Seika Boye will move you
Our recent Artist in Residence puts the spotlight on dance this month at the AGO.
Portrait of Seika Boye. Photo credit: Alyson Hardwick.
She’s a scholar, writer, educator and artist whose practices revolve around dance and movement.
When Seika began her residency in August 2018 at the AGO, she wanted to flip her role to experience what happens when she becomes the subject of study. Her project This Living Dancer is a self-archiving exercise that questions her life in dance, being a dance artist in the museum, privacy and her role as a scholar who looks for traces of dance within archival collections.
During her residency, Seika collaborated with a number of AGO experts including Sherry Phillips, Conservator, Contemporary and Inuit Art; Amy Furness, Rosamond Ivey Special Archivist & Head, Library & Archives; photographers Ian Lefebvre and Craig Boyko; Johnson Ngo, Project Coordinator, Special Programs & Residences; Bojana Stancic, Programmer, Cross-disciplinary Programs; and Sarah Febbraro, Programmer, Youth Programs & Special Events.
Seika recently wrapped up her residency, but she has some unique and exciting events in store for us at the AGO this February. Here are some of the places you can find her
this month:
Seika Boye with Natasha Powell: This Living Dancer
Dancers Natasha Powell and Raoul Pillay during top-view photo shoot in the Gallery School. Part of This Living Dancer Project, by Seika Boye. Photo by Craig Boyko
Having spent the past decade in archives and writing her doctoral dissertation, Seika decided to take lessons with Natasha Powell (a Toronto-based dancer, choreographer, producer and founding artistic director of Holla Jazz) once a month throughout the duration of her residency. Now that the residency has come to an end, she’s ready to share what they’ve been working on – and you’re invited to learn with them! Join Seika and Natasha for this free, accessible event as they discuss, demonstrate and dance in Walker Court on Wednesday, February 6.
Have you wondered how the world of performance curation works? Maybe you’ve dreamed of working in this world yourself. In partnership with the Progress Festival of International Performance and Ideas, Seika Boye joins Bojana Stancic, the AGO’s Programmer, Cross-Disciplinary Projects, Artistic Director, Native Earth Performing Arts and theatre artist Keith Barker, Artistic Director of FADO and performance artist Shannon Cochrane, and Artistic Director of The Amy Project and performer Nikki Shaffeullah for a free panel discussion on February 9. You’ll find out more about the different spaces, places and ways that performance is being curated and programmed.
Let’s Talk About Vogue Dancing
We can’t get enough of legendary vogue dancer Twysted Miyake-Mugler and his devotion to vogue dancing. He’s hosting youth vogue dancing workshops as part of our FREE After Three youth program and the much-anticipated Kiki Lounge Ball later this month. On February 27, Twysted joins Seika for an in-depth conversation about his dancing life and about the spectacular vogue community he dances in. Join them for this free event taking place on Level 5 in our exhibition Mickalene Thomas: Femmes Noires.
Want more? See Seika’s exhibit It’s About Time: Dancing Black in Canada 1900–1970 on now as part of the Progress festival at The Theatre Centre. Seika’s research explores blackness and dancing in Canada and the exhibition brings exposure to the largely undocumented dance history of Canada’s Black population before 1970.
For more exciting events happening at the AGO, visit AGO.ca/events.
