Dance Ontario and Dance Umbrella of Ontario have collaborated to bring you a special message for Ontario to celebrate International Dance Day 2023. The Ambassador for Ontario for 2023 is dance artist Diana Lopez Soto and here is her message to you:
Dance is medicine.
I dance to dive deep into body and listen to the rhythms and cycles that connect me to the world. I dance to wake up the rivers and quench the thirst of those who cannot walk with me to the waters. I dance to tell stories and inspire a future for our children. I dance to put my babies to sleep and to ask the skies to weep over farmers’ fields.
Dance is diversity.
Movement creates change within and outside of us, generating rippling impulses and intentions across all borders. Even in our perceived stillness, movement remains a constant: internal rivers irrigate and feed our sources. Our roots and branches expand and contract in response to being, relating and adapting. The rhythms of mothering and the labour of land work have taught me to release dance from an idea of specificity. Dance does not belong to a place, method, age, gender or race.
Dance is ecology.
Dance is to be cultivated like the seeds in the fields and forests. Germinating living impulses that originate from the responsibility to unify spirit and transformation in movement. We are relation. We are connection. We are intention. From our cellular being to our spirit being, dance connects us to the celebration of life and the healing of our nations.
Today and always.
Diana Lopez Soto iis an award-winning multidisciplinary Mexican/Canadian artist, mother and land caretaker. She has presented and exhibited her work nationally and internationally in France, Panama, Mexico, Costa Rica, the USA and Canada. She has produced and co-produced site-specific performances, vertical dance, art installations and experimental film for 18 years. Her interest in sustainable practices inform the direction of her collaborations and offerings. Diana’s love for material, physics and body/space connections inform her rigging designs and structures, installations and sculptural sets that come to life through her movement explorations. In 2028 and 2019, thanks to the Canada Arts Council for the Arts, Diana participated in the Guapamacataro Art and Ecology residency, the Vancouver International Vertical Dance Summit and the ‘Ritual de las Aguadoras’ with the Tirindikua family from the Barrio de Santo Santiago Michoacan. Diana is co-creator of Land Embodiment Lab with Coman Poon, member of Vanguardia Dance Projects and collaborates with Hercinia Arts, Femme du Feu, Look Up Theatre and Victoria Mata. www.dianalopezsoto.com
Photos by Gabino Barrera Castillo and Craig Meschino
Join us for a special DanceON Chat with Diana hosted by Samara Thompson on Saturday April 29th at 11am live on Dance Ontario’s Facebook page
