Terry Hunter & Emma Metcalfe Hurst
Interview for Coming Out of Chaos: A Vancouver Dance Story

December 4, 2020

To view more archival materials, see Terry Hunter & Savannah Walling, Terminal City Dance Collection

Terry Hunter, Executive Director of Vancouver Moving Theatre, Artistic Producer of the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival, founding member of Terminal City Dance Research

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: What is your background entering into contemporary dance? Could you please share your dancing story.

Terry Hunter: I think my background is maybe a little unusual but it might have been very common for the 1970s because when I got into modern dance, I did not have any modern dance training before that. I had no dance training, but I was a lover of dance. I really enjoyed dancing at the pub, and in social situations, and I was doing it a lot [laughs]. I was at Simon Fraser University, starting in 1969, and I was in Geography and Political Science, but I used to drop by the theatre, and I would see these dance classes and workshops going on in the theatre that I was really fascinated by. I also was – as I mentioned – dancing a lot, myself, in social situations in the pub, and I found it very enjoyable and very creative. And so I remember actually walking into the theatre, and I think it was a Phyllis Lamhut Summer Intensive Workshop and Savannah Walling was one of the participants and Karen Jamieson was another participant. I remember being fascinated by what the people were doing because I remember thinking: Wow, people actually make a living doing this, something that I love doing in the pub, people are actually making a living doing this and studying – not only studying it, but creating actual choreography, and then making a living doing it! And that really fascinated me because I was not aware of modern dance at all, before that. It was not in my radar. I knew of ballet of course, but I had very limited knowledge of ballet and my understanding of ballet was that ballet dancers just could dance that way. They were born coming up and able to extend legs up and do pirouettes, you know. I did not understand the training or any of the background that it took to become a ballet dancer. So, my knowledge of dance and modern dance and ballet was very, very, very limited. So, seeing that for the first time at SFU was really fascinating, very inspiring.

I actually got into the theatre at Simon Fraser because I was looking for a job one day and I walked by the theatre and there was a sign outside that said "Audition at Two O'Clock." And I thought, Hmm, I've always wanted to act and really admired people that had the courage to do that. So, I went to the SFU employment office, I applied for a job, I think I got a dishwashing job [laughs], working in the cafeteria as a dishwasher, and then I came back at two o'clock and I got an audition and I got a part in the play! My call was the following week, and I showed up at the first rehearsal, actually it might have been the second rehearsal, and I said to the actor beside me, "When do we get paid?"

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: The lifelong question isn't it! [laughs]

Terry Hunter: If he knew what I'm doing now, he'd just laugh. He said, "Man, you don't get paid for this, this is a workshop." "Oh really? I thought this was a paid job." So, welcome to the arts [laughs]. But I was having a great time, I actually remember saying, "Well, I'm having a great time and I'm staying." I really did think it was a paid job [laughs]. And from there, because I got to work in the theatre, in that show, I started working as a technician. I was available to actually get paid as a technician in the theatre. So, I started doing that, hanging around the theatre more, getting to see more and more of the people, getting to know people. And then the Simon Fraser Mime Troupe, at that time, they had an OFY grant, Opportunities For Youth grant. And this was money that the federal government under the Trudeau government, at that time, was giving to young people to do all kinds of things in the community. It was amazing funding. As a young person, you could apply for a project, or a program, and so Simon Fraser University Mime Troupe got some funding to do theatre mime shows in the park in Burnaby. I got a part in the show, and Wendy Gorling was a member of the troupe – she teaches at Langara [College] at Studio 58. She had a falling out with the other leaders in the group and she left the company and that's when Savannah [Walling] came in, so Savannah [Walling] replaced Wendy. I had known Savannah from a distance because I'd seen her performing on the stage and was quite – I have to say infatuated by her [laughs], from a distance, so I was pretty thrilled when I found out that she was joining the company. At that time, she was known as Elaine Walling and it was only later that – a couple years later, that she changed her name to Savannah Walling. So, that's where I met Savannah Walling, and then it was there that Savannah Walling was in the dance program at Simon Fraser University along with Karen Jamieson, and others, and she was choreographing and she asked me to be in one of her pieces, and I said yes.

At that time, I also started taking classes at the Simon Fraser Dance program, headed up by Iris Garland. I think Karen Jamieson, shortly after that, came back from New York, a year or two later, so I was studying with Karen Jamieson and studying with Savannah Walling. So that's how I got into it! It was actually kind of by accident, or just a kind of evolving. This door opens, then oh, this is interesting! Another step, oh, so here I am now. I was heavily involved in the dance program at Simon Fraser University, both as a student – and this was a time before it was an accredited program. They were what was called "workshops," and they were later in the day, four o'clock, five o'clock. They were not credited classes, that happened a little bit later. It was a very, very active and thrilling place to be. Very much driven, and influenced by the Alwin Nikolais, Murray Louis School from New York, which was based a lot on composition, and people creating their own work, and choreographing. It was a very accessible form for people who – like myself, and Karen Jamieson, and Savannah Walling – did not have training as children to be able to enter the form, and to quite quickly be able to be dancing and creating. So, that form was very accessible, and it was also very highly taught. It was very...I don't want to say strict, but it was a form that had very high standards to it. It wasn't based on a technique that you had to do physical training for for 15 or 20 years to be able to do – like ballet, right? You could start it right away – you might not be great at it, but you could start it. So, Simon Fraser University was a very important place for me, and others like Karen Jamieson, and Savannah Walling, both because it had the dance there, but also because of the kind of dance that they were training. And also its connection to professional artists, like Nikolais and Louis from New York, and a lot of people were traveling from Vancouver, from Simon Fraser University to go back to New York to study at the schools there. Not just at the Nikolais and Louis studio, but also at the other studios. People were studying at the Martha Graham Company with Martha Graham, they were studying at the Cunningham Studio. There were some ballet dancers, some really highly respected ballet teachers that Savannah Walling and Karen Jamieson also studied with. I'm getting down into the weeds a bit here but I just wanted to recognize the importance of Simon Fraser University, and Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis, and the particular form of dance that they were doing, which was very accessible for someone like me, who didn't have any previous dance training.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, that low barrier entry point seems like a really important thing about SFU. I didn't know you had a connection to SFU, so that's great. The significance of that program at that point, and the influences that were coming in, and the guest artists who were doing those workshops has been a pretty common thread through a lot of the interviews.

