Kaija Pepper & Emma Metcalfe Hurst
Interview for Coming Out of Chaos: A Vancouver Dance Story

December 3, 2020

Kaija Pepper, Dance researcher and historian, author of The Man Next Door Dances: The Art of Peter Bingham (2007), co-editor of Renegade Bodies: Canadian Dance in the 1970s (2012), Editor of Dance International Magazine

Emma Metcalfe Hurst, Karen Jamieson Dance Archivist/Creative Director of Coming Out of Chaos

This oral history interview has been edited for length, clarity, and accuracy

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: How did you get involved in contemporary dance in Vancouver? Could you please share your dancing story.

Kaija Pepper: Well, I'm from Vancouver, and I started taking ballet lessons at the age of five, and then somewhere around my late teens I discovered modern dance with Linda Rubin at Synergy.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Very interesting. I didn't know you had a connection to Linda [Rubin]!

Kaija Pepper: Yeah, I had left ballet just because of the typical adolescent issues with ballet, which is unfortunate, and then discovered modern dance and it felt really freeing, and happy, and helpful.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Nice. So, were you taking classes with her [Linda Rubin] at Western from then?

Kaija Pepper: No, the classes weren't at the Western Front. She opened a studio on Granville St., Granville and Robson. Then she moved to that place on Main Street just north of the Western Front, which burned down, where I think Main Dance was as well.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah.

Kaija Pepper: It was just that freedom from the strict ballet technique, which I wasn't particularly suited for. I love ballet, and I love the technique for the right person, the right body, but Linda [Rubin]'s was more free self-expression. And then after that, I was always taking dance, all my life – even as an older adult.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, that's a staple part of your life.

Kaija Pepper: Yeah. I do Qigong now.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Where do you do that?

Kaija Pepper: Well, nowhere right now because of COVID-19 unfortunately. I try to do it at home, which I do find really hard. There is something invigorating about doing it in a shared space.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Could you talk about the moment when you realized that you like to write about dance?

Kaija Pepper: That is really a complicated moment and I've actually just written a memoir that's being published very shortly by Signature Editions in Winnipeg, so I've written a whole book about it! It's called Falling Into Flight: A Memoir of Life and Dance. It's hard for me now to go into the straightforward version, but the small version is that I have also always been interested in writing. I have just naturally been a writer and reader all my life, as well as a dancer. I sort of devoted myself to writing when I returned to Vancouver after a decade away. I was a single parent at that stage, with a toddler, and somehow the writing just sort of blossomed, and there were some wonderful mentors in Vancouver in terms of writing, specifically Lee Windreich, who nabbed me as a writer to do a quarterly report about Vancouver dance. I think that was just so important in that it meant that I was seeing a lot of dance so I had something to write about. It was sort of circumstance and again, the two lifelong streams of my life coming together.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: It seems like archives also play into your writing and your research as well.

Kaija Pepper: Well that reminds me about the other great opportunity that sort of got me launched shortly after working with Lee Windreich at that time. He was one of the editors at Dance International Magazine. I was in Toronto, and went to meet Lawrence and Miriam Adams at Dance Collection Danse, and we had a three or four hour conversation – I remember I was late for my visit to the Toronto Art Gallery. We just had a lot to talk about it seemed and then very shortly after that, Lawrence Adams phoned to ask me if I would take on a project that they had about publishing a book on early theatrical dance in Vancouver. The person that was supposed to write it had dropped out – I don’t know what happened, but I had to research and write it in something like nine months. So, of course I said yes, and that launched me into a desperate search about dance at the City Archives, and the Vancouver Public Library and their archives, and of course, I discovered that there was actually very little material available. Early record-keepers were much more keen to document every single school principal – all these pictures of men, principals at the different schools, and very few photos or biographies of the dancers that I was trying to discover. But it was a start. I don't know, I just loved doing it. I found it very exciting to be able to explore the history of the city that I grew up in, you know? It was my city and my history, so it was a wonderful project and opportunity.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That's so great to be able to work so closely with dance archives.

Kaija Pepper: Yeah, it’s just so great what our careers are built on, and what opportunities are being offered, what opportunities are being supported, what research is being supported. Dance Collection Danse in Toronto supported my Vancouver research, and that was really important because they went on to commission two other books, and I guess they were greatly funded by the Canada Council, as well as by Ontario funders because they were funding Dance Collection Danse. So, the funders that have mostly supported my writing are the Canada Council [for the Arts] and other non-BC funders.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: The series of books you’ve done with Dance Collection Danse are so great and informative about dance history. I've got them right here.

Kaija Pepper: Yeah, the fourth book is Renegade Bodies: Canadian Dance in the 1970s, and that was a wonderful opportunity to work with Allana Lindgren at University of Victoria. We had a great collaboration and I just had the most fun working with Allana [Lindgren], setting research in motion for many other people, our line-up of contributors.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, and that motion must’ve set off other other initiatives as well.

Kaija Pepper: It's always the way that it happens. We're always complaining that Canadian artists are less visible because so many funders are not willing to invest in that [historical research]. I mean it's tedious, all this historical research. It's really time-consuming, and you don't get fully funded for it because I guess it's not glamorous – although you would on the academic side. But the arts funders maybe don't recognize that as much. I've never made anywhere near a proper rate for any of the books that I've written, but there we go.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. But they are there, and they are being used.

Kaija Pepper: They are there, they're being used. Yeah.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what you think some of the main roles of dance writing are?

Kaija Pepper: Well, it's really changing right now. I think the role of dance writing is very broad, and is really, right now, in a very uncertain state – partly because of the demise of what is called “legacy media.” You know, the fact that people are not reading newspapers so much anymore. There are some online, like the Guardian from Britain is an invaluable source of good writing. I also understand why some of the lack of interest in legacy media is because of a perceived political bias, and that, especially right now, I think, is being exposed, so that's a whole big thing. I shouldn't go into that, but it makes it very hard for me to really understand right now, at this moment in time, what the role of dance writing is, what people want from dance writing, beyond promotion, because that is the frustrating side for me is that so much of what people want from writers is mere promotion. I don't really get that because if you're going to write promotion, well, then you should be well paid for it because you're not usually writing that out of a personal project, or passion, so to kind of co-opt dance writers into a promotional role is a bit strange – but that does seem to be mostly what people want. I do get that. I think there is a way to make that a balance. All [dance] writing, in some ways, is promotional because it's out there, it's writing about dance. Even if you're writing about something that you don't adore, you can try to write something vibrant and interesting about a show in a more realistic, and deep, and authentic way than if you were just deliberately writing hype. I don't know if that really answers it fully, but I think that in terms of criticism, the role of dance criticism is also really in flux right now, and yet there is some wonderful dance criticism being written. Whenever I feel discouraged about [the state of criticism], I read a writer who I really admire, who is still writing serious criticism, and then I feel validated again. I work with Sanjoy Roy, who writes for me in my role as editor at Dance International [Magazine] and he just writes the most wonderful pieces about London dance. He's so astute, and such a good stylist. Laura Capelle, who writes for a lot of newspapers around the world, she's based in Paris and has written for Dance International in the past, again, just a really smart woman who can write serious criticism in an intelligent way that I really think is important.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Do you think the platforms have also changed criticism?

Kaija Pepper: Well, yeah. Dance International [Magazine] is now online, and I've recently hired someone who's looking at doing the SEOs [Search Engine Optimization] for the site, and you just become really aware of how far you want to go with writing to satisfy the algorithms, and things that we’re expected to cater to in order to get eyes on your piece. To get a high readability score on your WordPress site, you need to have short sentences and short paragraphs. I'm just now thinking that through, like, I do want lots of eyes, of course, but how far do I want to go in order to tweak the writing to fit WordPress parameters? And Google’s! Yes, it really is kind of a conundrum.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. As you said, you want readers, you want people to participate and build discourse, but not at the expense of the content and quality of writing criticism.

