Blog

Member Spotlight: Q&A with 

Who is Donna Redlick in a sentence?
Someone who is curious about dance and movement, and how it brings us in relationship to others and the world around us.

Tell us a bit about your work and practice.
I am a somatic-based dance artist, choreographer, and teacher, as well as a Registered Master Somatic Educator and Therapist. I am trained and certified in both Laban/ Bartenieff Movement Studies and Developmental Movement. My somatic-based dance classes, which I teach and offer at The Dance Centre, focus on the integration of body-mind through Laban/ Bartenieff concepts, in direct applications to dance. As a Somatic Movement Therapist I work one-on-one supporting individuals to find embodiment through movement repatterning.

As a choreographer I create and produce independent contemporary dance works, installations and films that are based on the subjective and lived experience.  I am interested in a philosophical and phenomenological approach to dance and create works from states of reflecting, being and becoming.

How long have you been dancing?
I began dancing 50 years ago and I have had a professional career in dance for almost 35 years. I think I gravitated towards dance as a child because it was a non-verbal form of communication. I was an extremely shy child and dance gave me a voice, a way to communicate and express beyond words.

How does dance fit into your life currently – are there any upcoming projects you want to share with us? 
I am currently engaged in a practice I call Moving Empathetically Together: In Dance. I am curious about how we come into relation to dance the space of the in-between, through attunement skills and kinesthetic empathy. Last summer I created an outdoor somatic-based dance piece called Relationscapes where we moved empathetically together in relation to nature and each other.  I proposed the question – What happens when we slow down, engage our senses, and work with the intention of deep listening to one another, with nature as our guide?  The work was presented as part of the Vine Arts Festival. I hope to return to development of this project again this summer. Stay tuned.

How would you describe dance’s impact on your life?
Dance has given me a voice. I was so shy as a child that I would literally hide in moments of intense shyness, yet at the same time I would observe what was going on around me. I would watch people in relationship. One of my favourite activities as a child was to spend time alone making small installations out of found objects. You could say this was the start of me becoming a choreographer. I have always been drawn to the relationship between things – both people and objects. To date I have choreographed over 100 works, in both community and professional settings. The act of exploring choreography and bringing dancers together in relation, takes me into a pure flow state. During this flow state I experience emergence, possibility and the unknown revealing itself.  I guess you could say that dance has offered me a way to experience the invisible – that which is real but cannot be seen, or what I might describe as the connective tissue that binds us together as humans at a universal level.

What three core values drive your engagement with dance? 
Empathy, Relationship, and Curiosity.

Do you have a particular practice that you carry out each day or have you implemented new practices over these last few years?
I have developed a somatic dance curriculum which I refer to as Somatic Dance Practice Method and I put this method into practice within my Soma Dance classes that I teach. One of the main principles, within my method of practice, is to foreground the sensing experience. Every day I make ‘a date with gravity’, I come down to the floor and begin my rolling practice. This practice requires me to weight sense in a reciprocal relationship with gravity. Through rolling I discover deep yielding and presence and this calms my nervous system, I let-go of thinking and I begin sensing.  Every Soma Dance class that I teach each week begins this same way.

What would you say are the most significant benefits for you in being a Dance Centre member?
I appreciate being able to rent studio space for classes, research, and creative process. I also love the different programs offered by the Dance Centre and I highly value belonging to a community. The E-Central Newsletter, sent out bi-weekly by The Dance Centre, keeps me informed and up to date on what is happening within the dance community at large. I am so grateful for all The Dance Centre has to offer.

Donna’s Member Profile
Website
Instagram

________________________________________________________________________________________

Interested in becoming a Dance Centre Member? Learn more here.
We support the development of dance in BC as a resource centre providing programs and services for dance professionals.

Photos: Rui Nunes and Yvonne Chew