Terry Hunter: Yeah. I also wanted to mention one thing, and it's just a bit in passing, but it is important in the context of things. This is the time in the Vietnam War and people were really looking for something to do that was creative, and to have a voice. You have to realize that at that time, it was during the war. And so, for me – I'll talk personally – the notion that you as an individual could have a voice through choreography, to make a statement, or to say something about the world in this time of major conflict, was really important. We were in a time of war and there were a lot of Americans up here at Simon Fraser University. Iris Garland is an American, she came from Portland, I think, or somewhere in the States. The American influence on Simon Fraser University was huge.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, that's a really good point. That came up a little bit when I was interviewing Susan Berganzi, because she's also American, from New York City, but in terms of thinking about the larger socio-political events that were happening around that time, and their influences, it’s really important to consider how that is affecting what is being produced. I know from a visual arts point of view, the American influence was very present in Vancouver. I've heard this before, specifically from Carole Itter who has noted the significance of the Draft Dodger mentality and philosophy, and how that impacted the arts during that period of time and I think you just re-articulated that perfectly in the dance context.

Terry Hunter: Yeah. It was really important.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. So, the next question is where you were drawing your personal influences from? I know you're also a musician, is that something that also influenced your dance work at the time?

Terry Hunter: Absolutely. So, I was at Simon Fraser and I was with the dance workshop program, but I also started to be a dance accompanist, a percussionist for the dance classes. Thanks to Iris Garland for opening that door for me! And that was also very, very important too, because that really led to some very significant work that I did at that time that was bringing together music and movement at the same time. Before that point, I was sitting on the floor in a dance class, and I became very interested in the notion of being able to do both at the same time. I had been struck by a Japanese taiko group called Za Ondekoza. I think it was 1978 when they came to Vancouver for the Powell Street Festival, who brought in musicians and amazing groups. So, I saw Za Ondekoza there and it was a movement, a folk tradition based on percussion – moving and percussion at the same time. Now [2021], there's a lot of taiko drummers, taiko groups, in the city of Vancouver. Za Ondekoza really inspired me, and I started to explore that whole world, which really had a huge influence on me. So, combining movement and percussion led me to create percussion-based characters like Drum Mother (1982), and another character called Creature (1981). Drum Mother (1982) led me to going outdoors so I became very inspired – this is when we were in Terminal City Dance – by the cultural traditions that were happening outside our door in Chinatown, on Pender street, and in the neighborhood where the line dancers are coming out, and the dragons are coming out, and there was hundreds and hundreds of people out there, and there were these mythical characters that were hundreds and hundreds of years old. I became really fascinated by cultural traditions that were embedded in the community and had been there for a millennia... a long time. At that time, we were doing a lot of work within the studio [as Terminal City Dance] and a lot of the work that we were doing was performing for other dance artists. Our audiences were very insular and small – it was a hot house, and it was very creative, but we were essentially performing primarily for other artists. I became very interested in the idea of taking art out into the community, so Drum Mother (1982) became a vehicle to do that, and Drum Mother (1982) actually appeared for the first time in the Chinese New Year's parade in 1982. Ahmed Hassan played the character.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh yeah?

Terry Hunter: It [Drum Mother] was an unmasked character, but with this skirt and the drums in it, and we realized from there that it didn't quite work. We needed to cover the face up [laughs], because it didn't look mythical enough. It just looked strange.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: [laughs]

Terry Hunter: So, that character was developed. Drum Mother (1982) which then led to the creation of other characters (1983), which then led to appearances at the Children's Festival, and traveling across Canada to other festivals, and going international, and really doing work outdoors. That whole explosion of all that work, within the container of Terminal City Dance, grew out of that hothouse, but the hothouse became too small to contain all the visions and all the directions that the creative personnel within the organization were coming up with, right? We were moving in different directions. That was one of the tensions that arose because of the various influences, and the various threads that people were following. One of the images that I really like that Karen Jamieson always used was "dig, dig, dig, dig, dig" [makes digging gestures with hands].

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: [laughs]

Terry Hunter: "Digging, digging down," and she would do this gesture "digging, digging, digging." I always loved that because it really expressed very clearly Karen Jamieson's passionate drive to dig, and to learn, and to explore. So, we were all digging in different areas, and we were in this hothouse, and we were digging, and going in different directions. People were following their own "holes" that they were digging in the ground [laughs].

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: I was wondering about Terminal City... So, Terminal City Dance Research was yourself, Savannah Walling and Karen Jamieson, but was there also a time when Terminal City Dance had other members who were involved? Could you speak about that, the origin of the name, and then moving into the three of you working together?

Terry Hunter: Yeah, so Terminal City Dance arose from the work that Karen Jamieson, Savannah Walling, myself, and Karen's sister, Marion-Lea Dahl were doing. Hugh McPherson had also worked with us and another dancer by the name of Peggy Florin. I think for two years in a row, we [the aforementioned group] did a show every year at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre. In the second year [1976-77], we realized that this was going really well, and we liked what we're doing – we should actually form a company. [So we took the name Terminal City Dance, and established a society] We were looking for a name, and up to that point, we did not have a name. I don't remember how we billed ourselves, it might have been just by the title of the show [we called our first show Dance Is... (1976). Our second show was called Terminal City Dance in Performance (1977)]. I remember a very specific memory. We were batting around all kinds of different ideas [for names]: “it could be this name, or it could be that name, or what about this? What about that?” Nothing was sticking, and we didn't have consensus on the name. I remember driving down Terminal Avenue now that I think about it, along where the SkyTrain is now, and we were going up to Simon Fraser University. I was in the car, Karen Jamieson was in the car, Savannah Walling was in the car, and Marion-Lea Dahl was in the car, and we were going up to Simon Fraser to take a class and do something up there. We were throwing around different names, and probably being on Terminal Avenue triggered it – I hadn't made the connection, but I remember Marion-Lea Dahl saying: "What about Terminal City?" And we all went: "Yes! That's it!" We all agreed. It was like, Yes! Of course! That's it! Terminal City! I remember that moment very clearly, it's just like I'm sitting here with you today. So, we had a very wonderful moment. Marion-Lea Dahl mentioned that Terminal City was also the nick-name for Vancouver because it was the end of the end of the railway line, and there's also a Terminal City Club over on 16th and Arbutus that I was aware of, but I didn't know where the name came from. I didn't know the reason behind the name. There was also a Terminal City Club down in Hastings Street, I think that was a millionaire's club. You needed to be a millionaire to belong to it. We really like the mix, the richness of the metaphor. It wasn't just because it was Vancouver, right? [laughs] There was tons of meaning in there that we also really were intrigued by. So, that's where the name came from. I should mention too, a couple of other people that we had worked with in those two years before we became mostly dance, which was Menlo MacFarlane, who is John MacFarlane's brother, and Michael Sawyer, who was a close friend of Menlo’s. It was in the second year that they worked with us on developing work. So, that's how Terminal City Dance was born. By 1976, we had a studio on Raymur Avenue, just across from the BC Sugar Refinery. We got it from Randy Raine-Reusch, who no longer lives in the city, but he was a very leading figure in the world of World Music. Through my connection with music and playing music, he invited me down to the studio one time and I got to know him there. It was then that I found out that his studio was coming up, so that's when we got the studio. I think it was in the second year, when we became Terminal City Dance, that we worked at that studio. It's fun to note also that in our first year, we worked in Karen's living room. We pushed back all the furniture, and we worked in the park at UBC. We found a park in the woods, and we worked in the park, and we also snuck into a studio in the annex at UBC [laughs]. We found out when it was empty, and there was no one around. We actually worked there on a regular basis just by walking into the building, and going up to the studio. We did that for quite a number of months. So, anyways, little side stories and anecdotes.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Very resourceful! Thank you for sharing those stories, they're great. What wonderful memories.

