Allen’s Thank You Thursday #25
Faith in Inclusiveness
Instead of Throwback Thursday, I’ve decided to say “Thank-You Thursday”, to those who have had a deep influence in my life, but most likely are completely unaware of their impact.
The eleventh person I’d like to say THANK YOU to is Susan Cohen (former Dance Officer at the Ontario Arts Council - 1990).
In 1989, Karen Kaeja and I were on tour in Venezuela. A wonderful international Performance Art festival called CAONABO: Artistic Director Livia Daza-Paris with Edgardo Moreno. We met amazing Dance Artists from all across North America and Europe. What was most disturbing, were that most of the DA from New York were talking about how, if they were recognized by David White, former director of PS122, then their careers were made. These DA were relying on this curator/presenter to “make” their career.
During this time period, Presenters and Curators were building a power and touring base, influencing the careers of many choreographers, and determining the shape and direction of dance, at that time.
In 1990, 30 years ago, I was involved with Tom Stroud’s Choreographic Research Lab and met Michael Menegon, one of 15 dancers in the lab. After the Lab was completed, Michael and his wife Deborah Torr, myself and MYLOVE Karen went out for chocolate cake at Just Desserts on Dupont. During this time, we came up with the idea of a fringe festival for dance. The Toronto theatre fringe had begun a year earlier by Gregory Nixon. We met with Gregory on August 13, 1990, to discuss the idea, though we didn’t want to follow the theatre fringe in its structure, but to harness it’s format to develop one distinctly for independent dance artists, who at that time, had very little recognition, funding and touring opportunities.
While conceiving of the dance festival, the name in its first incarnation was called FIDO (Festival of Independent Dance in Ontario) and later realized that we wanted to expand our range and make it an international festival and called it fFIDA, the fringe Festival of Independent Dance Artists (Michael and I both had different pronunciations of the acronym).
Most importantly, we wanted all Dance Artists in all dance forms and practices to be considered equal. We wanted to be as inclusive as possible without discrimination, judgement, bias or influence. The festival submissions were initially a “first come, first server” model (later becoming lottery to ensure fairness). fFIDA was one of the first Canadian dance festivals to invite all forms and styles of dance to be included in its foundation.
Once the idea was established, Michael and I approached a number of organizations and funders to see if they would support our unique idea. NO organizations supported us BUT when we made an appointment with Susan Cohen, then head of Dance at the Ontario Arts Council, after listening to us, she said, “OK, I will support this festival with $15,000, now go to the others: Metro Toronto, TAC and the Feds and tell them I’m supporting you and they have to provide funding as well”. Susan was right, our very first year, in 1991, we raised $53,000.
We approached Cathy Levy, then AD of the Dance Umbrella of Ontario, and they supported us administratively. We decided to hold it in August, because, at that time, nothing was happening in that month in dance. We were told no one would attend a festival that happened in the summer, but we also considered that in a city of over a million people, some might be looking for something to do on a summer’s day/eve.
We started with a bang and by mid-week, we were selling out 90% of our shows. Line-ups were around the block and fFIDA was born.
Susan later told us that she drew her funds from a little-known contingency fund as she felt that our initial idea was not only radical, unique and risky but it took courage and vision as we took into consideration our whole community (not selected individuals), valuing that dance was the language to support, not just the creators.
In fact, Michael and I discovered that many independents didn’t support the initial idea of fFIDA, as it wasn’t curated, so didn’t even bother to apply (some for many years). That being said, we held a festival for 30 local, national and international choreographers with 16 one-hour programmes over 6 days. We also included Site-Specific programming (pre-Maurycy’esque character made his first appearance) and guided audience through the Cabbagetown neighborhood to view the works that ranged from: Herve Anglerot (France) dancing on passing cars, to the Neocropolis & Crematorium. The first and second year poster image was of the amazing and beautiful dancer Dan Wild (designed by Bill Wilcox). The 1998 colour poster was designed by Larry Rossignol)
The next year, after realizing the importance of the festival to our community, we increased it to 10 days. Michael and I soon shifted to a lottery system to insure fairness. Within a few years fFIDA became Canada’s largest international dance festival with over 300 dance artists from around the world presenting/performing. In 1995, we moved from the Winchester Street Theatre to Buddies in Bad Times Theatre to support the thousands of audience members that were attracted annually. Independents started touring the world and we helped spawn: Human Lingo Danseries, Homeworks, Series 808 and Dusk Dances (Sylvie Bouchard Founder and AD).
As the years went on, we included categories that would support multi-media, multi-disciplined, improvisation and eventually the Latenight Series (starting at 11pm), that was geared towards young, emerging Dance Artists.
The closing show was reserved for the crew, who’s show parodied the festivals participants and became a hit into itself.
I was involved with fFIDA as Co-Artistic Director until 2000 (our tenth anniversary) and then as a Member of the Board until 2002. fFIDA ended in 2006.
Thank you, Susan Cohen, for trusting in our vision, believing in the essentiality of our diverse community and supporting the festival with its first grant.