Kaija Pepper: Exactly. You know, how short do the sentences have to be? You can't use a colon ‘cause that then extends the sentence, and yet, a well-placed dash can really extend a thought! Yes, it makes the sentence longer, but if it's a really good sentence, I just think it works. Don't hire me if you want to increase your readership numbers [laughs].

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: [laughs] Because you've mentioned it a couple of times now, how long have you been the editor at Dance International magazine?

Kaija Pepper: Since 2013.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: So, you've been at the helm of Dance International, and that's a really important platform for disseminating dance writing.

Kaija Pepper: You know, every platform is important now because there are so few left. I particularly enjoy working with the small group of writers that I have. Internationally, yes, but I also particularly value my local writers because they're the people I see in my community. I'm thrilled with the writers that I have here, and across Canada, and I really enjoy the dialogues with them; finding the right story, for the right person, at the right time. That's what an editor's job is – it's like curating, I suppose. It can be really fulfilling to find a story that will let the writer bring what they know, and what they are able to most authentically write about. It's good.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: How do you think your role as a dance historian has evolved over the years? You're talking about how editing a magazine has now become part of that role. Are there any other roles that you feel you've taken on?

Kaija Pepper: Well, I guess I don't consider myself a dance historian, because I've never officially trained in history, and it’s not my degree. I have a Master's and a BA, they're not in history. I don't think I've ever formally studied history. I'm one of those self-taught historians that really came into it – well actually, I've always read history, so I've always been interested in it, and dance history in particular, since a young age. I remember discovering books – mostly American because those are the books that are written and widely published – about Martha Graham, and Ruth St. Denis, and Ted Shawn. Those are the books I read as a young person in Vancouver because there weren't books about Canadian early dancers. Probably not even books available about Europeans, like Mary Wigman. Why do I know Martha Graham over Mary Wigman? Because that's what was out there. That's what I was reading. I became aware of that more and more as I got older, and with the CanLit movement... We should have had that in dance as well. That's why the work that you're doing, and that other Canadian organizations are doing, is so important because people [want to] know what is out there, and if it's not out there – no wonder we don't know Canadian history! No wonder we think we don't have a history, and why we're not honouring our history because we think it's not there. We get seduced by whatever is the “latest” because that is always very exciting. Young dancers and choreographers are always exciting. I guess I've become more aware of the bigger issues.

Through my work at Dance International, I was able to commission a few stories that meant the writers had to do more sustained research into Vancouver history. Rebecca Karpus wrote about Chinese dance in Vancouver, and came across a fellow called Paddy Wing who recently died, and had his obituary in the Globe and Mail. That was someone I didn't know about, and I was so excited that Rebecca found Paddy Wing – I think he was in his 90s, and it took a long time for her to get permission to interview him, and I kept saying, They better hurry up, because what happens is that you wait too long and then the person dies. I've had that happen. Luckily, she did get to meet him, and he was an early Chinese Canadian dancer in – gosh, you know, we're going back to the 1930s. So, that is now in the record for Vancouver dance [history] that wouldn't have been there because a lot of what he did was kind of show dancing, and he went into the States. It just kind of got lost and as far as I know, wasn't really written about in a serious dance context until Rebecca found him for her article for Dance International. We did get funding from the City of Vancouver for that.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh that’s great!

Kaija Pepper: Yeah. I was so glad they supported that Vancouver research, because if they don't, who will?

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. It seems like that’s another role that dance writing can have; filling in these historical gaps–

Kaija Pepper: –yeah!

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: It seems really important.