Terry Hunter: Yeah. I remember – another side note – UBC went on strike, the staff went on a strike. Even though we were sneaking into the studio building, Karen Jamieson refused to cross the picket line [laughs].

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Nice. Wow! Go Karen! That's so good.

Terry Hunter: And then of course, she convinced the rest of us not to do it too, but that was really intriguing to me. We were sneaking into the building, but because there's a picket line up we won't go and we won't cross the picket line! [laughs]

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That's a brilliant memory as well! [laughs] It just really goes to show the personalities that you work with, and the inherent values tied to creative practices.

Terry Hunter: Yeah, I think that first year for us, pushing back the furniture and working in the park and sneaking into a building, was definitely part of the creative ethos. [laughs]

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: The resourcefulness.

Terry Hunter: It's gonna happen. This work will happen. We will realize it.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: In whatever way that we can. Would you say that that ethos was present for many different groups at that time, or more uniquely to Terminal City Dance?

Terry Hunter: I can't speak to the others, but certainly it was very unique to us. Karen Jamieson, Savannah Walling, and myself, and the others, we did not pay ourselves to do this. We didn't have any money. We paid to do the work, we had to put out, out of our own pocket book. The Cultch would pay for the posters. Whatever expenses that we had, it came out of our own pocket.

Another interesting anecdote that I remember very clearly was, again, driving in a car, going down Broadway and Karen Jamieson's former husband, David Rimmer, was driving, and we were talking about artists, and being paid, or not being paid. And then the question came up: what is the definition of an artist? And David Rimmer said: "an artist is someone who pays to do their own work." And I was like, that's really interesting that a real artist is someone who will do their own work, and will put their money out of their own pocket to realize what it is they're doing. They're not looking for a job, and will only do this if someone else is paying you to do it. I was a bit shocked by what he said, but there was also so much truth behind what he was saying. So, that ethos was: this is work and this is serious work, and while we're not getting paid to do this work, it is work. One of the ways that we defined that work was by setting a schedule, by setting a time when we're going to go in the studio. We're gonna be in the studio at nine o'clock, and we're all going to meet here at nine o'clock, and this is our schedule for the Fall, or this is the schedule for the project. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday or, every day of the week from 9 to 12, or whatever it was. We set a schedule that we were gonna work. Even though we weren't paying ourselves, it was work, and it was treated like work, and it was treated seriously. If you didn't show up at work [laughs], I mean we always showed up. It was serious business and it was approached in the way that we have a job to do, and we have a responsibility to carry out. That was very much an ethos.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. And then there's the Canada Council, or these government funding bodies that start to show up at that time which must have had an impact on the work that you were doing – or compensating that work?

Terry Hunter: They were there. I think Karen Jamieson probably got her own individual grant to go to study in New York. Savannah may have gotten one too. I didn't receive one till a number of years later. But in the early days, we did not have any funding from the Canada Council, nor from the province. I think only when we established our own society that we were able to apply and get money from both the province and the feds, the Canada Council. What's really interesting about that is that the money that we received, I don't know that we actually gave any of it to ourselves in the beginning. We certainly used it to hire our first manager in 1979. We may have put some of it into the studio – I don't remember the studio costs. Whether we actually gave ourselves any money? I don't recall that. Maybe just a small amount – certainly not enough to live on, but we were all working other jobs. I was working as a dance accompanist. Karen Jamieson and Savannah Walling were still teaching at Simon Fraser University. The other big income area for people was modeling. People were doing a lot of modeling. That was a source of income for people. That was an alternative to waitressing. So, even in those first couple of years that we did get funding from the Canada Council, I believe that we used that money to hire people, to actually do the management side of the equation, and to do the grant writing, and to help us get further money. That was a strategy that worked for us, and it's still a strategy that Savannah and I use today. We pay ourselves last. We pay everyone else first, to make sure that the organization is solid and strong, and we pay ourselves last. [That value came from those days in the ‘70s when we received Canada Council support and used it to primarily hire staff. The dedication was to the art, moving the practice forward, realizing the production, paying others that support you the fees they need. If we paid ourselves first we wouldn't have money to contract and pay the people we needed to hire to realize the work. And we need to pay the people we hire proper fees. With the nature of the funding, you are judged and awarded funding in large part on the success of your previous year’s work. Have a good show then hopefully receive more funding the following year.] This strategy worked for us, as in the end we were able to grow our company over time. And we were always able to pay ourselves enough that we could get by from year to year.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Interesting. When did Terminal City Dance become a society? And was that also the shift to Terminal City Dance becoming you, Savannah Walling, and Karen Jamieson?

Terry Hunter: Yeah, it was the three of us. I don't know why Marion-Lea Dahl wasn't involved in the actual establishment of the society, but she was the one that came up with the name.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: And then at that point, you didn't have any of these other collaborators that you worked with, other than the three of you?

