10 more days until DanceWeekend’19! Today we are featuring one of our 2019 commissioned artists Decades Collective – together across decades to dance this earth. Decades Collective will have its premiere performance at DanceWeekend with the commissioned work Six, Saturday, January 26 at 3:45pm and Sunday, January 27 at 3:15 pm.

 Can you tell us little bit about your company/collective/school?
DECADES is an ad hoc dance collective newly formed, whose member’s ages range through 6
generations.
We believe in the different wisdoms that come from curiosity, exploration and experience.
Every age offers its form of valid creative impulse and vitality. We realize that different
generations have been exposed to different ways of receiving, using and transmitting
information. Our expressive vocabularies and personalities reflect this. Calendar time divides
us, but actual life places us in simultaneous time. From co-creation and discoveries inherent in
the process, will come will come co-habitation and collective growth of our shared abilities.
We are all contemporary artists creating from our inherited forms. We have come together
because we respect each other’s artistry. We work within a variety of ancestral influences and
at the same time the diversity of Ontario. We recognize that the basics we have in common:
our dancing bodies and the earth we share and dance upon. This commission is our first
creation.

 What are showing at DanceWeekend’19?
Together across decades to dance this earth, Decades Collective spans generations with
inspiration from global roots, taking diversity to another level.
At this moment in our personal and Canadian histories, there is much discussion about
“home”, “belonging”, “ownership”. Some see actual material places. Others live in fluid
relationships to place and community. And there are societies across virtual spaces. There is
also talk about generational differences in communication modes and “community”. The
Toronto region adds the wonderful complexity of cultural interactions.
We have convened our collective purposely as people who have come to this land in recent
history from 6 heritages, being facilitated and led by Indigenous artists whose history here
reaches back many 10000’s of years.
The theme is how each of us (cross-generations and cultures) relates to notions of “belonging”.
With the help of our creative facilitators we will search ancestral connections in ourselves, each
other and with the land that we are currently living on contemporaneously.
In this project we ask ourselves “How does our life experience and learned modes of
expression affect our communal and artistic communication?”
Dance is first a material form, its primary instrument being one’s body. As dance artists we
intend to explore how we are currently living, and dancing in this environment. Dance by its
very nature stands on the ground. How do our respective dance practices exist on the land: i.e.
pulling away from it, skimming along, pounding it, sinking into it, etc. How do each of us relate
as artists to different approaches that sometimes complement or challenge each other? We
aim to uncover basic physicalities we all work with due to gravity and human realities, and
experiment with the complex techniques that each practice has developed over time to
express life’s experiences.

 Who are the performers/collaborators in this piece(s)?
Mi Young Kim, Maxine Heppner, Sashar Zarif, Mafa Makhubalo, Jennifer Dallas, and Atri
Nundry

 Can you talk about your creative process? What inspires you?
Inspirations: myths, legends, fellow collective artists personal stories, water, earth, air, and sky
and the actuality of our dances on this ground. We bring to the studio our individual
approaches to dance. Our research has plumbed our personal experiences journeying to and
living in T’karonto. First nations elders have facilitated our explorations about land, belonging
and home. We have taught each other personal dances regarding “how I live on this earth”,
we have each facilitated creation research sessions. We are collectively choreographing our
group dance for dance weekend.
Dance by its very nature stands on the ground. How do our respective dance practices exist on
the land: I.e. pulling away from it, skimming along, pounding it, sinking into it, etc. how do each
of us relate as artists to different approaches that sometimes complement or challenges each
other? We aim to uncover basic physicality’s we all work with duo to gravity and human
realities and experiment with the complex techniques that each practice has developed over
time to express life’s experience.

 Please share your experience performing in a previous DanceWeekend and/or tell us
what you are looking forward to at DanceWeekend’19?
This is the first performance of this newly formed collective. But the individual artists have all
performed in DanceWeekends across the decades and are committed members of Dance
Ontario and Ontario’s dance Community.

 What is one surprising or interesting fact about your company/collective/school?
We are all humans dancing.

 Do you have any up-coming performances/events you would like to share?
This is Decades collective premier performance.

Social Media Links
https://www.facebook.com/miyoung.kim.7583992 (Mi Young Kim)
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008617024550 (Maxine Heppner)
https://www.facebook.com/sashar.zarif. (Sashar Zarif)
https://www.facebook.com/mafa.makhubalo. (Mafa Makhubalo)
https://www.facebook.com/jennifer.dallas.33. (Jennifer Dallas)
https://www.facebook.com/atri.nundy (Atri Nundy)