Canadian Heritage Committee on May 4th, 2015

[Kate Cornell, Executive Director, Canadian Dance Assembly]

Thank you, Mr. Brown.

The Canadian Dance Assembly is the national arts service organization for the professional dance sector. The CDA helps foster a community that is creative, vibrant, and sustainable. The CDA represents more than 100 dance organizations, many of which you will hear from during these meetings, and close to 500 individual dancers. Our partners include all of the provincial service organizations, the Performing Arts Alliance of the National Arts Service Organizations, or NASOs, and the Canadian Arts Coalition.

I want to begin by thanking the committee for its interest and this unique opportunity to talk about Canadian dance.

The Canada Council for the Arts is a respected and trusted public funder of the dance sector. I want to acknowledge the government's sustained investment in the Canada Council during these difficult financial times. The Canada Council employs specialists who truly understand the needs of the field, as evidenced by the extensive dance mapping study that you will hear about on May 13. The dance mapping study examines the scope and influence of professional and non-professional dance in Canada. The Canadian Dance Assembly is forever grateful for this research and it is going to keep me busy for many years. In Canada dance artists are championed by service organizations like the CDA and Regroupement, who advocate for their well-being. Notably the Canada Council supports service organizations in community building.

Recently, Simon Brault, the CEO of the Canada Council, announced a new funding model. One of the new programs will be focused on international market access. This yet to be defined touring program is welcomed by the dance sector as absolutely essential to its development. There are no borders in dance. Dance is a universal language and therefore dancers can get a job in any country. The creative exchange of dance artists and choreographic works is at the heart of a healthy dance ecology. International touring and reciprocity is an important cornerstone of our field. The dance sector is encouraged by this announcement of the international program at the Canada Council, but would also like to see Canadian embassies and the Department of Foreign Affairs consider supporting touring.

My brief includes several recommendations. One of them is that CDA recommends that dance organizations, in an effort to have reciprocity with their international partners, have access to more international touring funding at the Canada Council for the Arts and at the Department of Foreign Affairs.

To illustrate the absence of borders in dance, I want to tell you about Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite, whom you heard mentioned in the last session. Crystal Pite is truly world renowned. She is currently the associate artist at the Sadler's Wells ballet in London. She's also an associate dance artist of the National Arts Centre here in Ottawa. Last year she was the only Canadian choreographer featured in the Nederlands Dans Theater's live streaming dance series shown in movie theatres and in Canada's Cineplex theatres.

Crystal Pite is an excellent example of a Canadian working in the dance sector. She trained in a studio in Victoria, and first danced with Ballet BC, and then she left Canada to dance in Germany with the extraordinary choreographer, William Forsythe. She later returned to Canada to be resident choreographer with Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal. Then she founded her company Kidd Pivot, and her international career took off. Her Canadian company toured to an astonishing 52 cities in 2014. Those cities were in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., and Europe. Her dance has no borders, but Crystal Pite is 100% Canadian.

As a result of her successful work in many countries, Pite has seen hundreds of talented international dancers, not unlike the coach of an NHL team. Of course, she has longstanding relationships with accomplished Canadian dancers who she regularly employs, but when she auditions a dancer who can perform her demanding choreography she doesn't ask to see their passport. Pite hires the dancer and lets her manager, Bernard Sauvé, sort out the paperwork. Since July 2014 the demands of that paperwork have hindered the dance industry.

In January, The Dance Current magazine published a feature article on the temporary foreign worker program and its affects on the dance community.

The following is the administrative trail of Pite's new co-creation:

Pite has been commissioned to create a work for the Pan Am Games taking place in Toronto in the summer of 2015. The creation process and rehearsal schedule for this new work extends over eighteen months—

—which is quite common—

involves three foreign national collaborators—dancers whom Pite admires and wishes to work with—and will take place in three different provinces over three different work periods. This means that Kidd Pivot needs to absorb the $9,000 cost of making nine separate applications (representing three dancers who will be paid for work in three different provinces each requiring a separate application), as well as the administrative hassle in doing so.

“This is a very, very complex issue,” sighs manager Bernard Sauvé, “very time-consuming, very expensive and not conducive to art-making.”

Unfortunately, Kidd Pivot is just one of many dance companies spending thousands a year on the temporary foreign worker program.

This ESDC program does not recognize the reality that dance is by design international, just like professional hockey. There are many similarities between hockey and dance. Athletes train for about a decade to become professionals. These workers are susceptible to sudden, career-ending injuries, but hockey players have highly skilled, high-paying jobs, whereas dancers have highly skilled, low-paying jobs, as we've already heard. Professional hockey players are traded and move quickly between teams, using the international mobility program.

