, play and share on the unceded territories of the Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Səlílwətaɬ (Tsleil- Waututh), and xwməθkwəyəm (Musqueam) Nations. She received her postgraduate studies through Alonzo King LINES Ballet and Ballet Austin. Her engagement with the Vancouver dance community has demonstrated her capability to produce, perform, and host works. She is currently a member of TWObigsteps Collective, which she founded in 2015. Since then, she has choreographed works that have been presented internationally, including at

TEDxSoma (San Francisco) and Dance in Vancouver. In addition to performance, Marissa n i d n a

engages in the community through workshop facilitation, project managing, stage m r o N

t managing and teaching. Interested in sharing dialogue, she seeks expansion through the r e b l A

language of movement, and a practice of continually challenging assumptions. She hopes b

o t o h

to achieve this through choreography, education, and engagement in various arts practices. p MARISSA WONG

Anaheed Saatchi writes fiction, creative nonfiction and covers themes of sustainable community building, diaspora, the outdoors industry and identity politics as a freelance journalist. They are a settler on the unceded territories of the šxʷməθkʷəy̓ əmaɁɬ təməxʷ (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh-ulh Temíx̱ w (Squamish) and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ təməxʷ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. They've written for various publications including The Malahat Review, Melanin Base Camp and The Alpinist. o r i e b i R

a n A y b o t o h p ANAHEED SAATCHI

30 2020 Ancillary Project BIOGRAPHIES

Yana Schwannecke is a German-Chinese illustrator who graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver in 2019. Her artistic practice in illustration touches on cultural displacement and the splicing of cultural and personal environments. The inspiration for this stemmed from a mixed cultural upbringing in the United States, Germany, and Singapore before living in Canada at age 18. Her practice also wandered into the realm of curation, having curated two group shows at ECU in Vancouver. She is currently living Düsseldorf, Germany where she is pursuing a MA in Art History at Heinrich-Heine-University. Due to this endeavour, Yana is spending p h o

less time illustrating and more time doing art historical research, and exploring her t o

b y :

interest in the history of the representation of romantic love in the western didactic of art. t a c y

B e

YANA SCHWANNECKE

ADDENDUM

A third generation Japanese Canadian, Mariko Tanabe has over thirty-five years of experience as a dancer, teacher, choreographer, and researcher. Since 2004, Mariko received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec to support research of her life’s work with the teachings of Body- Mind Centering®. She has worked with emerging and mature artists including Benoît Lachambre, Jeans Sébastien Lourdais, Nicholas Paltry, Christopher House with Toronto Dance Theatre, and Helge Letonja with Steptext dance projects in Germany. Mariko has performed her dance creations around the world since 1994, and taught internationally. Her solo work “Narcisse en Silence” is in the permanent archives of the German Tanzfilm Institute in Bremen. She is also an adjunct professor at the Dance Department of the Université du Québec à Montréal. For twelve years she worked with American Modern Dance master Erick Hawkins in New York as a

principal dancer, teacher and rehearsal director. A Certified Teacher of BMCSM,

c i

r Mariko is the founder and director of the Canadian BMCSM Licensed Training

u A

Program in Montreal. She is also an Infant Developmental Movement Educator,

n e

J Somatic Movement Therapist and Yoga Teacher, and maintains a private practice. marikotanabe.com, espritenmouvement.com MARIKO TANABE

31 The MiBC Creative Residency Ancillary Project is supported, in part, by the City of Vancouver’s Art, Culture and Community Services Department, RBC Foundation, Tara Cheyenne Performance, and with the support of the following studios: Xanadu Studio and 45 W. St.