Canadian Dance: Visions and Stories

Edited by Selma Landen Odom and Mary Jane Warner
Canadians want to hear stories about their country and the personalities who have forged a path to the present day. Now, thanks to Selma Landen Odom and Mary Jane Warner, two of Canada’s senior dance historians, there is finally an anthology that spans Canadian dance history from pre-Confederation to the end of the twentieth century.

In Canadian Dance: Visions and Stories, Canadians can read about the reconstruction of a lost ballet by Gweneth Lloyd that had been originally staged in Winnipeg in the 1940s. They will discover how experimental dance was introduced to Toronto audiences by two former dancers with The National Ballet of Canada. They will encounter reasons for the long and rocky saga of trying to find a foothold for theatrical dance in Nova Scotia. They also will have access to Françoise Sullivan’s essay, “Dance and Hope”, one of the first political treatises about dance written in Canada.

A compilation of over thirty articles by dance historians, theorists and professional practitioners, Canadian Dance: Visions and Stories examines the central aesthetic, social, political and economic issues that helped to define the development of dance in this country. Long overdue, this anthology redresses the dearth of dance literature in Canadian Studies and other academic programs.

About the Editors
Selma Landen Odom, Professor at York University, teaches dance history and writing. She has an M.A. in drama from Tufts University and a Ph.D. in dance studies from the University of Surrey. Her articles and reviews have appeared in many publications since the 1960s. Her research focusses on dance, music and education in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Current projects include Musicians Who Move: People and Practice in Dalcroze Eurhythmics, a book based on extensive fieldwork and historical research.

Mary Jane Warner, Professor at York University, teaches courses in Canadian dance history, reconstruction, education and movement analysis. She has an M.A. in dance and a Ph.D. in theatre from Ohio State University. She is the author of Laban Notation Scores: An International Bibliography and Toronto Dance Teachers, 1825-1925 (1995). She has written extensively on nineteenth and early twentieth-century Canadian dance. She is co-author of the CD-ROM Shadow on the Prairie: An Interactive Multimedia Dance History Tutorial (1996).