Here are two examples just to illustrate the difference between hockey and dance.

American Ryan Miller of the Vancouver Canucks makes about $6 million a season. American dancer Gilbert Small of Ballet B.C. makes about $30,000 a season. If it so happened that Ryan Miller were to come to Canada today, the Vancouver Canucks would pay $230 in fees to the international mobility program, whereas Ballet B.C. would pay $1,000 for Gilbert Small, through the temporary foreign worker program.

International players contribute to making hockey competitive, world class, and enticing to Canadian audiences. The same is true of international dancers in Canadian dance companies.

Considering the numerous similarities between professional dance and professional hockey, dance companies have requested access to the international mobility program. Therefore, the Canadian Dance Assembly recommends that dance organizations be eligible for the international mobility program instead of the temporary foreign worker program.

In conclusion, dance is an essential component of Canadian culture. Right now Canadians are dancing in studios, community centres, church basements, schools, parks, living rooms, and theatres across the nation. Dance as a non-verbal means of communication keenly expresses the complex pluralism of Canadian culture to audiences of all backgrounds. Dance crosses barriers and helps to define who we are as Canadians.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Thank you very much.

We'll now move to Harold Rhéaume and Lorraine Hébert, for up to eight minutes.

[Lorraine Hébert, Executive Director, Regroupement québécois de la danse]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My colleague, Harold Rhéaume, and I represent the Regroupement québécois de la danse. Harold is its president.

I am going to speak to you about the realities of the sector we represent. Essentially, it is made up of dance companies that focus on research and original creation. We will describe our advances and our challenges as well as the observations and recommendations that we have included in our brief. The brief draws its inspiration from the master plan for professional dance in Quebec, which we published in June 2011. This is the result of several years of work by more than 200 dance professionals. The activities in our sector are atypical. My colleagues talked to you about it just now. I will go over a few points only.

There was a boom in dance research and original dance in the 1980s. That was a time of deep recession. Recessions have continued and reoccur to this day, meaning that the sector has had to find ways to organize itself and to pool resources and services in order to reduce costs. The sector has therefore developed a number of organizational models that are based on that sharing of resources and services. We are very proud of them.

In dance, there are organizational models like Diagramme—gestion culturelle, La Rotonde—centre chorégraphique contemporain de Québec, the Circuit-Est centre chorégraphique, La danse sur les routes du Québec and la Fondation Jean-Pierre Perreault. In a way, they form the backbone of our ecosystem.

The operations of about 35 research and creation companies are supported by at least two levels of government. In most cases, those companies are very small organizations that rely on one or two employees. In 2008, we did an internal study in conjunction with the HEC. The study showed that the salary of an employee working in a dance company is $35,000. Working conditions are very stressful given the multi-tasking required and the number of overtime hours worked.

Yet because the companies remain very efficient, the dance economy has been growing since 2004. The growth is slow, but it is sure. According to figures from the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the revenues from the activities of those 35 dance companies came to a little more than $33 million in 2012-2013. But the manoeuvring room was extremely tight because the expenditures came to a little more than $31 million.

Funding comes from the governments in part and outreach, specifically international outreach, in part, actually the larger part. In our opinion, the local market for dance is underdeveloped.

The many underpaid hours of work and certainly the many unpaid hours of work, in the case of dancers and choreographers, also contributes to the budgetary balance in the ecosystem. According to statistics from a recent study on the status of dancers and choreographers—the same source of figures that we mentioned earlier—total income earned from dancing itself, not from teaching or other related tasks, is an average of $13,900. When you subtract expenses for training, career management, travel, preventative or therapeutic health care, auditions and even personal investments in creative works, the net income goes to $9,300.

We should tell you that 70% of the choreographers and dancers who took part in the study are self-employed workers. Forty-two per cent have chronic pain as the result of dance injuries and the same percentage has no complementary coverage from social protection or income security programs.

According to another study, recently conducted by the ministère de la Culture et des Communications on social protection for artists and others who are self-employed in the arts, governments must implement programs to provide artists with access to a social safety net. Such programs are already in place in countries such as France, Belgium and Germany.

In conclusion, improving working conditions for artists and workers is a vital issue for all our organizations, but our sector cannot solve it alone. Yet dance has made some major advances in the last 30 years, especially on international stages. But those advances are fragile. The dance ecosystem is efficient, but it is fragile and vulnerable to change.

