Since 2019, artistic co-curation has been a key pillar of Danse-Cité. These three-year cycles allow ideas to circulate, perspectives to intersect, and practices and sensibilities to enter into dialogue.
This year marks the end of Winnie Ho’s curatorial term. Thank you, thank you, thank you! With her lively, free spirit and constant attentiveness to emerging forms, Winnie has left a joyful imprint on how we think about artistic support. She will remain close to us as a member of our artistic committee.
A new cycle begins with Michael Martini. A curious and insightful artist, grounded in performance, theatre, dance — and everything that slips in-between — Michael will bring new energy to our conversations, shift perspectives, and give space to other narratives.
These roles — like that of Ellen Furey, advisor in leadership and organizational health — go far beyond their titles. They play an active part in Danse-Cité’s strategic thinking, question our ways of doing things, and help sustain a critical and living, breathing approach to our direction.
We believe in unique projects, nonlinear impulses, and artists who throw themselves into the unknown. And we believe our role is to accompany them with care, discernment, and trust.
Our artistic vision is based on a few simple yet firmly held principles:
supporting rigorous and unique approaches;
valuing a diversity of aesthetics and practices;
fostering unexpected encounters;
working toward greater equity in access to resources and venues;
developing formats adapted to the evolving needs of artists and audiences;
making accessibility — notably through audio description — a core focus of our work.
' In a performance, we are brought into a little corner of the artist’s mind, a space they’ve been finding furniture for. We see the little details of the world within a world they’re drawn to, the things we might miss otherwise, a pulse that has been keeping the artist’s creativity alive, a pulse that we can hear if we lend an ear to their wrist. Sometimes a work is touching; sometimes it is revolting; sometimes it is pathetic; sometimes it is triumphant. At the juiciest of times it might be all of the above, the answer to a tricky question.
It’s an honour to co-curate at DanseCité, in collaboration with Sophie Corriveau and on the heels of Winnie Ho, whose final handful of curatorial choices I will get to see come to fruition. DanseCité is an organization I know to be dense with love, imagination, and thoughtfulness. I’ve observed it listen closely to artists, shapeshift to different artists’ ways of working, and cleverly disguise its loving signature within the works themselves. I’m particularly enchanted by DanseCité’s new step beyond the model of “seasons,” which we know to be increasingly troublesome for artists dizzied by bureaucracy and unreliable funding models. In a season-less curation style, projects can be postponed; plans can be rewired; nothing is set in stone until the artist has what they need. I’m eager to listen to the wants and needs of DanseCité’s community, including the work this community wants to see on and off stage, such as researching and getting to know PACBI better.
I am drawn to artistic projects born of burning interests, recurring daydreams, and mysterious desires. I am drawn to work that is unafraid of attention, sensuality, and unpredictability in our age of increasingly non-sensual predictability and superficial distractions. I am drawn to work that cuts through the crap of what artists are told sells best. I hope to not introduce work with phrases such as “now more than ever,” and discourage the thinking of urgency as an artistic after-thought or promotional resource. I’d rather invest in the self-determined and diverse urges of artists, where a beautiful diversity indeed lies. '