Terry Hunter: Well, the three of us were the key artistic drivers of the organization, but we had a lot of collaborators that we were working with. One of the features that was very characteristic of Terminal City Dance was that we were very interdisciplinary. I mean, it was centered on dance as the primary piece or movement, but all these other elements of mime and clowning and mask-work and music, and art forms from around the world – not just Western – we were very influenced by and because of the way that we worked collaboratively, creating pieces together, these elements worked their way into the collective pieces that we created. Terminal City Dance was set up as a vehicle for Savannah Walling, Karen Jamieson, and myself to do our choreography, and to create our work as individuals, but it was also set up to create collaborative productions together. One of the very strong characteristics of Terminal City Dance is we worked with a lot of composers. That was a very strong feature of our organization and the work that we did. Henry Kucharzyk was one, Michael J. Baker was another. We also took percussion classes. Sal Ferraras was one of our teachers, and we had singing classes. All kinds of different stuff that we were studying. We had a lot of collaborators, and then there were other people who came in and joined us. Barbara Stowe worked with us for a while, for a year or two. She was a dancer that came through ballet, and became interested in modern dance. Ahmed Hassan joined the company. He came in as a musician. Tedd Robinson was working with us for a month or two. Cheryl Prophet also worked with us for one season. She went on to become a teacher, a professor or senior teacher, at Simon Fraser University. There was a lot of collaboration not only between the three of us, in terms of what we were studying together and what we were creating together, but also a lot of collaboration with a lot of other artists who came into the studio. I was thinking about the importance of that studio as a facility. That, like Simon Fraser, being a platform where the dance could happen, us having a studio became a platform where we could do our own work, but also all these other collaborations could happen, and all these other dancers were coming into our studio and doing performances within our studio. We also set up an exchange series where different artists were coming in, and we were mixing up people. I did some shows where I had Taiko drummers and African drummers, and I was doing my own drum-dance work. Savannah Walling was doing pieces that were very theatrical, movement-based and she had different artists that were coming in. Different people were invited to put together different shows. So, the facility itself, the studio itself, became a really important place that could hold the creative process and the place for people to be able to collaborate, and share their work with others.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Great, yeah, I can see how valuable that must have been for you all and also looking back at it now, which I think kind of speaks to my next question of what impact do you think Terminal City Dance had? My question specifically asks about its influence on contemporary dance, but given what you've just told me, it sounds like its impact potentially transcends beyond dance into these other interdisciplinary forms and expressions.

Terry Hunter: It certainly did. I can talk very specifically in terms of my own experience and the things that I see. What impact it had on others like Jennifer Mascall, who was involved there, but, you know, it was more like a satellite to her. She would have to speak to that personal impact, but I do know that the Terminal City Dance space itself really became a creative hotbed for not only our organization, but other artists in the city, and other dance artists in the city who were working outside the studio. There was a draw, a pull, to come to the Terminal City Dance studio and to do work there, and to teach. People were also bringing a lot. I mean Peter Bingham was teaching there, Lola Ryan was teaching there. Ahmed Hassan was doing stuff. There was a lot of teaching going on in that studio. It was very, very, active. I can draw specific lines. Karen Jamieson’s Coming Out of Chaos, bringing in Lola Ryan, Peter Bingham, Lola MacLaughlin, Ahmed Hassan, Savannah Walling, Barbara Bourget. My understanding is that that led to the establishment of EDAM. It's interesting to note that EDAM stands for Experimental Dance And Music. There was a lot of that exploration of dance and music at that time. Out of EDAM came the work that Peter Bingham was doing, and he still is, at the Western Front. Lola MacLaughlin started her own dance company out of that. Jay Hirabayashi and Barbara Bourget went on to start their own dance company called Kokoro, which then led to the establishment of the Vancouver International Dance Festival. And so that was a very particular thing that emerged out of Terminal City Dance and you can draw the line and see how there's very key organizations that came out of that time period and still exist today. Certainly Terminal City Dance had a huge influence. On our end, I mean myself and Savannah Walling, out of Terminal City Dance came Special Delivery Dance / Music / Theatre – again, interesting to note the dance, music, theatre emphasis. We changed the name a number of years later to Vancouver Moving Theatre, which became rooted in the Downtown Eastside, which is where the Terminal City Dance studio was in the Downtown Eastside in the neighbourhood of Chinatown. Vancouver Moving Theatre started the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival in 2004, [in partnership with the Carnegie Community Centre.] Each year we produce at the Festival about one-hundred-and-sixty (160) events in twelve (12) days, featuring fourteen-thousand (1,400) artists through the neighbourhood. So, that's a huge thing that emerged because of the work that we were doing in the 1970s. Karen Jamieson Dance Company came out of Terminal City Dance, another really significant development. Terminal City Dance went on to evolve into The Vancouver Dance Centre. So, I don't have to say much more about that. I would say, yeah! It had a huge impact on the cultural life in the city of Vancouver!

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. It's amazing how interconnected it all is when you dig a little bit deeper. That’s something that we really hope to do with this project is to make all of those connections. Kaija Pepper has made some really good groundwork for making these connections, and then based on my interviews with Savannah Walling and Barb Clausen, it seems like the origin point that is Terminal City Dance Research has been under-historicized and acknowledged.

Terry Hunter: That's another important point that you're bringing out is the influence of the managers that we worked with, like Barbara Clausen, who had a huge impact on the arts in Vancouver. [After Savannah, Karen and I resigned from Terminal City Dance on Sept 1, 1983, Barbara Clausen became the Director of Terminal City Dance from Fall 1983 to May 1985. Barbara was elected by the TCD Board of Directors as Managing Director to continue to support the work of Terminal City Dance Research Centre as a force for new dance in Vancouver by means of the Performance Exchange Series, the IndepenDance Program and the creation of a centre for dance information and exchange in Vancouver. With Barbara’s departure in 1985 to work at the Dance Section of the Canada Council, a decision was made to make the emerging Dance Centre project the main focus of Terminal City Dance Society. Funding was received from the Feds for a one year project to undertake a feasibility study for a new dance centre. Joyce Ozier was hired as coordinator for this one year pilot project. Then in August 1986, the name of the society was changed from Terminal City Dance Society to VDC Dance Centre. Barbara returned to Vancouver in early 1987 to become the founding Executive Director of the Dance Centre. A number of years later Barbara then went on to establish New Works, which focused on guests from all kinds of cultural backgrounds.] I think that is something that's really important also to underline with Terminal City Dance is that at Terminal City Dance, we were very strongly influenced by European dance art forms, but we were also very strongly influenced also by cultural traditions from all around the world – both how that informed our work that we were creating ourselves, some to less or more degrees, and in the pieces that the artist that was producing. Certainly for me and for Savannah, we were very influenced by Japanese Taiko and Noh theatre and the mask work. I was very influenced by African dance and percussion elements. We were also programming things within our studio at that time that were non-Western forms: artists of African descent, artists of Japanese descent, but we were probably among the first ones in the city to do that. I remember putting on a show, Vancouver Sources: A Celebration of Traditional and Contemporary Dance and Music, highlighting the cultural diversity of Vancouver at The Cultch for Vancouver Dance Week, co-produced by Special Delivery Dance / Music / Theatre with the Vancouver Dance Centre. We invited multicultural artists from around the city. I remember being criticized at the time, because it wasn't pure dance, it wasn't “modern dance.” The Canada Council at that time was not funding anything other than modern dance and ballet. They did not recognize any of the art forms from other places around the world, so that was really groundbreaking in those days. I'm just trying to give some kind of contextual background in that particular time period, because Barbara Clausen was there. I remember another little anecdote, even before Terminal City Dance started. I remember going to a meeting in Gastown and it was dance artists from the city and Barbara Clausen was there. I knew Barbara Clausen from Simon Fraser University, she was in the [SFU] dance program, and I remember we were sitting around talking about what we needed in the dance community, and Barbara Clausen said – and I remember very clearly: "We need a dance organization. We need a dance organization that supports the dance community in the city of Vancouver." I think that time period had a huge impact on Barbara Clausen, and obviously, what she did with The Dance Centre, but also what she did in terms of the types of programming that she then started to do within the dance community when she established Dance Allsorts.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yes, yes. Babara [Clausen] mentioned that. We talked about Dance Allsorts.