For example, the changes announced to the Canada Council for the Arts’ funding system is a cause for concern. We may find ourselves in a situation of diminishing funds allocated to dance in general or in a situation where the distribution of those funds ignores the nature of our ecosystem. That ecosystem is essential for productivity and artistic excellence in dance. All of its elements are interdependent. If one link is weakened, the entire chain is weakened.

Earlier, my colleague spoke about the impact of the changes to the international mobility program and the foreign workers program. Unfortunately, we are experiencing that impact and seeing its effects. It jeopardizes co-production projects and touring, as well as company development projects. It is costing a great deal. It gives us a lot of administrative hassle that is frankly counterproductive.

Why is dance not entitled to an exemption, like the one granted to the Cirque du Soleil, given that international mobility lies at the heart of its history and its economics? I would say that there is still a future for dance because dance is built on structures, on organizations and on extremely committed artists who want only to dance, at least for a while. The commitment to dance is a deep and very personal investment, not in order to make a lot of money but in order to make a lot of oneself.

Future challenges mean future investments. We need more investment in international outreach, more investment in the the entire production chain—

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

I have to cut you off right there. You're well over the eight minutes. You'll get a chance to expand on that in the questions.

We'll now move to Amanda Hancox, Parise Mongrain, and Coralee McLaren.

You have up to eight minutes between the three of you.

Thank you.

[Amanda Hancox, Executive Director, National Office, Dancer Transition Resource Centre]

Thank you.

I'd like to thank the committee for this opportunity to speak about the situation for professional dancers regarding career transition.

Founded in 1985, the Dancer Transition Resource Centre is a national charitable organization dedicated to helping dancers make necessary transitions into, within, and from a professional performance career. Our services are available to professional dancers across Canada and in both languages.

For this presentation we'll be focusing specifically on issues regarding only those dancers with performance careers. I don't wish to minimize the concerns of the wider dance community in any way, or other cultural workers, because we're aware that the overall discipline is struggling with endemic and interrelated issues that concerns all dancers and ultimately affects their careers. But as we can see, our other colleagues are very good at this and the committee will hear their issues.

Dancer transition is an internationally well-documented issue. I would like to start with a quote from Making changes: facilitating the transition of dancers to post-performance careers, the report of a major international research project conducted by the Research Center for Arts and Culture of Columbia University in 2004. It reads:

We know of no other occupation that requires such extensive training, that is held in such esteem as a contribution to culture, and pays so little.

As you've been hearing.

...in the long run, the vitality of dance activity itself requires attention to the welfare of those engaged in it.

Thus, inadequacy of career transition support not only creates significant challenges for individual dancers, but also imposes a social cost in the form of wasted human capital.

As you've heard, becoming a dancer requires an abundance of rigour, passion, discipline, and commitment. Dance careers are extremely demanding and highly competitive. It is appropriate that a dancer's career profile is frequently compared to that of a high performance athlete's. The training of a dancer begins at a very early age, often as young as eight, and it takes about 10 years before they enter the field.

When they do enter a dance career, the majority of dancers will find they are self-employed and are working from contract to contract or juggling several contracts at a time. They will often be creating their own projects because they really want to dance. The emerging dancers tend to develop a strong resilience to financial hardship.

According to a national survey of professional dancers in Canada conducted by Hill Strategies Research in 2005—and these numbers jump all over the place—the annual earning from dance was $18,000, but the median was just over $11,000. Despite this data, and instead of leaving the career, most adopt a strategy to diversify their activities. Therefore, 72% of professional dancers supplement their income with additional part-time work either within or outside the dance milieu.

According to many studies and to the DTRC's own observations, a performance career of a dancer lasts about 15 years. There are several reasons for the career to come to an end. Physical limitations due to age or injury, financial insecurity and lack of employment are common, but also discouragement. Performance stress, chronic pain, and lack of artistic opportunities are reasons for a dancer to make the difficult decision to stop dancing.

This is almost an inevitable step, and it requires specialized support. While we appreciate that some improvements in conditions of the dance profession have contributed to the extension of the career, no action will completely lead to the eradication of the issue. Ultimately, the majority of professional performing careers have ended by the age of 40. At an age when most professionals are reaching the peak of their career and have a stable socio-economic status, it's not unusual for a dancer's career to end. Sometimes it ends abruptly, leaving psychological and financial hardship in its wake.

It's a major challenge for many dancers to overcome the difficulty of career change. To address this, very many countries have initialized special programs. Over the years our organization has built and evolved programs to respond in the most economical and appropriate way possible to the challenge facing not only dancers, but indirectly the whole community. The heart of our mission remains to support dancers through the transition process, because we know when they're properly supported they can become aware of their transferable skills and have the ability to set goals that properly reflect their unique potential.

