“It’s a human need to watch something in a dark space together,” said Nathalie Bonjour, performing arts director at Toronto Harbourfront Centre, “because it really is about our shared human experience. That moment we spend together in that dark room is pretty magical.”…
A good portion of my dance training involved dance exams. In the case of tap, I even had to memorize step definitions. “Tap: strike the floor with the ball of the foot, releasing it immediately.” Or, “Shuffle: a combination of a brush…
A Russian-Canadian Impresario Have you ever heard of the word “impresario”? That’s someone who organizes and maybe even finances performing arts events, including concerts, plays, ballets, operas, and more. It’s a very risky profession, and likely not one taught in arts management…
Engage With Your Art Form Theatre guru Trevor Copp has a bowl of theatre tickets, roughly 1,200 of them. The bowl makes its stage appearance when Copp judges the Ontario Drama Festival (formerly the Sears Drama Festival): it contains one way of…
With Change on the Horizon, Cadilla Moved Towards It Life is full of transitions, and I won’t bore you with a list of all the usual ones. But as you explore your creativity, remember that transitions can happen here, too. Bored with…
It’s another Hollywood cliché (I seem to be taking a lot of digs at Hollywood lately): the loner who wants to risk it all for his (sometimes her) goal, and no matter what anyone says, he (sometimes she) will punch through all…
Last time, I talked about how art isn’t only about those Hollywood-movie moments of inspiration, that ideas can take time to develop. But why? What makes it so difficult to develop an idea? Montreal-based choreographer Sasha Ivanochko’s work can provide us with…
One myth I want to take down with this interview is the romanticized image of inspiration. Yes, we all get eureka moments: I have plenty of them. However, in my case, they’re never actually good ideas. Instead, those moments of inspiration are…
I came across German-Romanian writer Hertha Müller* (“Mueller” in English) about two months ago. I’m embarrassed to say, I had no idea who she was, despite having two degrees in German Studies. In my defence, though, I stopped studying in 2005, and…
The hardest part about creating art is knowing when to break with convention. When I read experienced writers’ and editors’ blogs, they invariably talk about writers who sacrifice good writing in order to be clever. I sometimes roll my eyes when I…