Terry Hunter: That was really big in the city. I think it was once a month at the Roundhouse Community Centre. She would present a Japanese dance troupe, or Chinese dancers, or Brazilian dancers, dancers from all over the world that really reflected the culture and the art forms of the city. That was really influential in breaking down this very strict definition of what dance was, as being defined by the Dance Department at the Canada Council. And boy, is there ever a change now between the Canada Council now, and their attitude, and their values towards arts, than there was in the ‘70s. It's huge. If you weren't there, you probably don't really understand and appreciate it, but it’s really huge. I think the only company in Canada that got funding for jazz dance was probably in Montréal. Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal, or something like that? They were a highly trained company, and very ballet-influenced, and they were based in Québec. Québec had its own funding, and that was an important company. I think they were the only jazz-based company in Canada. Anyway, I think that's a really important point too, around the whole multicultural – at that time, it was referred to as multiculturalism. It's a name that's fallen out of vogue now, but at that time, that was the term. But Barbara Clausen's influence in terms of Terminal City Dance, and her influence on The Dance Centre, and then on the establishment of opening up how we defined dancing in Canada was significant.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, and the advocacy work through her programming as well. It's interesting to think about it on that scale too and that scope of time. Acknowledging the amount of time and work that went into actually realizing [The Dance Centre], but the fact that it was actually realized in the end of it all, after so many years, is pretty inspiring.

Terry Hunter: Yeah, I know for me, in terms of the work that Savannah Walling and I are doing with Vancouver Moving Theatre and the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival, I can trace everything that we're doing now back to the 1970s. Not just in terms of this organization and that organization, but the values that we were working with at the time which was collaboration, sharing, and breaking down boundaries. And for me, getting outdoors; connecting to the community, cross-cultural influences that were impacting our work. All the values that we have now, we had them in the 1970s. And that hasn't changed. How the work gets expressed has changed, but the values and the way that we are coming at our work, they were all developed in the ‘70s. Those values have stayed consistent, and have continued to inform the way that the work evolved. All of us went through different evolutions. It has to be an evolving process. You know, if you told me in the 1970s, when we opened up a studio in Chinatown in 1975, that 40 years later, you would be producing a festival that featured 1,500 artists, and 160 events in 12 days, I wouldn't believe you.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. And let alone hosting a festival during a global pandemic [laughs]

Terry Hunter: Yeah, that sense of evolution. On a very personal level, I'm very, very grateful to both Karen Jamieson and my partner, Savannah Walling, for that time with them. I was five years younger than them, and they had a lot more experience than I did in the world at that point. They had a lot more dance training than I did. They were very much both mentors, but also colleagues. I learned so much from that time period, working with Karen Jamieson, and the others. I'm very, very grateful for that time period, because I know that the work I'm doing now is because I had the honour to work with those artists.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. And how that time defined those core values that you articulated earlier, and how important those have been to what you do now, and who you are too.

Terry Hunter: For me, Karen Jamieson was a very strong, powerful, creative voice. Very certain about what she wanted and what she was going for. I needed to be around someone like that because of my own insecurities, and my own lack of confidence in myself, and to be with someone like Karen Jamieson, who was so determined, that was really important for me to have in my life at that time, because it gave me the confidence and the support to do the work that I needed to do. I'm very grateful for that.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah. It's so nice to hear you say all of this, and how impactful it's been for you as well. So, coming out of Terminal City Dance then, I was wondering if we could speak a little bit about Coming Out of Chaos. I know you weren't in the final product of it, but I was wondering if you had any recollections of it, or if you were involved in any stage of the production of it at all?

Terry Hunter: I was not involved in the show, obviously, just around it peripherally. I got a Canada Council grant to go and study in Toronto. I was working on exploring this area of movement and percussion at the same time, so I went there to develop a new piece called Drum House (Fall 1981), which is based on moving and drumming at the same time. I was very much influenced by Korean drum dancing. I was also studying percussion when I was in Toronto. I was talking with Savannah Walling and I don't think I was invited into Chaos because it was probably known that I was heading off to Toronto. I probably would have gotten the grant a number of months earlier. I don't recall if it was ever asked, but I was around in the studio at times when they were working on it. I remember coming back from Toronto, and seeing the folks there in the studio, rehearsing. I saw the show when it was presented at the Waterfront Theatre. I was in the studio when Karen Jamieson was working on the Solo from Coming Out of Chaos with Ahmed Hassan. And Savannah Walling was an outside eye on that piece. I was around watching the work being developed, but I wasn't in the show. That was my relationship to the show. I do remember an interesting anecdote though. Karen took Coming Out of Chaos to the Dance in Canada Conference in Ottawa [in 1982]. I was there at the conference, doing my own work, and Savannah Walling was there. [Karen Jamieson] did Coming Out of Chaos Solo with Ahmed Hassan. I was sitting in the theatre watching the show, and there was a lady sitting beside me, and she had a notepad out and she was taking notes. We'd already watched the piece, we were waiting for the next piece to start, and I made a comment to her about something or other about the show. She made a comment, and I said, “Actually, no, that's not true. It’s this” It had to do in reference to the show, Coming out of Chaos. And she actually turned to me and she said, "Do you know who I am? I'm the critic for the Montréal Gazette." And I got to say to her, “Do you know who I am? I'm Karen's colleague!” [laughs] So when I think of Coming Out of Chaos, actually, that's what I think about, is that little anecdote, where this critic sort of gave me the "do you know who I am?" comment, like, I'm right because I'm the critic for the Montréal Gazette [laughs].

