Seika Boye is an artist, writer, teacher and scholar who is devoted to the history of dance and movement.
As a dance artist, she has performed and presented her choreography across the country with the nation’s top dance companies and worked alongside some of Canada’s most respected artists.
The assistant professor, teaching stream, in the Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies and director of the centre’s Institute for Dance Studies (IDS) spoke with Arts & Science News about the magic of dance, its ability to reveal and uncover elements of history and social justice and its potential to elevate interpersonal connection.
What do you find so magical about dance?
Trying to describe dancing as an experience is like trying to describe life. I stopped performing professionally over 15 years ago, I was 30. At first, I thought my dancing life was over. In truth, so many of my realizations about dance came after this.
Dancing shaped who I am as a person, not because of what I can — or could! — do physically, but because over a lifetime of training and moving together in space with other humans for hours and hours every day for decades, it taught me how to connect, to fall into rhythm with, and sense the world around me — to notice connection between human beings and other creatures — to be carried by that connection, to experience life through movement — in joy, sorrow, protest, gratitude and love.
Read the full article on the Faculty of Arts & Science website.