Kaija Pepper: It is important for writers to do that kind of story because it's through discovering new material, and through researching, that you understand, and learn the skills – even an article about somebody today, it needs research. Like, where are you finding the substance for what you write about? A lot of it is going to be in the past... I'm going to write about somebody who's 20 – they still didn't come from nowhere! Even if you won't use everything you discover, you need to have it just to give yourself context for what you're writing about. I look on it [historical research] now as a blessing; that I had those projects that really pushed me into looking at Vancouver dance from 1886, and then through the different stages of the different books, up until the ‘70s. I guess ‘80s and ‘90s as well. So, I look at it as gold – the gold is what I have learned about Vancouver dance over the past decades; the decades that formed me and you, because you're from Vancouver, and even if you are a newcomer to Vancouver, you're coming to this place. This place has a rich history that you should want to know about. You should honour the place where you're at. We are doing that more and more, and that immediately makes me think of First Nations [histories]. That is another gap we are writing more about. That's been hard to discover because of the whole [history and] politics around that. I recently wrote an obituary for Dance International on Margaret Harris. I actually didn't really know very much about her. I knew that Karen Jamieson had worked with her, and I know Margaret Harris' daughter, Margaret Grenier, the current Artistic Director of Dancers of Damelahamid. I feel so blessed that I was able to write this obituary, because not only was this woman [Margaret Harris] so important to establishing Dancers of Damelahamid, which today is a major company in North Vancouver and across Canada, but she’s also just a wonderful woman. I also felt very sad that I hadn't actually met her, that I was writing about her after she had passed on. So, that's why, again, you need these projects to write these stories, so that you find people while they're still alive. You'll always find them. There's always more people to be discovered.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: And the lineages of influence as well.

Kaija Pepper: It's fascinating. It just gives you a soil, and of course, the First Nations soil is so important. We were aware in the first book I did, we deliberately called it Theatrical Dance in Vancouver, 1880’s-1920’s, because we were unable in that short timeframe – and probably even unable in terms of the skills that we had when I wrote it, and how willing people were to engage – to do what came before “Vancouver.” We focused on what was there in “Vancouver.”

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, that's something that came up in my interview with Peter Dickinson as well; how we need to acknowledge that there is a gap in history that we, as producers, have also contributed to. When we talk about “contemporary dance,” that's usually in reference to a Western canon and Western understandings of “dance.”

Kaija Pepper: Yeah. That’s Vancouver, and then we have this other story [before the establishment of Vancouver] that is so interesting, and is finding its way forward, and we're learning how to get along with each other, I guess.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, exactly. I’m wondering if you have any insights into local dance-writing initiatives in Vancouver that you've seen, or are interested in? Even writing-based, dance projects?

Kaija Pepper: No, I don't really. I mean, as we know, the newspapers – the free and the paid ones, are not really actively involved these days, unfortunately. I know that's created a gap. I guess my involvement is very much working with people that want to work with me now because I'm not really going out there so much anymore. Through The Dance Centre, we put out some booklets – a series of three booklets [between 2011-2013] about different things to do with dance, and they were mostly Vancouver dance because everyone I worked with [was from Vancouver] – except we had two writers, Carolyn Deby, she's in London now, but she is a Vancouver person, and Paul-Andre Fortier, who toured here. For years I’ve been looking for and asking people to write. For The Dance Centre booklets, I remember working with different choreographers, and James Proudfoot is a lighting designer who contributed. We had an architect or two contributing. I commissioned them to write about Vancouver dance and that was really fun getting different perspectives. That was supported by The Dance Centre, so The Dance Centre has also been really important to work that I've been able to do. I also worked as the editor of Dance Central [The Dance Centre’s member newsletter] after Fran Brafman, and I did it for however long. I remember a column called The Personals, Fran had started it. That was the column I was really interested in; getting people to tell their story. I had really anyone that wanted to [contribute]. I was so grateful they wanted to contribute and write their story of their relationship to dance. The rest of it was all quite tedious; listings of what was going on, and who is doing what, but The Personals was super fun to work on, and challenging because I am an editor, and I like bringing my skills as an editor to everything I work on. It's a relationship [between writer and editor]. Not everybody understands that – if you're not a professional writer, why should you?