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Oh, the power dynamics, and the power plays! [laughs]

Terry Hunter: I remember seeing the show. I think I'd seen segments of it in rehearsal. I might have watched the whole thing in rehearsal, at the Terminal City Dance studio, but as an audience member, I remember just being really struck by it. It was such a powerful piece. The way that Karen Jamieson wove all these artists who really had quite a range of different personalities and backgrounds in their own particular form of movement. You had someone like Ahmed Hassan, who was a musician. You had someone like Barbara Bourget, who was a ballet-trained dancer who was doing modern dance. You had people like Lola Ryan and Peter Bingham who were contact improv people. You had people like Savannah Walling who came through SFU and the Nikolais program, and her work was always very theatrical, and a lot of dance characters in her pieces. And Lola McLaughlin who had her own very significant movement style, and then Karen Jamieson herself, who had her own particular language of movement. People had their own different ways that they express themselves, linguistically, through the language or dance, but how Karen wove that all together was quite amazing.

The Coming Out of Chaos solo [that Karen did], is probably one of the most powerful dance pieces that I've ever had the privilege of seeing, certainly in Vancouver, by a Vancouver artist. The conviction that Karen Jamieson brought to the work that she was doing, in terms of how she spoke the language of her dance, through her body, but how she also expressed that with the archetypal figures that she was creating, were very, very powerful. She was infused with the movement and understood that the dance that she was expressing was coming from a very, very deep place within her soul. She had gone down into a really deep well, and was bringing that out, and making that visibly public to the world and to the audience that had the privilege to be able to witness that. The work that she was doing also with breath – Ahmed Hassan brought that in, so Ahmed Hassan was doing all this vocal work, where he was [hee-aw-ho-hee-ho-hee] doing all this rhythmic work. He was really interested in that, and he was very influenced by Inuit throat singers, which we had seen at Simon Fraser University. That work was happening within our [Terminal City Dance] company, we'd be doing a lot of breath work, and yoga breathing, and vocal work, and then Ahmed Hassan came and put it into this vocal rhythmic expression, which then Karen Jamieson took, and she integrated what he was doing vocally, rhythmically inside of her, so that what we were hearing was almost like coming out of our own chest. An incredible integration of music and movement, of deep singing that comes from a place of vitality – we all breathe. Breathing is, you know, we'll die if we don't breathe. That work was so powerful. I’m just revisiting that work that [Karen Jamieson] had been doing with Ahmed Hassan, and how they integrated breath work into the breath work of the dancer, and then Karen's own deep sense of digging, that we were talking about earlier, and her incredible expressiveness and how she can find these places in her movement that really, really resonate – that sense of resonation coming off of her, when she finds those places is very powerful. You see that a lot in different pieces that she's done where she hits this place of resignation. You can feel the vibrations moving through the room, because she's hit the gong, and right in the right spot, and it creates this vibration within the room that the audience experiences. Those were some of the experiences that I felt watching the show. It was a great piece of choreography. What else can we say? [laughs]

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: I think you've touched on this already, or you pointed out how Coming Out of Chaos drew out some of these themes that she has continued to work with throughout her career, and that's deeply embedded into her repertoire as well.

Terry Hunter: That primal-ness. That place of going into a primal place. And you know that archetypal imagery of her figure that she uses in her logo?

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah.

Terry Hunter: That came from the 1970s. She was researching the archetypal figures that came out of the caves in Europe, in France, I believe. It's one of these images that we see of figures: dancing. Very primal.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Foundational. Maybe it's a good point to return back to this earlier question about what the contemporary dance scene was like in Vancouver during the ‘70s and ‘80s, and what some common themes, interests, and influences were. Did you have anything else to say about that?

Terry Hunter: I've been thinking about this and I also talked with Savannah Walling about it. Certainly, for Terminal City Dance, there was a time of deep exploration, of collaboration, of being influenced by many different things, of collective creation, of sharing, of researching, and digging together. There were a lot of other dance artists in the city who were also doing their own work, and other companies that were around at the time. Looking back at the whole dance scene at that time, it was primarily company-oriented. People were gathering together in companies, and they were producing the work in company contexts. There was Terminal City Dance, there was the Anna Wyman Dance Company, Ballet BC, on the ballet side of the equation. There was Mountain Dance, which was Mauryne Allan and Freddie Long. Lee Eisler and Karen Greenhough had another company called Jumpstart. They were based out of the Burnaby Art Centre. They also came out of Simon Fraser University. EDAM started up in the ‘80s. It was a much smaller scene. It was characterized typically by companies and a couple of schools. Gisa Cole or Gisa Laszlo, her married name, and Jamie Zagoudakis had a studio on Hastings St called the Prism Contemporary Dance Theatre, for a number of years. Gisa Cole went on to co-found Main Dance Place, a pre-professional dance training program, which was very influential probably for about two decades and unfolded from 1984 (at the Arcadian Hall) and from 1994 (at 828 East Hastings) until the early 2000s.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Because it burned down, right?

Terry Hunter: Yeah, they had a studio on Main Street [the Arcadian Hall], and it burned to the ground in 1993. Arson. And somebody arsoned another small music studio behind the Biltmore Hotel in 1996. I think it was called the Glass Slipper or something. Karen Jamieson's studio was the Cinderella Ballroom. So Main Dance burned down, and then they relocated to Hastings Street at Hawks Avenue. There was a beautiful studio there that was an old ballroom. For a long time it was a warehouse, unfortunately for rocks. Acme Labs bought it and they stored rocks in there.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: That's a loss.

