Karen Kaeja
Karen Kaeja is an award winning performer, choreographer, educator, community builder and project instigator. She thrives on developing performance platforms provoking collaborative relationships between dancers, everyday people and the body. Commissions and residencies take her around the world from NFLD to Japan. She is Co-Artistic director of Kaeja d’Dance with Allen Kaeja and of Cloud 9 with Claudia Moore.
Photo of Karen Kaeja by Sean Howard
The Muriel Sherrin Award is presented to a creator or artist who has made a contribution to the cultural life in Toronto. This year, it’s being presented in the field of dance. Why is having a vibrant cultural life important to a healthy city?
Culture speaks volumes. It is the heartbeat of a city because it spreads its wings so far into so many relatable accents of life. It is a visceral pulse that excels our relationship to the senses. It reaches the hearts, minds and souls of people. It is an expression of the hidden treasures within, which we don't always talk about. Toronto is known for its multiplicity of cultures and I feel the landscape of artistic voices and dance practices here are what makes Toronto rich!
You began your career in 1982 as a dance therapist. You choreography has been described as emotionally engaging, interior and psychological. What are the healing properties of dance, both for the dancer and the audience?
I come to a work from my interior world in direct relationship to life’s imperfections and awkwardnesses. I suppose this would make my work psychologically driven. So that means that I harvest my experience and observations and work intuitively to magnify or reduce them. I think the healing properties of dance in general triggers new perspectives along with a refreshed sense of living and belonging, visceral awakenings and emotional journeys, both as a dance artist, community guest dancer and an audience member.
You founded Kaeja d’Dance in 1990 with your husband Allen Kaeja. Since then, the company has accomplished a lot, including your creation of Porch View Dances, a neighbourhood staple that is now entering its 6th year. What does the future hold for Kaeja d’Dance?
Allen and I are doers. We always have at least 10 projects overlapping from research to creation to commissions to to community engagement to teaching to collaborations to touring to lecturing to filmmaking to mentoring. Much of my work over the past decade has largely included the provocative collaborative relationship between dancers, everyday people and the body. My research over the next two years integrates professional dance artists and community guest movers for a full on performance. I am very excited about this work that will have close to 50 people involved. I love to create platforms to highlight dancers, choreographers and community integration - this we will for sure continue. Together Allen and I have a project called X-TOD. It hasn't been announced yet but it marries film and live performance as 2 separate but related developments where the improvised film component comes first and the live aspect happens several months later, inspired by the film. We have 22 of Toronto's Extraordinary Dance Artists of many practices and generations who will dance, exchange their dances and cross-pollinate to perform. This summer we are doing 3 Porch View Dances in Ontario, many Flock Landings and a Downtown Dances in Moncton (with the Atlantic Ballet Theatre Canada) which integrates 80 non-dancer business people dancing (last year the Mayor and city council joined in)! What does the future hold? More incubating, dancing, dance making and making mistakes, that always inspire new things to be made!
How has your work/choreography evolved over the years?
I started dancing late - at 18. There was a lot of learning to do. I remember feeling like a doe just learning to get up from its first fall. I think this is what kick started my focus on precarious imbalances where destabilization, awkward interfaces and the effort to attain, are seen for their humbling beauty. I believe my creative process has always followed my fascination. I used to tightly choreograph every nuance and now I have propelled myself to really harness the dancers and trust them to be alive in the moment where their choices that are made in the performance tighten the loose threads by their interpretation. I used to plan more and now I come in with a concept that has been mulling around for years and combine it with seeing what appears in front of me to harness even the tiniest bit of behaviour or offering that the dancers are exhibiting. When one of my dancers does something off-ish, they always laugh and say "be careful what you do because Karen will use it!" That is how I get inspired. I love making something out of nothing and embellishing what could be missed or considered irrelevant. I have and always loved the duet form which I would call my home base, coming from so many years exploring and practicing partnering. I am fascinated by Touch and continue to delve into it on many levels in my current creative and academic research.
In addition to Kaeja d’Dance, you also founded Cloud 9 with dance artists Sylvie Bouchard and Claudia Moore, which produces work for seasoned dance artists. How does your approach to dance differ with Cloud 9?
Cloud 9 is a project dear to my heart. A lot of love goes into it by all artists involved. I am an artistic vessel for Cloud 9. We commission outstanding choreographers to create a work for dancers over 45. We bring together celebrated dance artists from across the country to be in process and performance of the works. I have to admit I truly love to be in a room of artists my age and older.
You were recently touring in Japan. What work were you presenting?
Allen and I taught many classes of partnering, Kaeja Elevations and Improvisation for brilliant and very focused students. We also improvised a duet performance. I gave several lectures/slide shows about my life as a Canadian Dance Artist which was a revealing journey to put together!
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
I feel blessed to do what I do, to be supported by so many and I feel a huge passion to share it in the ways that I do.
I am rehearsing non-stop towards our show May 9-20, 2017 at the Theatre Centre. The Kaeja show (choreography each by me and by Allen) runs in tandem with Cloud 9 (choreographers DA Hoskins and Lina Cruz). I am dancing in both Cloud 9 works and Allen's new work and I am bringing my Crave duet to the stage with a live string quartet. Can't wait!
Learn more: www.kaeja.org