The Dance Centre sponsored at least half a dozen or more of my writing workshops over the years. Those were really wonderful because there we would be, sitting around this boardroom table, and talking about dance. It's like, what do you have to say about dance? You write it down, and then you talk about what you've written down. You think about it, and you think about it together. The writing really is the vehicle to think about dance. It would be the shared offering that different writers would bring each time. We had wonderful conversations, and I valued those so much. Because people had written about things and thought about them before we came to talk, they were invested in the conversation. I adore a conversation about dance anytime, but particularly when you're working with writers because they want to find ways into their writing. They understand that the way to get into their writing is to explore their thinking about it, and to explore the art form. Those were fantastic experiences. I'm always looking for writers who want to write! Right now, the outlet I have to offer them is Dance International online. I’m always looking for people – happy to hear from anyone that has a story they think will work for Dance International.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Amazing.

Kaija Pepper: Yeah, it's great developing relationships with different writers. It's hard right now too, though writing is always a precarious career. It's just very tricky finding people who really want to invest in writing about dance, and how I can support them, because, obviously, I'm not offering them very much except an occasional article.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. It's still a platform though, which is valuable.

Kaija Pepper: Absolutely. It's so valuable because you have to have something. You need a place for your writing.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That's really cool about the writing workshops too.

Kaija Pepper: Yeah, those are just just so much fun. I think the first one was connected to Dancing on the Edge [festival], and then we did the VIDF [Vancouver International Dance Festival], and PuSh Festival. Once The Dance Centre started doing Global Connections, that was easiest, because it was a Dance Centre initiative. Participants would be able to get reduced price tickets because, of course, everyone in the arts needs subsidies, because artists can never afford to pay the full amount of what something costs. I'm so grateful The Dance Centre was interested in doing that kind of work.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. Any opportunities where you can make space to encourage people to take time to write, and think about writing, especially in a group context, is always so valuable.

Kaija Pepper: Yeah. It was just really valuable and fulfilling.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: I hope you get to do that again in the future.

Kaija Pepper: Yeah. Well, I guess now [during COVID-19] is not the right time.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Or it's the perfect time to get a lot of writing done!

Kaija Pepper: Yes. It's just that thing of not being able to be in a group [because of health and safety restrictions]. Conversations on Zoom are not the same. I mean if we're desperate, if we knew the pandemic was going to go on for 10 years, but it won't.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: I agree. Well, things to look forward to in the post-COVID-19 vaccine era.

Kaija Pepper: Yeah. Maybe it'll be time soon to do another workshop. I guess we haven't done one for a while.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Where might one find those booklets published by The Dance Centre?

Kaija Pepper: Heather Bray [Director of Marketing at The Dance Centre] put them online.1 We had something from Karen Jamieson in the one titled Dance Aesthetics: Nine Views from Vancouver.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh great, thank you for letting me know. Okay, so we're going to move into the Coming Out of Chaos era now.

Kaija Pepper: Yeah, which I didn't see because I was in England at the time.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That's okay. For this second round of interviews, it's been nice to use the Coming Out of Chaos piece as a jumping off point to talk about other things as well.

Kaija Pepper: Well good for Karen Jamieson Dance for taking the bigger picture because many artists just want to really focus on their own work, and not have that broader groundwork.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Exactly. We wanted to cover those new bases, and get different perspectives.

Kaija Pepper: I wrote about Coming Out of Chaos quite a bit in the book on Peter Bingham [The Man Next Door Dances: The Art of Peter Bingham] because I came to the conclusion after talking to people that Coming Out of Chaos was a seminal piece that did bring these people together. It wasn't the beginning of EDAM, but it was just something that was there that brought these people together, and then some went into EDAM, and others, like Karen [Jamieson], formed their own companies. I can't remember the details now, but I did think it was a seminal piece for those reasons.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: You had a great line in here [in The Man Next Door Dances: The Art of Peter Bingham] that was about the Coming Out of Chaos piece. It was: "The dancers were not always at their most committed, they had their own aesthetic agendas and beliefs, which limited their ability to commit to another artist."

Kaija Pepper: That's funny because, obviously, I got some interesting stories from everyone involved. I worded it as diplomatically as I could, but basically, they wanted a job. Karen [Jamieson] needed dancers. They maybe weren't really suited to working together, and yet the piece came together into something that did cohere, but it must have been hard at times.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Coming Out of Chaos, very aptly named.

Kaija Pepper: Yeah, that's true. They were very different, individualistic artists, and none of them really wanted to be dancers in somebody else's work. I guess that's what the thing was at that time. It was a period when everybody was very much into expressing themselves so it kind of makes sense.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. Based on your personal experience and your research, I was wondering if you could talk about what the Vancouver dance scene was like in Vancouver around the ‘70s, ‘80s?

Kaija Pepper: In the ‘70s, I went to school in Montréal, but I was always coming back. There was Paula Ross and Anna Wyman, and Anna Wyman's dancers were known for their technique and polish. We all thought they were amazing and we were very proud. I say "we" meaning a generic kind of Vancouver audience. “We” were very proud. It's very interesting because I just recently wrote [Anna Wyman’s] obituary for the Globe and Mail, and I didn't really know until I wrote it that she had been involved in so many “firsts,” and that she had been so highly regarded in the East. And for some reason in Vancouver, in the ‘70s, and even now probably, the power is always in the East. If a Vancouver company is looked on as groundbreaking in the East, you know they were groundbreaking – especially in the ‘70s. That was interesting to see.

Personally, I was more drawn to Paula Ross, the artist, the company. I took a summer program at Paula [Ross]'s company that her nephew, Donald MacLeod, taught, and Paula taught it sometimes. It was a company of individuals, and Paula was known as the "poet of dance." It was more individual, and also highly respected, but maybe not as high profile – here it goes back to what we were talking about in terms of funders and platforms. One reason for the disparity between Anna Wyman’s company with all the razzle dazzle, and Paula Ross, this smaller, quieter presence, was simply funding. Anna Wyman, for whatever reasons, did receive a lot of Canada Council funding early on. I mean it did create a great rivalry between them, and it's just so unfortunate. The Canada Council would never operate like that nowadays, but they did back then. I think it's fair to say, I think everybody would acknowledge it now – even Anna [Wyman] if she was alive, and Paula [Ross]. They've come to terms with it. It must have been just as hard for Anna [Wyman] looking back to see this; how much money was poured into her company because it then turned on her as well, when the Canada Council didn't like what [she] was doing anymore, in the early ‘90s, all of a sudden, she had no more funding. The Canada Council cleaned up their act around that time. But you know, suddenly there was no more Anna Wyman Dance Theatre because her major funder suddenly pulls out their money, and so there's nothing, so the company folds. Canada Council was not giving time for recovery, for an artist to go through a fallow period – I'm going to sound like a nerd now, I have just been writing a review of a film on Marius Petipa, the French master of Russian ballet. What I've come to realize over his seventy-year career is that apparently he was a mediocre dancer, but then he found his way as a choreographer, and made some of ballet’s major works: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty. He had twenty years when he was generally not very successful, and made works that are not remembered today. People probably wanted to put him out to pasture, but it was after these twenty years of apparently making schlock – I have not seen these works – that he made Sleeping Beauty. So, you know, it's not like you can just create masterpieces every time. I don't know how I got into that, except for this thing about looking at Vancouver dance that you really see how you do need that historical context. At the time, people were so passionate, they were either for Anna [Wyman], or for Paula [Ross], and it was so political. I was young then and had no idea how important funders were to an artist's career.

So, my memory of the Vancouver scene was that there was Paula [Ross], and there was Anna [Wyman], and then there were these people doing contact improv at the Western Front. That was just so in tune with Vancouver. I think that's why EDAM did become such a presence because there was, at the foundation of it, and as is continuing today, contact improvisation that gives it this unique Vancouver flavor. Contact improv is very much about give and take, and reciprocity, and not about technical virtuosity – although there can certainly be some physical pyrotechnics. There was stuff happening, obviously, across Canada, and some of that was because of touring by members of EDAM, Peter Bingham and Lola Ryan, and others.

