dance+words is an initiative to disseminate ideas and facilitate conversations around dance and movement arts across Canada. Kathleen and Philip aim to combine old school journalistic values and experience with new technological tools and an inter-generational, inclusive, respectful and curious attitude towards thinking about and engaging with the Canadian dance scene.
Kathleen Smith is a Toronto-based writer, filmmaker and web designer with an interest in the arts. As a writer, she has investigated issues in performance and culture for many publications and platforms, both print and online, including NOW Weekly, Dance International, Pointe, Toronto Life Fashion, House and Home, the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail. Smith was Editor in chief at The Dance Current and thedancecurrent.com from 2011 – 2014. As a film producer and director at Hellhound Productions from 2006 – 2015, Smith worked on short films and features for Channel 4, TV Ontario, Sundance Channel, Bravo! and the Knowledge Network and presented festival premieres at Hot Docs, Toronto International Film Festival, Regent Park Film Festival and Buenos Aires International Film Festival.
Philip Szporer is a Montreal-based filmmaker, writer, and lecturer. He has been immersed in the Canadian dance world for over 40 years. Currently, he teaches in the Contemporary Dance department, the Faculty of Fine Arts, and the Loyola College for Diversity and Sustainability at Concordia University. In 1999, he was awarded a Pew National Dance Media Fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was the recipient of the Jacqueline Lemieux Prize in 2010, awarded by the Canada Council of the Arts. And he was recognized with a Distinguished Teaching Award from Concordia University’s Faculty of Fine Arts in Spring 2016. In 2001, Philip along with Marlene Millar, co-founded the Montréal-based award-winning media arts production company, Mouvement Perpétuel. Together they have co-directed and co-produced a critically acclaimed collection of documentaries, short dance films, and installation work to great acclaim. Their award-winning films have been broadcast nationally and internationally, and widely circulated at festivals worldwide and at major events and spaces.