Terry Hunter: Yeah. So, back to the dancing, I think there were some individual artists and people doing individual work. Western Front was a platform where individual artists could also do things, and people could do things at our company, but our studio was pretty low-key, and not a lot of profile. Things shifted in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. There had been cutbacks in the arts starting in the late 1980s. Canada Council went through major cutbacks and there were also big changes in the Employment Insurance (EI) at the time. The companies could hire dancers, have a company, and have a season. Hire people for 15-20 weeks and then give them an EI Separation Certificate, and then people could live off unemployment insurance, and still do their work, and then come back, and get employment again. That was there for about 15 or 20 years, and people really relied on that. When the EI rules were changed, and coupled with the cutbacks of the Canada Council, it really killed the ensemble dance companies in the city. Things drifted into solo artists, or people working in duos and trios, or doing collective, small projects together. I think that characteristic has really remained today. There are obviously still some companies in the city, but in the ‘70s, in the early ‘80s, there were at least 8 or 9 dance companies in the city. And now, how many? Ballet BC is a big one. What other dance organizations do we have in the city right now? I'm not part of the dance community anymore so I'm not as familiar with it as much, but I think that's a big change: the number of companies in the ‘70s and now, the shortage of companies, and lots of individual dancers doing individual work. The other component in the ‘70s was we did not have any big producing organizations in the city that supported dance in Vancouver. Terminal City Dance evolved into the Dance Centre over the years of 1983-86, and it went on to become obviously an important organization in that community. The society’s name was changed from Terminal City Dance Society to the VDC Dance Centre in 1986. The Dance Centre is a presentation and rehearsal space dedicated to dance, so that’s also serving a lot of individual dance artists in the city that we did not have.

Today, we also have some large festivals that regularly bring big, main companies from outside – international ones, primarily. The International Dance Festival, it's sister organization to Kokoro Dance, started by Jay Hirabayashi and Barbara Bourget, that's a very big festival in the city. There's other organizations like the Chutzpah! Festival, which also does a lot of contemporary dance, focusing on Jewish traditions. [And there’s the Dancing on the Edge Festival at the Firehall Arts Centre - Canada’s longest running contemporary dance festival.] There's a lot of cultural groups within the city themselves that also present their own work, of their own cultures. Having these major festivals now produce dance events in the city, that’s a big change since the ‘70s. In the 1970s, and the early 1980s, there was a lot of touring. There was a lot of international touring companies so the Canada Council Touring Office was founding a lot of dance companies to come into the city. So, we would see on a regular basis companies like Toronto Dance Theatre would come here and play at The Playhouse. There were other companies from the prairies, from Montréal that would come here. Vancouver organizations were touring across the country. We are also seeing each other a lot at the Dance in Canada Association conferences, which also happened here in Vancouver. Every two or three years we would host the event here, and there was a lot of sharing of work that way. David Y. H. Lui was very active. He was bringing a lot of really big name international companies. It seems like now we have this infrastructure within the city where there's a lot of companies that are being brought into performing in the context of an ongoing series, or festivals that are dedicated to dance, right? Big change. This whole area of lots of independent artists, solo artists, who get together and work with other artists for a project. Very project-driven, whereas in Vancouver in the 1970s, it was more ensemble-driven and more company-driven. The equation kind of flipped on itself.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Right, yeah. It also seems like there's an opening up of the discipline as well, to a certain extent, once you get festivals like PuSh, for example, that kind of moves into performing arts at large, as a greater umbrella term.

Terry Hunter: Yeah, I would say that the dance artists today are a lot more comfortable now doing characters, doing vocal work, mixing up art forms and stuff like that than they were in the ‘70s. It's more of a standard and very accepted practice.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, that's super interesting to hear that and see those kinds of changes that have happened, because it's things we take for granted. We take for granted all of the work that went into opening up with the discipline.

Terry Hunter: You can see shifts, and you can see changes, and different senses of qualities, and different dynamics going on.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, yeah, but you need that time in between in order to reflect.

Terry Hunter: Which takes us back to your question about the importance of archival!

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Exactly, yeah! What do you think has changed the most for Vancouver contemporary dance since the time that Coming Out of Chaos was produced?

Terry Hunter: Well, I already covered that earlier in terms of the qualitative difference in terms of that mix – the interdisciplinary aspect of dance is much more accepted now. And it's interesting to acknowledge that in the ‘70s and the early ‘80s, dance in Vancouver was the cutting edge and the avant-garde in terms of integrating and being open to other influences, music and movement, and theatre, was not. Theatre tended to be very straightforward and very typical – the way we think of it: theatre as a script with a through line, and the development, and characters, and plotline, and all that kind of stuff, right? And theatre has really changed, so I think dance itself in Vancouver really influenced the theatre scene in Vancouver. The theatre scene in Vancouver now is very experimental. They bring in movement, they bring in sound, they bring in different visual elements. There's really exciting work that's happening in theatre. I think it's important to acknowledge that cross-fertilization. And while not specifically to the dance community, I think how the dance community has changed the theatre community is also really important to acknowledge.

Today, the dance community is much more interdisciplinary now than it was back in the ‘70s and ‘80s. It's the commonly accepted practice today, where it wasn't before. I would say seeing dance that we used to think of as mainstream is now actually not all that common anymore. These words are hard. Like, what do we mean by "mainstream"? The notion of “experimenting” was being risky, and challenging, and trying to do things in new ways, and not just repeating a model that kind of works, or a form that just works, and doing it over, and over, and over again. I think that ethos is the ethos of today, whereas before, in the ‘70s, it was just beginning to emerge. And that’s one of the things I realized. I'll speak personally. When I was in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and even up to the ‘90s, the work that I was doing, I always felt was on the margins. We were outside of the mainstream. It was in the margins that we were able to work, and create, and be imaginative, and do things in completely different ways because we weren't constricted by what the mainstream said we should be doing. Now, that work we’re doing now, that I felt that we were on the margins, the whole cultural world has shifted. That work that was on the margins is now centred. So, what is the new margin area that's coming? What are the new margins, right? Is it the matriarchs? Over 500 people met yesterday on a Zoom call, talking about how the city can be re-envisioned from a matriarchal and Indigenous perspective. Is that the new margin that we're moving towards? The cultural shift that's going on in Vancouver is huge. A huge way that they're shifting the cultural operations in the city of Vancouver, in terms of cultural policy, the notion of decolonization, the whole notion of centering Indigenous practice. We weren't talking on this level in the 1970s. We were talking about "multiculturalism." We were talking about cross-cultural collaboration. We were talking about breaking down walls. Going around barriers. That's the kind of language that we were using. Today, you're not only seeing the shift on an artistic level, you're seeing the shift on a policy level, from the funding bodies. Not only at the City of Vancouver, which I just mentioned, but also at the Canada Council, and at the BC Arts Council. Huge, huge cultural shifts in terms of policy. That's a huge change.