By offering retraining support to dancers at the end of their career, the DTRC ensures that they can continue to use their creative artistry in conjunction with their new skills, and contribute to society in a meaningful way, because they're gifted citizens and they want to remain productive. Forty is pretty young to hang up your shoes.

Again, to quote from Making Changes, the international study, “The issue of dancer career transition creates challenges on multiple levels—not just for individual dancers, who warrant assistance with the educational, emotional, and financial challenges they face at the end of their career, but also for the field and the culture at large.”

For the field of dance, the issue of dancer transition connects to issues of dancer recruitment and dancer retention. In an increasingly competitive workforce, aspiring dancers and their families may be reluctant to make or encourage a commitment into a field where long-term financial, educational, and psychological needs go unaddressed.

Just as a side note, the artistic director of Canada's National Ballet School, Mavis Staines, was talking to Minister Glover in the fall, and I quote:

I believe the DTRC's unique contributions at the pan-Canadian professional dance community are invaluable. ln fact, it is thanks to the services offered by the DTRC that l can ethically encourage Canadian parents to support their children's dreams to pursue professional careers as dance artists.

For the general population, the issue of career transition creates a lost economic opportunity to transfer valuable human capital to the global workplace where ex-dancers can embark on valuable and satisfying new careers, and employers can reap the benefits of having highly skilled, trainable, and creative workers who are so in demand. A growing body of literature indicates that through their training and professional performing careers, dancers develop a unique and valuable set of skills and abilities. Where appropriate retraining is made available, dancers can and do make substantial contributions to diverse sectors in the economic marketplace and in society.

If Canada sees dance as an art form that it wishes to protect and whose existence is justified by the positive externalities it generates, and if Canada wishes to develop excellent dancers and retain talent, its only option is to view the reality of the dancers' profession in its entirety and to support these dancers throughout the natural cycle of their careers.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

All right, thank you very much.

We're now going to move to the questions. We are going to start with Mr. Young.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Thank you.

I thank everyone for coming here today, for your time.

I'd like to start at the end of a dancer's career, which is something that we don't normally consider, because what happens at the end is very important to what happens at the beginning, that is, is, whether or not young dancers will choose dance as a career.

I think most people know about professional athletes. We have heard how much they earn in their careers, and we know that once they're in their late thirties their knees or ligaments or tendons start to give out a little bit and they don't have the same strength in their bodies, so they get ready to retire. But we don't normally think about that for dancers. It's exactly the same for dancers because dancers are in fact athletes.

We heard about dancers' earning power and the fact they have part-time work and sporadic work. Professional athletes who make maybe about $6 to $7 million in the NHL on average, for example, have a lot of money to save for retirement and have an association help them negotiate their benefits and their retirement earnings, etc. Of course, dancers don't, so when they come to the end of their career, they're basically on their own. They may be 35 years old, looking through the newspaper and the want ads, they may or may not have marketable skills, and they're getting ready for a second career.

Ms. Hancox, your organization helps them plan ahead to succeed in a career. That is great, but I think it's more important to note that that allows them, if they can, to choose to have a career in dance. That relates to what happens in retirement, so that they will know there's light at the end of the tunnel.

What should the government do to help your organization help dancers choose a career in dance and thereby grow and help dance flourish in Canada?

[Amanda Hancox]

The Department of Canadian Heritage has been very supportive of our organization since the beginning of the Canada Arts training fund, which used to be under a different name but was the same thing, since about 1996, and has supported us very well.

It's a program that supports development in the arts. From the very beginning, we have been an anomaly, but it was understood that training for a second career for a dancer really is part of training to be a dancer. You have to have that support, because as we've heard, and Mavis Staines said, their parents wouldn't let them go into dance if they knew that at the end there was just nothing.

Over the last year, we have had some red flags flown at us by the Canada arts training fund because we are not an arts training institution. They are saying that they don't know what we're doing in their program because we don't fit their criteria so well. It was a surprise to us because, from the very beginning, we had been in the program and no one had mentioned anything.

For the dancers who are transitioning, where does that support come? It's unique because we are a unique organization, so we may not totally fit in arts training, but we don't really fit in health, and we don't really fit in education.

We are really looking to have the government encourage the Canada arts training fund to acknowledge the fact that dance is unusual, unique, and different, and that training to be a dancer involves preparing for transition.

