Contemporary choreographers around the world reimagine oral traditions, which may or may not “belong” to them, as emotionally and politically-potent dance works. What types of transformation become possible in these physicalized reinterpretations? An international panel of dancemakers explored how the global movement of narrative, people, and dance has shaped personal and national identities as well as the dancemakers’ respective bodies of work. This sharing of dance and ideas brought together Seeta Patel (Seeta Patel Dance, UK), Michael Keegan-Dolan (Teaċ Daṁsa, Ireland), Neil Ieremia (Black Grace, New Zealand), Roxane D'Orleans Juste (Limón Dance Company, USA), and Sameena Mitta (MeenMoves, USA), and will be moderated by Dr. Henry Daniel (Simon Fraser University & Full Performing Bodies, Canada).
Produced in partnership with MeenMoves.
Born in London, Seeta Patel has worked with a range of Bharatanatyam and contemporary dance professionals and toured with many companies including DV8 Physical Theatre, Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company & Gandini Juggling. She has presented sold out work at the Southbank Centre, Royal Opera House: ROH2 and Sadler’s Wells. In tandem with her choreographic and performing work she has worked in film, TV and theatre, including producing a multi award-winning short dance film, The Art of Defining Me; being a judge, mentor and advisor for the inaugural BBC Young Dancer Competition, and choreographing a play at the Theatre Royal Stratford East - The House of In Between. Her work, Not Today’s Yesterday, is a one-woman show taking a dramatic look at the whitewashing of history. The show won Best Dance and the Peace Foundation Award at the Adelaide Fringe. Most recently Seeta created a Bharatanatyam version of the iconic ballet, The Rite of Spring, touring in 2019 and to be expanded in 2023 for Sadler’s Wells and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.
Michael Keegan-Dolan founded Teaċ Daṁsa in 2016 as a means to forge stronger connections with the native traditions, language and music of Ireland. The name Teaċ Daṁsa, ‘House of the Dance,’ in Classical Irish, supports this process and is exemplified in the company’s first two productions, Swan Lake / Loch na hEala (2016) and MÁM (2019). Swan Lake | Loch na hEala – reimagines the story on which the famous ballet is based and is a contemporary fusion of dance, traditional storytelling, folk music and theatre. It premiered at the 2016 Dublin Theatre Festival and won the 2017 Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Production and the award for Best Modern Choreography at the UK National Dance Awards later in the same year.
Neil Ieremia (ONZM) is the founder and artistic director of Black Grace. Over the past 25 years, Black Grace has changed the face of contemporary dance in Aotearoa New Zealand, drawing upon Neil’s Samoan heritage and melding it with Māori and Western influences to create unique expressions of our contemporary identity. In that time, Black Grace has also become one of our most successful cultural exports, performing Neil’s choreography in Australia, Canada, Germany, Holland, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Caledonia, South Korea, Switzerland and the United States of America. Among the company’s international highlights are sell-out performances at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts and a four-week season on New York City’s 42nd Street, as well as performances at Mexico’s renowned Cervantino Festival, Washington D.C.’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the 2010 Cultural Olympiad in Vancouver. The company also received a Herald Angel Award at the 2014 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Roxane D’Orleans Juste is French Canadian and of Haitian descent. Hailed for her technical and musical versatility and for the dramatic depth of her performances, she gained international acclaim in her powerful interpretation of the classics of American modern dance and contemporary dance choreographers. She performed with the Eleo Pomare Dance Company, Anabelle Gamson Dance Solos and with the Limon Dance Company (1983-2016) which she led as Artistic Associate (2002) and Associate Artistic Director (2007-2016). D’Orleans Juste won a New York Dance and Performance (“Bessie”) Award and Le Prix Jacqueline Lemieux recognizing outstanding achievement of Canadian dance artists. In 2002 she founded “En Solo” a platform for her own choreography and signature works of internationally renowned choreographers. Named choreographer in residence for the company Coreoarte in Caracas, Venezuela (2008), she was entrusted co- chair of the board since 2011. An active master teacher, she stages and directs the dances of Jose Limon worldwide and taught at the New York University, the North Carolina School of the Arts, Barnard College, Marymount Manhattan College, The Rotterdam Tanzakademie, The Palucca Hochschule Fȕr Tanz, the Folkwang Hochschule and at the University of Illinois Urbana – Champaign where she earned her MFA in Dance. Juste was a guest teacher for the Tanztheater Wuppertal /Pina Bausch Dance Company (2014-2017).
Sameena Mitta (co-producer) is the artistic director of dance-theatre company MeenMoves and its education program MadHops. Mitta has presented choreography around the world, and is in year 7 of her 10-year dance film Struwwelpeter Project, filmed site-specifically in Germany. Mitta earned with distinction the Cecchetti Society’s Associate Diploma and an MA in Dance Creation from UQAM focusing on Movement Intervention for South Asian survivors of domestic violence. Mitta is an advocate for diversity in dance and has sat on dance juries in Canada and the USA for several organizations and governments. An NJPAC Choreography Fellow (2018-2022), Mitta is mentor for the Recanati-Kaplan scholarship students in dance through the Harkness Dance Center and is also on faculty at the Limón Institute and 92Y Harkness Dance Center.
Professor of Dance, Performance Studies and New Media Technologies, scholar, performer, choreographer, and Artistic Director of Full Performing Bodies, Henry Daniel PhD’s research concentrates on strengthening notions of Practice-as-Research (PaR), Arts-based-Research, and Research/Creation in Canada. He has a professional background in dance, theatre, and new media with a career that started in his native Trinidad & Tobago and continued in the USA, Germany, the UK, and Canada. Daniel’s current research project “Contemporary Nomads” takes its inspiration from what cultural theorist Stuart Hall once called "the prototype of the modern or postmodern New World nomad, continually moving between centre and periphery” (Hall in Rutherford, J. 234:1990).
Photographer: Alicja Hoppel, Dancer: Jie-Hung Connie Shiau, Choreographer: Sameena Mitta