I think you can say that the work that we were doing in the 1970s, and the values that we were working for, and trying to get towards, definitely had an influence on wherever we've arrived at today. To draw another specific line back to Karen Jamieson. In the 1980s, she was exploring her family roots, and her father's connection to Coast Salish people through family connections. She did the show Rainforest (1987), which was really a groundbreaking production in terms of somebody from a Western-European background being influenced by Coastal Indigenous traditions, and, as you know, she received a huge amount of flack about that show, and to Karen Jamieson's immense credit, she sat and listened to that flack. She learned, and she listened, and she moved forward. She didn't bounce away from it, and run away from it. She went to it. She embraced it, and it changed her, and it changed the work that she did, and the way that she worked with Indigenous community. People today, artists today, are still trying to figure out how to do what Karen Jamieson had to do 30 years ago. So, that may not be recognized today in terms of understanding the history, and how did that influence, and how did that play a role, but I'm just saying that the work that people like Karen Jamieson, and Savannah Walling, and I, and others in the studio were doing in those days, that work is now centred. It was on the margins, and now that practice is being centred and it's being driven by governments and policies that are being shifted.

People don't understand the difference between the attitude of the Canada Council in the 1970s to today. Even today, with the huge shifts that are going on, there's still artists out there who are saying very intently, the Canada Council needs to even go further, that there's a lot more that they have to do. So, that whole notion of evolution, that you get to one place and you learn and then you get to another place, that's the way things have been moving. It's an evolutionary process. Things move in steps. Sometimes people want to just change things overnight but that's not the way that things typically move. [laughs] They follow the artists. Although all those funding changes have happened, because they're following the artists, they're watching what's going on in the community. They're seeing what's going on in cultural practice and they're shifting in response to what the artists are saying.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: I'm wondering what more you think needs to be done in order to preserve these types of histories – contemporary dance and performing arts histories in Vancouver, in particular?

Terry Hunter: It's such a great question. It's a huge one, and I have to raise my hands to Karen Jamieson Dance, and how this organization is going about doing it, because I think it's a model that we all could use, both those companies like ourselves, Vancouver Moving Theatre, and the other companies in the city. It is very labour intensive, as you well know, and with that comes a huge amount of focus and time, and also financial resources to make that happen. It's a huge commitment, both from a personnel perspective, but also from a budget perspective. I really appreciate you guys doing this, and how you're doing it, because it's opening it up to the other artists in the city who are part of that time period, and making those historical connections. If organizations have the capacity, and the means to be able to do what you guys are doing, that would be huge. The role of the major archives in the city, like the City of Vancouver Archives, UBC, Simon Fraser University, they also have a very, very important role. I know that they recognize that, but, again, it's priorities, and it's money, and it's time, and making sure that those connections are being made. I remember that wonderful session at The Dance Centre, when [Karen Jamieson Dance] was showing us your [archiving] model and saying, this is what we're doing and encouraging us to be archiving, I remember Jennifer Mascall standing up and saying, “This is all wonderful, but when do I find the time to do this?” And that’s the question, right?

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah.

Terry Hunter: How do you find the time to do it? And speaking of which, Savannah and I have in our basement, a box with a few of the minutes from Terminal City Dance board meetings, including the minutes reporting on when Terminal City Dance went through a major shift. When Savannah Walling, and I, and Karen Jamieson, all submitted our letters of resignation, and Terminal City Dance continued on as an administrative and production support for independent dancers before evolving into the Dance Centre. Somehow we need to get those out of our basement – and I don't know why we ended up with them, but we did. They're sitting in our basement, in a very nice box, and they're all there, you can look at the minutes. It's all there. But that aside, there was another comment that was made at the workshop that you guys did at the Vancouver Dance Centre, and that was the importance of the artists themselves to document and archive their work as they're going through their life. So, this is in reference to younger artists who are just starting out now. It really needs to be brought home to people the importance that they document what they've done. Keep the posters, keep the program guides, keep descriptions of the shows, keep the names of the artists. Document them in some way that somebody can come back, and look at it, and research it. I don't know that young artists are doing that to the degree that they should be doing it. We're in a very time period now where everything's like touch, touch, touch, and computers, and it's all there on YouTube and various things that we posted on Facebook, but is it in a way that a researcher such as yourself, can come back and look at the body of work in a very concise way? We've done our own things over the years, but we know that it's a huge amount of work, and that we also need to dedicate time to it, otherwise, it doesn't happen.

The other piece that I think is really important has to do with how we share this history with others. I think the Vancouver Dance Centre has a really important role to play in this. What is The Dance Centre doing to have a publicly accessible library that people can walk into, and sit down at, and pull a binder or book out, or a video monitor on the wall that shows images of dance shows? They could have a 20 minute video showing dance history, just images. Then people walking by see it and that just triggers interest. And making it publicly accessible, so that people don't need to go and look for it. So, publicly accessible history that's placed in public places where people see it, not intentionally, but because they happen to be there.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, so you’re suggesting a public art program, or an exhibition.

Terry Hunter: Yeah, I could see a monitor [with archival images] in the lobby of The Dance. Centre or in the foyer downstairs while the audience is waiting to go into the theatre. That's just a simple idea. It's not complicated to do. The other is, I think there needs to be an equivalent of Dance Collection Danse for Vancouver. They do a fantastic job of profiling and promoting dance, and the history, and the archives of dance on a national level. It's a subscription, you need to buy it to get access to it. Could there be an equivalent here in Vancouver where maybe bi-yearly or something there's articles on the history of dance in Vancouver made available? Does The Dance Centre send it out in emails? Is there a newsletter that goes out with it? What can we use that would be easily accessible to people, and be able to distribute stuff so that people are aware of the history. Maybe there's a grant, or somebody could put up money for this. The stories need to be told, and they need to be told in a way that you can actually put it in front of people. It needs to be active.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, I completely agree. From what I'm hearing from you, there also seems to be an importance about locality. I'm just coming to learn a little bit more about Kaija Pepper's magazine Dance International too.

Terry Hunter: I didn't know she did that.

Emma Metcalfe Hurst: Yeah, she's the Editor-in-Chief there, but I guess based on the publication’s name, I assume it's supposed to cover a more expansive breadth of dance on an international level, not necessarily on a local level, but given her areas of research and interests related to Vancouver, I know that she is trying to encourage local stories as well. But again, how do you make that accessible? How do you make them known? How do you make that visible? There are many layers to that, especially with all these new technologies, and the social media platforms in which younger audiences tend to use. We're coming from the print era, now print has gone online, and then there's also Facebook, and Instagram, and then there's all these other ones that have even surpassed my generation now too. It's an ongoing, evolving process. Well, I think that's a good place to end, although I'm sure we could keep going [laughs]. We will save it for another day. Thank you Terry, and I hope you have a restful break and get outside and recuperate.

Terry Hunter: It's lovely to draw these threads forward today. It's been a really interesting conversation with you. I really enjoyed it.