We start talking to these dancers when they're still in school about having to keep their options open and having to do some education while they're dancing, so that they can start to prepare for this and don't hit 30 or 35 or, God forbid, have a career-ending injury at 26 and suddenly find they have nothing. That would be my recommendation.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Madame Mongrain.

[Parise Mongrain, Director of the Quebec office, Dancer Transition Resource Centre]

You need to know that the process of career transition for a dancer lasts about three years. So, with our organization funded on an annual basis, our ability to provide dancers with quality support is compromised. If we knew that our funding was secure for a certain number of years, it would help us greatly.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Kate Cornell, I'm sure you've thought about this many times, but if the Dancers Transition Resource Centre didn't exist and a lot fewer young people chose dance as a career, what would happen to dance as an art in Canada?

[Kate Cornell]

It's difficult to imagine that future, but we would definitely see less people having the confidence to go into dance. We would see parents, as Amanda Hancox has already referenced, being reticent to put their student into a full-time program, be it a residential program at one of the ballet schools or even some of the post-secondary training programs in contemporary dance or in classical Indian dance forms.

Not to have that small bit of security....I can't help but mention that most dancers, even most arts workers, don't have pensions and rarely even have health care insurance. The security provided by the Dancers Transition Resource Centre is absolutely essential to our field. As Ms. Hancox has said, it's very important.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Mr. Nantel, you have seven minutes.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to everyone for being here. I hope we will have time to talk to Ms. McLaren. Time really is flying.

My questions are for you, Ms. Hébert. Just now Ms. Bowring said that CBC/Radio-Canada was a major player that has become more fragile recently. Ms. Cornell said that the embassies are playing a smaller and smaller role in culture. I agree that we have to support international tours for our dance creators.

In Quebec and in Canada, what more could be done to stimulate demand? What could be done to get the public more interested in dance?

Earlier, you mentioned the 1980s. I remember Édouard Lock's company La La La Human steps and all the others. What created that vitality? What could we do to get a similar vitality back, first locally?

[Lorraine Hébert]

The vitality is still there. Dance audiences in Quebec represent 4% of all performing arts audiences. But even though it is only a small proportion, that audience is growing.

What is it that helps to make dance and the audience for dance grow? Among other things, it takes promoters who can develop skills, who have the equipment, who work with the cultural media, who have the means to promote dance and who are committed to the community. That last point is very important. Promoters have to be committed to their communities.

Locally, I feel that investment in the development of dance promotion must be continued. Promoters must be given more resources and they must be encouraged to work in networks. Finally, we absolutely have to invest in an online presence.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Ms. Hébert, when you say promoters, do you mean the people who buy the shows in order to present them in theatres in various cities around the country?

[Lorraine Hébert]

Yes. They have a major role to play. They are the focal point, they are the people who promote dance in communities. They have to have the tools.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

In order to build the audience for dance, do you think that there could be greater visibility if there were more direct interaction with young people?

[Lorraine Hébert]

We do that already, but it takes a lot of work. For it to be done well, we need partnerships. Partnerships must be established and developed with other organizations and with schools. Although that is work in the trenches, basic work, work for the long haul, it pays off.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Exactly; you mention schools. A little earlier, Mr. Dalrymple, in Alberta, told us about a collaboration with schools. What kind of collaboration do you believe is needed to create interest, both in dancing itself and in going to see dance performances?

[Lorraine Hébert]

We have to take a very close look at what dance is developing with a very young audience, in schools and community centres. It is quite fascinating to see the impact of the young audience dance performances on kids and their parents. I think that it is certainly an investment in the future.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

When we were getting ready for this study, we saw the term “research and development” a lot. I have no doubt that a choreographer does a lot of research and development before putting on a show, but what exactly is the idea?

[Lorraine Hébert]

A work is something original that implies research, experimentation and rehearsal. Generally, a work has quite a short lifespan, unless it gets included in a major series of international tours. Choreographers are therefore constantly required to reinvent themselves and create new works in order to maintain their place in the market. Originality is what makes one's mark in dance. To be original, you must constantly be producing something new.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Now, I heard loud and clear about Ms. Hancox, Ms. Mongrain and Ms. McLaren's crusade to improve the lot of dancers who are getting to the age when an athlete and a dancer is expected to retire.

Do you not feel that the media should do something to make access to dance easier? There was mention of some television programs that created some interest. Is there no approach that would make it easier for people to understand, interpret and have access to dance?

[Lorraine Hébert]

At a minimum, it needs to be more visible in our media. Seeing how little visibility dance has in our media is pathetic, whether on television or in the traditional media. You have to know that, in our country, dance developed thanks to television. In the 1950s and 1960s, dance could be seen on television.