Canadian Heritage committee  Good afternoon. Thank you for providing me this opportunity to talk to you about dance in Calgary, jazz dance, and DJD. Decidedly Jazz Danceworks was born in 1984 out of the University of Calgary. Vicki Adams Willis had founded one of the only jazz dance programs at a Canadian

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. It's been very exciting and it's been a lot of work. We did receive $1.9 million from the Heritage fund as part of that $23 million.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you.

Canadian Heritage committee  Oh, I think that from a young age, sadly, boys aren't encouraged to dance as much as girls. There's a supply and demand issue in that there are many more trained female dancers than male dancers. A male dancer with any talent has a greater opportunity for contracts. Often you wil

Canadian Heritage committee  We recently did a project with a guest company from Brazil. We brought in five dancers and shared an evening of work. We did half the work; they did half the work, and then we did a collaboration. We would love this to be a much larger project and to tour to Brazil, but there isn

Canadian Heritage committee  Well, it would be touring support and just various programs that we can access for funding.

Canadian Heritage committee  I'm a big believer in operating funding. We need operating funding to allow us to do what we do. I went to a presentation last week, and I know that Canada Council is streamlining all its grants. As a small organization—even the $2 million organization, which you may think is big

Canadian Heritage committee  At this point, the only one I know specific details about is the Building Canada fund, which would be for renovations of the facilities and which we would not be eligible for. I have not seen the details. I've heard that the details are going to come, but I haven't seen details o

Canadian Heritage committee  Oh, 2017 is very close, and time goes very fast. In order to do something properly, we need more advance notice, yes.

Canadian Heritage committee  The paperwork is massive and the rules change continuously. We have a lawyer who does it all for us pro bono. If we didn't have that, we wouldn't be able to do it. There was no example that I know of, of abuse in the cultural sector. From having run auditions across Canada for 10

Canadian Heritage committee  Good afternoon. I thank you for this opportunity to speak to you today. My name is Kathi Sundstrom, and I'm the Executive Director of Calgary-based Decidedly Jazz Danceworks, DJD. DJD is one of a handful of jazz dance companies in North America. Our mission is to enrich lives b

Canadian Heritage committee  Do you mean in person? I couldn't tell you that. I'm sorry.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes.