Exploration – Group Mentorship
Sharing Knowledge Within and Beyond Dance Performance
Exploration facilitates a robust group mentorship experience to expand dance artists’ capacity to reinvigorate and reimagine their careers. Through collective learning and with professional guidance, all online, mentees are supported in planning their career paths and expanding their professional networks toward futures both within and beyond dance performance.
Our group mentorship model enables each mentee to have access to three experienced mentors with varied backgrounds rather than the traditional single mentor. The experience is enhanced by individual dialogues between mentors and mentees. Each cohort is led by a facilitator and includes opportunities for peer-to-peer sharing among the mentees. Having structured time and space allows mentees to ponder and plan their career paths, make strategic choices, and expand their professional networks.
Thank you for your interest. This program has concluded.
We are no longer accepting applications or registration.
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If you have any questions, please contact nationaloffice@dtrc.ca.
FREE
Open to all professional dancers who are legally entitled to work in Canada, and to Canadian professional dancers working abroad, including DTRC members. See application form for full eligibility criteria. Must be at least 18 years of age.
DETAILS
By application. Full series commitment required. Weekly sessions over six weeks, January through March 2023. 3 cohorts (2 English, 1 French). Each cohort will have 3 mentors and 6 mentees. ASL/LSQ and captioning provided upon request.
THE APPLICATION PERIOD HAS NOW CLOSED.
If you’d like to join our list for future programming notifications, please email: exploration@dtrc.ca with a request to join the list.
Who can benefit from this program?
This program is for dance artists at any stage who are looking to make a shift in their career. You might be an emerging, mid-career or established dance professional. You might be looking for insight and guidance around a specific career advancement goal, career exploration or career transition. For example:
- You have multiple projects in mind such as a residency, a Fringe festival tour or a film project you want to get off the ground. You need some strategic career planning to optimize your path forward.
- You feel stuck in a rut and want to explore new performance opportunities or a parallel career that broadens your skills and supplements your income.
- You want to forge new partnerships with new collaborators, examine new career paths or work in new communities and want to develop your professional network.
Please note: This is NOT a program for dance artists wishing to undertake creative or aesthetic explorations such as examining one’s creative process or having an outside eye or creative mentor for feedback on a dance work.
Mentors
Cohort A (English) – Building on my Dance Foundation
Lopa Sarkar has an MBA and an Advanced Certificate in Executive Coaching and Mentoring. Her background includes working in multiple industries including tech, banking, the public sector, and the creative industries. She brings a holistic approach to her coaching, blending corporate and creative thinking. She has lived and worked in London, England, the Bahamas and in Toronto, Canada. As the owner of a performing arts company, she has travelled internationally as a choreographer, speaker, performer, and teacher. Lopa is a member of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council and is passionate about entrepreneurship. She sits on boards working to increase representation and access to careers in the performing arts. In 2023 she will be launching the Lopa Sarkar School of Dance.
Paul Chambers: When Paul tried to retire from his performance career in 2003, the founder of the DTRC, Joysanne Sidimus, talked him out of it. Instead, she prescribed career counselling through the DTRC. Paul danced for three more years, which included a season with Toronto Dance Theatre. In total, his dance career spanned fourteen years, including performing with Cleveland San Jose Ballet, Alberta Ballet, Banff Festival Ballet, Ballet Jörgen Canada. Paul retired from the stage in late 2006 to assume the responsibilities of Company Manager for Alberta Ballet and began his studies for a Cultural Management Certificate from Grant MacEwan University. In the summer of 2022, Paul returned to Alberta Ballet fulltime as Senior Development Officer while continuing to teach adult ballet at the Alberta Ballet School. Paul and his husband Craig, also a retired dancer, live on a small farm outside Calgary where they raise goats and chickens.
Susanna Hood: Tiohtià:ke/Montreal-based performer, maker and teacher in both dance and music, Susanna Hood has devoted her career to synthesizing voice and movement, creating intimate, sensual and raw performances both in dance-theatre and improvised music contexts. Founder and former artistic director of interdisciplinary performance company hum dansoundart (2000-2013), she is currently developing her PACKET trio as bandleader, performer, arranger and choreographer as the trio prepares for the recording of its first disk in the spring of 2023. Since 2004, Susanna has been teaching improvisation, composition, and voice and movement synthesis in various institutions and through independent workshops across Canada, internationally and online. Since 2013, Susanna is a core faculty member of Open Source Forms Teacher Certification and is currently pursuing teacher certification in Emotionally Integrated Voice with her teacher of 20 years, Fides Krucker. She is the co-director with Sarah Bild of La Poêle Studio in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal.
Cohort B (English) – Reaching Beyond My Horizon
Clayton Windatt is a curator, multi-arts performer and filmmaker living and working in Ontario. As the former Executive Director of the White Water Gallery, Aboriginal Curatorial Collective and current Executive Director of the Artist-Run Centres and Collectives Conference, Clayton has an extensive history working in artist-run culture and community arts. Clayton maintains contracts with various governments, colleges and non-government organizations as a writer, consultant and knowledge broker negotiating between peoples, places and communities. Clayton works in/with community, design, communications, curation, performance, theatre, technology, and consulting, and is a very active artist.