Vancouver was definitely at the forefront of that movement, which was looked down on at the time [within the professional world of dance]. It would have been hard to believe back then that a ballet dancer would value contact improv training, but they do now. But at the time, they were looked on as hippies with no technique. I think Vancouver can rightly be proud that there was interest and support for that art form early on. It just really fit the laidback Vancouver vibe that Vancouver was definitely known for in the ‘60s, and ‘70s, and into the ‘80s, and changed somewhere around Expo [‘86], probably.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. Expo ‘86 was a very transformative and significant historical event for Vancouver. You point out some interesting things about that time though; the arrival of Anna [Wyman] and Max [Wyman] from London, but also that this was a period of time where there was this division in dance itself – the old world ballet forms, and then contact enters the scene, which has an Eastern influence, and is more intuitive, and improvisational. When I interviewed Linda Rubin, she was talking about how Peter Bingham was really resistant to having any kind of formal, technical training, which is obviously derivative from ballet training, so it seems like there was this tension between forms, between influences, emerging.

Kaija Pepper: There was. It is too bad. I mean, we just so blithely refer to ballet as a Western and a European art form, and we're kind of dismissing it now in the current politics. And yet I think that for Vancouver, in terms of our local history of dance, the art form of ballet comes from Russia – which isn't really Europe, Russia is kind of its own thing – and from Britain, and British roots are very much part of Vancouver. For our history in Vancouver, there has been ballet in Vancouver at least since Anna Pavlova first appeared here in 1910, and there have been Vancouver artists involved in ballet, and making it their own not long after. Kay Armstrong did ballets with local themes in the 1950s, Stanley Park Sketches (1956) and Pacific Rhapsody (1954), and she used local composers. So, yes, it is a European art form, I do understand its roots in Europe, but I also understand the roots in Vancouver because I come out of Vancouver, and there was ballet here then, so those are my roots. Kay Armstrong, a Vancouver woman, BC born, trained in BC, primarily had her career here, and died here. She's a Vancouver artist and ballet was her art form, and for good and ill, she made it her own, and that is my history now. The roots are all spread out, and they're not clear cut, and I think it's more complex than we sometimes credit it for in public discourse.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Mm hmm. One of the other things that Linda Rubin mentioned which was interesting and that I didn't know about was actually how Anna Wyman apparently bought Norbert Vesak’s dance studio business that Linda Rubin, and a handful of others were originally involved in, and then that transformed into the Anna Wyman Dance Company.

Kaija Pepper: Yeah, now I can't remember the details of that. I know I've got [information] about that somewhere because I've got a little history of Western Dance Theatre, but I don't recall – it's certainly what goes on! Ballet BC grew out of Maria Lewis’ Pacific Ballet Theatre, which grew out of Ballet Horizons, which started in god knows when. There is a long history to everything. Sometimes it's more a matter of people just taking on a society structure. I'm not sure in Anna Wyman's case because I can't see, off-hand, a direct aesthetic connection or influence [from Western Dance Theatre], and the way I understand it is that Anna [Wyman] came in more as a teacher. She had a Laban background, as well as a ballet background, which fit right in with Vancouver when she came here in 1967. She started teaching first, and then she started showing her [dance] work at the Vancouver Art Gallery. It was out of the Vancouver Art Gallery noon-hour shows that Anna Wyman's company grew. I think she used the studio where Norbert [Vesak] was – I can't recall its direct succession, or any other connection though. He [Norbert Vesak] left because of a whole complicated story.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That’s for another project! [laughs]

Kaija Pepper: Yeah. Actually, I wrote about that in the Renegade Bodies book, because The Ecstasy of Rita Joe (1967) was Norbert Vesak's choreography [of the play by George Ryga]. He made that [The Ecstasy of Rita Joe] for the RWB [Royal Winnipeg Ballet] after his own company had folded. There will be a little bit about Norbert Vesak, and the company in there.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Okay, cool. I will take note of that.

