ESTIVALE 2000 Canadian Dancing Bodies Then and Now

Editor: Iro Valaskakis Tembeck
ESTIVALE 2000 was a three-day scholars’ gathering hosted by Université du Québec à Montréal’s dance department in May 2000. The conference focussed specifically on historical, critical and aesthetic research on dance conducted by and about Canadians. It was a first such venture in its choice to dwell solely on Canadian content and thus bring greater visibility to this research area. Its “co-lingual” format left the choice to presenters to speak either in French or in English and these proceedings respect the language of presentation.

About the Editor
Iro Valaskakis Tembeck was born in Cairo, Egypt, and made Montreal her home from the late 1960s on. She worked as a professional dancer, choreographer, and company co-founder/artistic director of Axis Dance and ArtsScène. In 1976, her choreographic work Howl was commissioned by the Olympic Games Festival and performed by Le Groupe Nouvelle Aire, a Montreal modern dance company with which she was long associated as a dancer and teacher. She was the pre-eminent historian of dance in Quebec and authored a number of books on Quebec dance history while she was a professor of dance at the Université du Québec à Montréal. Iro Valaskakis Tembeck passed away in 2004.