Dr. Carol Whiteman: Best known as co-creator and producer of the internationally respected Women In the Director’s Chair (WIDC) program, Dr. Carol Whiteman is a two-time Governor General’s award nominee and multiple award-winner for promoting gender inclusion in Canada’s screen industry. Since 1997, Dr. Whiteman has helped advance the careers, fiction feature films, television, and digital series, of a generation of women and non-binary screen writers and directors. Through WIDC she has produced over 150 short films and is executive producer on eight award-winning feature films, with seven more projects in the pipeline. In 2019, Whiteman completed her doctorate in Transformational Change at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia. Her dissertation chronicles WIDC’s over two-decades long work and offers an inspiring call to action for those seeking to create paradigmatic change.
Dr. Rita Shelton Deverell: Throughout her distinguished career in broadcasting, journalism and theatre, Rita Shelton Deverell has been a pioneer of innovation, creativity and inclusion. Driven by her commitment to social justice, she has focused on telling the stories of those whose voices are not often heard. In 1973, she joined CBC TV; in 1988, she co-founded VisionTV, the world’s first multifaith, multicultural network; and she was news director at the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) from 2002–2005, mentoring her Indigenous successor. She is one of the first Black women in Canada to be a television host and network executive. An inspiring mentor and teacher, she serves as a role model for young journalists, students, and audiences alike. She retired from broadcasting in 2005 and returned to her first profession, theatre and drama and has also written several books.
Cohorte C (Français) – La floraison de mes racines de la danse
Marie-Josee Chartier : Artiste polyvalente, Marie-Josée Chartier navigue aisément dans les milieux de la danse, de la musique, de l’opéra et du multimédia, en tant que chorégraphe, interprète, metteur en scène, chanteuse ou enseignante. Son répertoire chorégraphique fur présenté nationalement par le biais de séries ou festivals. Elle est la laureate de nombreux prix et bourses. Depuis 2000, Marie-Josée est en demande comme chorégraphe et metteure en scène pour des productions de musique, opéra et multimedia contemporains. Marie-Josée continue de danser et sa carrière professionnelle l’a amenée sur les scenes nationales et internationales comme soliste et membre de compagnies notamment Dancemakers pendant 9 ans. Elle est invitée régulièrement comme professeur dans les centres de formation réputés. Elle se spécialise en l’enseignement de mouvement et voix pour danseurs et musiciens. Co-fondatrice de CADA, elle s’implique toujours dans l’amélioration des conditions de travail des artistes de la danse.
Luca « Lazylegz » Patuelli danse (B-boying) depuis l’âge de 15 ans. Il a développé un style de danse unique en utilisant ses béquilles et la force de ses bras, qui lui a valu une reconnaissance mondiale. Lazylegz a été présenté sur Ellen, So You Think You Can Dance Canada, America’s Got Talent, et bien d’autres. Luca a été chorégraphe et interprète principal des cérémonies d’ouverture des Jeux paralympiques de Vancouver 2010. Il est le fondateur et le créateur de ILL-Abilities™ Crew, un crew international de B-boy composé des meilleurs danseurs « different » du monde. Luca a également co-fondé le Projet RAD, premier programme de danse urbaine inclusive au Canada offrant aux personnes de tous âges, de toutes capacités la possibilité de danser dans des studios de danse accessibles. Luca a été reconnu comme l’ambassadeur canadien de la danse et a reçu la médaille du service méritoire du gouverneur général du Canada pour ses programmes de sensibilisation à la danse.
Janick Arseneau : Je suis né au Nouveau-Brunswick, à Bathurst. J’ai commencé la danse à l’âge de 3 ans. La danse a toujours fait partie de moi et m’a aidé à surmonter les passages difficiles de ma vie. Un de mes plus grands objectifs étant jeune étaient de faire partie de So You Think You Can Dance Canada. Non seulement j’ai atteint cet objectif, mais je me suis placé au Top 4 – finaliste. À Los Angeles, j’ai dansé avec Jennifer Lopez pendant 3 ans à Las Vegas au théâtre Axis du Planet Hollywood. J’ai aussi dansé avec Hailee Steinfeld, Rihanna et plusieurs autres. Je vis maintenant à Montréal et je possède ma compagnie professionnelle de danse Bee-Yond Belief avec Hannah Pierre. En tant que personne non-binaire, je suis passionnée de ma communauté. Même si j’ai réalisé tant de mes rêves, je suis étudiant.e de la vie, et pour la vie.
Community Guidelines
- We gather in a spirit of mutual support and respect for each other. We acknowledge the diverse learning journeys we are all on.
- We listen to learn. We accept and expect non-closure.
- We leave our assumptions at the door in order to facilitate a non-judgmental space for dialogue.
- We don’t assume pronouns, gender, or other identifiers based on someone’s name or appearance.
- There is zero tolerance for those promoting violence on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation, or ability. Anyone inciting harm towards other participants will be removed at the discretion of our technical team and moderator.
Exploration Application
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