These classes come from our mutual experiences as support workers in various capacities, and as dancers working and training in professional “contemporary” dance. Our desire to allow these experiences to inform each other led us to create these classes as a way to learn and share tools alongside other workers.
Rianne:
Rianne Svelnis is a queer dance artist and a settler of European descent born and living on stolen + occupied Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil- Waututh), and xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) territories.
Before starting their studies in dance, Rianne worked at the WISH Drop-In Centre and Lookout Emergency Aid Society in the Downtown Eastside. She has continued her frontline work through the pandemic mainly in tent city support work, resource re-distribution and harm reduction. Through this work and under the mentorship of Elder Veronica, Chrissy Brett, and Fiona York, Rianne and Charlie Hannah co-founded the Distro Disco Mobile Free Store.
Rianne has led inclusive, accessible community dance classes through All Bodies Dance for the last 8 years, and is currently co-facilitator with Lance Lim and Kevin Li of the community classes at the Carnegie Community Centre. Rianne is also the new workshop facilitator of The Carnegie Dance Troupe (Karen Jamieson Dance).
Alexa (Solveig):
Alexa is a first generation settler of Finnish and British Isles descent living as an uninvited guest on the illegally occupied, unceded Coast Salish territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ peoples.
From 2016-2021 Alexa supported survivors of sexual violence through WAVAW’s crisis line, hospital accompaniment program and two-spirit, trans and gender diverse support groups.
Alexa’s dance practice is a devotion to gathering, privileging sensing over thinking, and imperfect collaboration with the the numinous.
As a teacher/facilitator, Alexa is committed to anti-oppressive frameworks, unlearning unhealthy relationships to obedience and power, and creating spaces where agency, rigorous play, and selfhood can flourish.
I am a student of justice-orientated embodied facilitation with teachers including Lee Su-Feh and Carmen Spagnola.
Why Dance?
We both came to dance through our training in western contemporary dance technique, a form which heavily relies on decontextualizing cultural and folk practices and siloing them within supposedly “apolitical” white dominant, professionalized spaces.
While acknoweldging this, we work to centre the inherent creativity, explicit politicality, and useful strategies we have found in our dance training, as well as share dance facilitation methods we have learned from more inclusive and accessible dance communities.
For us these include:
-practicing moving our attention from our own body’s experience to another person’s experience to a collective experience
-practicing feeling a sensation in our bodies while sensing and orienting to the world around us (seeing, hearing, any senses that are accessible etc)
-practicing making choices with our attention, increasing our options in a given moment
-practicing making different and creative shapes with our bodies and in relation to one another
-sensing, following and choosing impulses
-the physiological benefits of blood flow, endorphins, sweating, thrill, play, laughter
-connecting with one another through shared rhythm, movement
-play as a practice of creativity recovery