Beyond BC: Redefining the Contemporary between Canada, Peru and India

Redefining the Contemporary between Canada, Peru and India

by Colleen Lanki, Pamela Santana and Kavya Iyer

Three "Redefining the Contemporary" Symposiums were streamed online from Canada, Peru and India in December 2020, garnering over 2000 views and coverage in local media. The dancers behind this transnational project are Colleen Lanki (Vancouver, Canada), Pamela Santana (Lima, Peru) and Kavya Iyer (Kolkata, India/Paris, France). They curated roundtables with dancers and scholars to discuss the terms “traditional”, “classical” and “C/contemporary” from diverse perspectives in their constant reevaluation of practice-based knowledge in dance.

This is the story of how an exciting project was conceived. Great ideas are hardly borne out of thin air: they speak of inspiration, courage to reach out, and last but not least, collaboration. Cross-cultural exchange is much called for in these urgent times of isolation and collapse of old paradigms. The collaboration across continents between Colleen, Pamela and Kav ya sets a great example of intercultural bonds and talking about dance without a dominant voice in the room.

Catalyst - Colleen Lanki:

I have always found boundaries challenging. It is part of my masochistic nature to choose the most difficult path in the “in-between” places, where labels are not easily fixed, or where I do not completely fit. This is why I love nihon buyō (Japanese classical dance) – which is both dance and theatre, which allows for a crossing of gender in performance, and which is both a classical tradition and a contemporary practice.

I am a Canadian performing artist of Finnish and Irish/Scottish heritage who (among many other things) practices nihon buyō. Through TomoeArts, I work to maintain the training and legacy I inherited from my first teacher Fujima Yūko (1928-2003), and my creative practice is entwined with Japanese forms and aesthetics. Yet since moving back to Canada from Japan, even the new dance-theatre works I create seem to fall into the category of “traditional” which makes them patently not relevant to the contemporary arts scene. In addition, the optics created by the disconnect between my physical appearance and the “traditional/ethnic” labelling of the dance form is a growing issue, which has intensified my desire to question the validity of the terms “traditional”, “contemporary” and “classical”- or at least to challenge the stigma associated with them.

In Spring 2018, while being an Artist-inResidence at the Dance Centre, I gathered some of my favourite choreographer-dancers in a room to discuss how these labels affect their practice. It was a private lunchtime conversation between six artists who each work in a form which has a strong lineage of training (ballet, Bharatanatyam, flamenco, First Nations dance, and nihon buyō), yet who each create new work using their form’s principles and aesthetics. We barely got past the first question of what the terms “traditional”, “classical” and “C/ contemporary” mean to our forms! We had so much to share regarding how these labels influenced funding, programming, marketing and simply how people perceived the work we do. We ultimately decided the conversation was something we wanted to carry on with the general public.

I started planning for a public event called “Redefining the Contemporary” that would involve presentations and possibly short performances of our work. I received a small grant, the Dance Centre offered their theatre as a venue, and this group of incredibly busy artists made themselves available in mid-April 2020. Then the pandemic hit and by midMarch everything in Vancouver was closed or cancelled. Life went into a tailspin and, without understanding the magnitude of the marathon ahead, I rescheduled for early December thinking that, surely, we could gather for this event by then…. but within a few months this hope was already eroding. Then in mid-May I received an unexpected email from Peru:

I want to ask if by any chance you need some help with research or work. I feel I need to have more grounded experience and at the moment, I am quite free. I would love to be a volunteer or intern with you or your organization. It would be a great opportunity for me. (Pamela Santana , personal communication, May 11, 2020)

I was sitting alone at home worrying about the future and how to keep TomoeArts going. I could not imagine what I could offer, yet I set up a Zoom meeting with Pamela, and that launched an amazing journey. Our conversations and emails were as personal as they were professional. I learned how she was coping with severe lockdowns in her cold, damp winter in Lima, and she heard about our seemingly charmed summer in Vancouver. The tables turned later in the year as Canada launched into a winter of “second-wave” and more lockdowns, while summer arrived in Peru, but our main topic was the "Redefining the Contemporary" Symposium. I knew it would have to move to an online format, but how best to make that happen? And how could we possibly expand its reach?

We discussed how to make it an international endeavour. We decided to each organize a panel located in our home territory (mine was already in place but moving online) and to involve a third organizer. Pamela and I were both becoming busy with other work and we knew we had to keep the project manageable, but our discussions had become like little life-rafts. They were proving that the pandemic could actually be a catalyst for positive change:

Let’s meet tomorrow and see how we can make this successful without killing ourselves. We can keep it small - and manageable - for this first iteration. I think this pandemic is going to last a while, and this […] could be a long-term project that we do in stages. […] We are both really busy with other projects and the world is in a crazy state. Let’s create a small anchor and see what happens. (Colleen Lanki, personal communication, August 6, 2020)

Our team eventually grew with Kavya Iyer joining as the third organizer for India. This topic has proven itself to be important and relevant –far beyond my personal queries. I have loved working with Pamela and Kavya in this “in-between” space we have created.

