This text is part of the special notebook Dance in Quebec
In its 40 years of existence, the Regroupement québécois de la danse (RQD) has contributed to structuring the dance sector in Quebec. But even if it has allowed members of the discipline to become more professional, there is still a way to go to perpetuate professional practice.
Dena Davida is a curator, educator and researcher in dance and performing arts. She arrived in Montreal from the United States in 1977. “The dance community was in turmoil, but I quickly realized the lack of structure in the environment,” she says. At that time, everything was lacking to form a real profession. » She notes that there was no professional venue or complete university program for the discipline. “I then proposed ideas that already existed in the United States,” she continues.
Towards the structuring of the profession
In 1980, Mr.me Davida thus created Tangente, an informal but professional venue to allow choreographers to make their work known to the public. The following year, she and her team presented their first show: “At that time, we had no money, we all worked on the side,” she says. We collected donations at the end of the show, which we then redistributed to the performers. » The situation persisted until the creation of the first public support funds intended for dissemination, shortly after the creation of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec in 1994 and the Société de Développement des Entreprises Culturelles (SODEC) in 1995, in particular, which will then allow it to benefit from subsidies to finance its projects and to remunerate the artists. Since then, Quebec has had 8 presenters specialized in dance and 12 other multidisciplinary ones, lists the RQD.
The now retired performer and choreographer Lucie Boissinot sat on the board of directors of the RQD when the Second Estates General of Professional Dance of Quebec was held in 2009. On this occasion, more than 200 people from the field — dancers, choreographers, companies, teachers, producers and broadcasters — met to address the issues facing the discipline.
At the end of this major consultation, around a hundred recommendations were adopted, which led to the creation of the first phase of the Master Plan for Professional Dance in Quebec 2011-2021.
“It was an extraordinary exercise which allowed us to work together to improve our working conditions,” says M.me Boissinot. She remembers that this brought concrete changes to the profession: “Services for interpreters improved, the RQD website became a place where everyone could converge and, above all, there was less discontent and more desire to take charge. »
Since then, the RQD has around 600 members and offers various training courses, both for participants to become aware of their rights in terms of health and safety at work and to teach them production management, for example. It also allows dancers to continue training between their contracts, in particular to avoid the risk of injury.
Enrichment of training
Although the professional practice of dance is recent in Quebec, notes Dena Davida, it has nevertheless evolved a lot in just a few decades. Thus, the first minor in dance was created in 1971 at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM), while the first three complete university programs saw the light of day between 1978 and 1979, again at UQAM (bachelor’s degree in dance ), at the University of Montreal (certificate in dance) and at Concordia University (Bachelor of Fine Arts in dance).
“Each new degree of academic professionalization has led to another level of sophistication in aesthetics,” she says. According to the artist, these training courses also taught professionals to present their work and to do cultural mediation, for example.
Mme Davida remembers being part of the first cohort of the doctorate in dance at UQAM, in 1997.
“It’s incredible, the different types of professional practice that now exist,” she continues, enthusiastically. You can practice just as easily in a basement at the Fringe Festival as you can be a dance doctor. »
With Tangente, she has also contributed to making professional practice more inclusive and more diverse, among other things by bringing people with disabilities on stage and presenting shows by the Kala Bharati and Nyata Nyata troupes.
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