How can we create inclusive spaces, where everyone feels safe to move and express themselves? How can diversity be nurtured and encouraged in dance intervention?
During this experiential workshop, Farah Fancy will discuss these questions, and many more, to shift the movement narrative to include underrepresented populations.
The workshop will be divided in two parts, taking place on two different days.
First Workshop
The first workshop will offer participants skills and guidance to limit the impact of implicit biases and reduce oppression of marginalized communities. Visceral and embodied exercises and practices will help to reveal the individual values of participants. Then, each participant will create a personal roadmap for self-reflection, re-evaluation, and action to support their communities being visible and in harmony, while striving to "do no harm". The goal will be to model diversity and inclusion in practice and to allow authenticity to surface, stripping expectations that do not belong to the individual and moving in ways that are culturally ethical.
Second Workshop
The second workshop will take the form of an interactive discussion, where both words and movement will be used to acknowledge gaps, blind spots and biases that may be preventing connection or doing justice to the underrepresented populations the participants work with. The group will be encouraged to bring forward the obstacles they face in their embodied teaching, movement methodologies and dance techniques and, through their collective knowledge, they will be identifying promising practices and suggestions that can apply to working with a diversity of populations. Farah will also offer alternative solutions from the lens of a global indigenous perspective as a Kwaja/Pathan spiritual keeper and warrior.
Expectations
Participants wishing to join should come willing to become comfortable with being uncomfortable; enter with radical openness; transparently offer their concerns and challenges; be free of judging themselves or others. The framework of the two workshops will consider empathy, resilience, and active whole-bodied listening with the goal of leveraging social capital to increase cultural vitality.
This event is presented by the National Centre for Dance Therapy and supported by the RBC Foundation. It is dedicated to all the dance professionals, artists, educators and practitioners who offer dance interventions to marginalized communities.
We are only accepting a small number of participants. Please reserve your spot below and, if you cannot make it, let us know in advance, so we can free your space for someone on the waiting list.
In compliance with the latest government measures to stop the spread of COVID-19 and for the health and safety of our dance community, the workshops will be offered virtually, rather than in-person as previously announced.
As an international public speaker and consultant, Farah shifts mindsets and strips away bias to increase resilience, inclusion, and justice. Her holistic approach fuses the arts, therapeutic techniques, and ethnography to reduce harm while improving self-worth, productivity and purpose with relevance and harmony. She commits to building a diverse community of leaders who are proud to be fearless and flawsome without limiting beliefs, self-doubt, or shame.
For 25 years, she has been using creativity to reveal and resolve barriers to equity and to foster economic, professional, and personal development, while improving belonging and sparking innovation. Her successes include facilitating programs for over 100,000 people, producing and creating over 30 performances, implementing 6 community projects for social change, co-founding the Dance Movement Therapy Association in Canada and Le Groupe Herencias. Farah focuses on identity, respect, vitality, and empathy to decolonize behaviours so we can dare to be audaciously visible and aligned beings.