Redefining the Contemporary Symposium Poster for Canada

Design by Cle Delgado

Redefining the Contemporary Symposium Poster for Peru

Design by Cle Delgado

Redefining the Contemporary Symposium Poster for India

Design by Cle Delgado

Bridge - Pamela Santana:

My first contact with Colleen Lanki was through her article, “The Body in Space: Layers of Gender in Japanese Classical Dance” which explored gendered signifiers in Japanese classical dance, nihon buyō. As part of my assignment for the Choreomundus Masters program to analyze a dance different from my own culture, I googled Colleen and decided to reach out to her:

I am writing to you because I am fascinated by your work and research and see you as an example of what I would like to accomplish. (Pamela Santana, Personal communication, February 1st, 2018)

A few days later, Colleen wrote back to my surprise. I had a feeling that our connection would evolve into something bigger.

What lovely emails to receive! I have to say that I feel pretty alone in my world at times, so it is nice to hear when someone else out there is interested in some of the same things. (Colleen Lanki, Personal communication, February 13, 2018)

Finding Colleen was refreshing. She came from a practice-based approach and was writing from her own embodied experiences. After a long hiatus since our first e-mail exchange, I finally wrote to Colleen again during the first week of May 2020. By then, we had been under lockdown in Peru for almost three months. Many feelings pushed me to restart a connection with Colleen. Perhaps the most significant was the drive to continue to be active - to continue working and producing in a world that was urging us to stop. I had been unemployed for several months, and by that time, I was losing hope of seeing any change in that situation. Thus, I decided to invest my time and energy as an intern at an organization. I reached out again to Colleen. Catching up with her felt organic. It was her forthright honesty and depth of thoughts that captivated me:

Time seems to have taken on an entirely different meaning and quality since this lockdown began, and even though I am keeping “busy,” productivity is minimal, and I lose track of days. I heard someone say “I no longer own time. Time owns me.” You call it a “complicated context” - and I agree entirely. (Colleen Lanki, Personal communication, May 22, 2020)

“Contemporary” and “traditional” were indeed long-discussed terms, but how could these issues be echoed in other geographical and social contexts? How could the symposium be adapted to capture the interests and questions of artists and dance practitioners from other parts of the world? I foresaw the impact it could have in the Peruvian context where traditional dances have long suffered from exclusion and discrimination, and where there is a strong separation between what is considered classical, contemporary, traditional and folk dance.

Aware of the relevance of this discussion, I decided to join the initiative. Inspired by UNESCO’s Resiliart model of work, we constructed a small network of three countries and began the organization. Organizing the "Redefining the Contemporary" Symposium was not always easy. During our meetings, we were coordinating technical aspects, making decisions about the panels, and listening to each other and sharing in a time of uncertainty and loneliness. We shared loss, fear, sickness, stress, but also joy, laughs and hope. Amidst this mesh of emotions and circumstances, we managed to build a collaborative network of artist-researchers who worked horizontally and exchanged in a human manner. And from this collaboration, an exciting and beautiful project was nurtured.

Ripple - Kavya Iyer:

My engagement with "Redefining the Contemporary" has been memorable, stimulating and refreshing. It is true that there is something about the way artists connect and work with each other which is unlike other work relationships. An organic rapport filled with honesty, empathy and curiosity developed among us, which made working together fun, smooth and also a great learning experience. While organizing the India panel in a span of two weeks was a daunting task, the support from Colleen and Pamela helped immensely to make it successful. The event even received coverage from a national newspaper called The Hindu which served as a testament to the importance of the topic of discussion.

I asked Pamela and Colleen, “Why India?" and got to know that they had planned to have Bharatanatyam dancers on their panels to get an Indian perspective in their discussion. It was this free-spiritedness and willingness to share, expand and explore that brought three dancerresearchers from around the globe together, even under times of duress. My initiation into this endeavour has been in reverse, but from here, there is no looking back!

While the symposium stirred up some answers, it also gave rise to more questions and reflections. It is impor tant to continue the larger conversation in order to constantly recreate and redefine categories and labels so as to make them more inclusive of the “in-between.” Thus, as 2021 unfolds, Colleen, Pamela and Kavya hope to organize and engage with more dancers and scholars in innovative ways to sustain this endeavour in an attempt to break away from siloed notions and reimagine a new "C/contemporary" dance world.

Clockwise from top left: Pamela Santana, Colleen Lanki and Kavya Iyer

If you would like to join them on this evolving journey, feel free to reach out via email at redefiningcontemporary@gmail.com or on Instagram (@redefiningthecontemporary).

Colleen Lanki is the Artistic Director of TomoeArts in Vancouver, Canada. She has practiced Japanese classical dance for almost 20 years, maintaining both her “traditional” practice and creating “contemporary” work using the form.

Pamela Santana is a dance artist and researcher from Lima, Perú. She graduated with distinction from the MA Choreomundus program. Her experience resides in the coordination and direction of projects that articulate dance, education and cultural heritage.

Kavya Iyer is a dance researcher, teacher, choreographer and performer in Paris, France. As a Choreomundus graduate, she also works as a research assistant with ArtX, an Indian arts and culture consultancy.