Kaija Pepper: I wrote about The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, which is about a First Nations woman living in the city. Allana [Lindgren] and I wanted a First Nations writer to write about it, but we couldn't find anyone. I wasn't going to contribute anything to the Renegade Bodies book, I was just going to be an editor, but we felt very strongly that we needed something to represent First Nations, and that ballet does tell a whole interesting historical story about attitudes towards First Nations people at the time. It was a really important ballet, and the anomaly of having a First Nations story told on pointe shoes....

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Very layered.

Kaija Pepper: Layered and a very positive story at the time.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. You talked about how Vancouver had a hippie, laid-back West Coast feel in the ‘60s. Were there any other like influences, like common themes or interests, that may have influenced the forms of dance that were happening? Or even important historical social movements or events?

Kaija Pepper: At that time, the Dance Department at SFU [Simon Fraser University] was starting as well and that was important. There were people working in the community that did come out of the SFU Dance Department. Mountain Dance Theatre came out of SFU, and they were very important at the time too. They didn't last long. There’s also Mauryne Allan, who was one of the founders, and won the first Clifford E. Lee choreographic award. That company [Mountain Dance Theatre] is under the radar now. Again, why? Because probably no one's written about them recently. One of the people involved in it [Mountain Dance Theatre] returned to the States. I think she was an American. Certainly through SFU, in the ‘60s and ‘70s, a lot of the professors were American, so they brought that American story to Vancouver. I don't think there was too much sustained support for the Vancouver history of dance coming from SFU back then. Peter Dickinson might be changing that now, through his writing and interests, but in the past, historically, there hasn't been because I guess the early professors were from America, they knew American history, they didn't know Canadian history. They didn't know Vancouver history, so that's too bad. I can tell you even in the ‘60s and ‘70s that our artists were worthy of being talked about. Vancouver has always been known as a hotbed of dancers. In the ‘40s and ‘50s, we were so well known because of all the excellent dancers that came out of here. Lee Windreich, who brought me on, as I said, had done research into the ‘20s and ‘30s period of dance in Vancouver. I remember when I first heard about it, I was so excited to realize that some of those Russian ballet dancers touring the world were from Vancouver, and they took Russian names. I don't know why, but I just felt so proud. I felt like this was my story because they were BC dancers who had these glamorous careers. Somehow, we always think that those stories are elsewhere, or we think that the latest arrival is the story. Those are part of the story, but our history going back is fascinating too. We won't ever really value that until we start promoting it the way the Americans do. At Dance International, I get so many review pitches from American publishing houses who have published histories about obscure American dancers. It's just out there. We don't do that here.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: It's interesting that you talk about that connection between SFU and the American influence based on the teachers who were teaching there. That also makes me think, from the visual art side, about the influence of draft dodgers coming over.

Kaija Pepper: Yes. Same thing. A great deal of it was draft dodgers and some husband and wives, because if one got a job, the other could more easily follow.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: I’m curious about how their politics also influenced their teaching.

Kaija Pepper: Influenced, yeah. You know, in some ways, that's all well and good, but it's also part of the Vancouver syndrome, of always thinking the story is elsewhere, and always being so interested and respectful of the stories from elsewhere, that we don't stand up for our own stories, and our own artists.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Right, as you mentioned before. So, we talked about Coming Out of Chaos. I would be curious to hear about your thoughts on preserving Vancouver's contemporary dance history, and what more you think needs to be done?

Kaija Pepper: Well, so much more. That's why it's great that Karen Jamieson Dance is doing this, and not just looking at it through her company, not just preserving her story, but using that to look at the larger context. Preserving your own story is important too, but it seems to me that by understanding and taking on a bigger chunk of it, that's really doing the whole community a service. I really do think that's valuable, because nobody else is really doing that, aside from Dance Collection Danse in Toronto. No artist is just an artist in their own context. Through Dance International, I’m always looking for stories that are about Vancouver, and have had two features supported by the City of Vancouver, where I could pay the writers more money in order to support tedious research and interviews where you research five people for one article, and you go to the archives once, at least.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. Documenting and writing about these histories is a long process, but worthwhile for posterity. Thank you for speaking with me, Kaija!