The Bentway has teamed up with Toronto Dance Theatre on our 2023 Artist Residency, with a focus on dance in public space. We welcome our 2023 resident artists: Jessie Jakumeit, Charlotte Carbone, and Saysah.
There is an urgent need to adopt a broader ecological view of our cities and engage communities in sustainable stewardship of our shared spaces. Expanded ecological worldviews can lead to newfound knowledge of place – an embodied interconnectedness – long understood by Indigenous communities who have adapted to changing conditions over thousands of years. Using our public spaces, public art and public programming as a vessel of change, we are able to embed urban resilience into the complex forms and cultures of the city.
The Bentway Artist Residency: Dance in Public Space aims to:
- support dance, movement and embodied practices through independent site research in order to investigate our relationships to public space and spark new connections and understandings;
- embed professional development and learning opportunities in partnership with local organizations for residents to further cultivate their practice in the public realm;
- expand audiences through inclusive and thoughtful community dialogue, public presentation, and participation in the resident’s research and experimentation.
Read more about our 2023 artist residents:
Jessie Jakumeit (she/her): Jessie is an award winning Visual Artist and Educator from Vancouver with German, Icelandic, Tsimshian and Gitxsan ancestry. She loves guiding her students through a creative process filled with experimentation and play. Her project will explore the question of how we can dance and move with our four-legged relatives, dogs, to build good relationships.
Charlotte Carbone (they/she): Char is a designer and dancer. They enjoy creating interdisciplinary projects that combine street dance, fashion, and abstract storytelling. Char is dedicated to creating work and sharing knowledge that honours the lived experiences of marginalized people, drawing from their own experiences as a queer diasporic Asian adoptee.
Saysah Hassen (they/them): Saysah is a mover and maker whose practice is ever-evolving, community-oriented, and rooted in the Black Radical Tradition and an Afro-presentist lens. They find the intersections between Black liberation, Indigenous sovereignty, queer liberation and belonging. They use multi-sensorial mediums as a way to tell stories that centre 2SQTBIPOC experiences and resistance.