Ola Skanks

This essay chronicles my research relationship with choreographer, teacher, educator, and activist Ola Skanks. Canadian-born and of West Indian (St. Lucia and Barbados) descent, Skanks was a groundbreaking dance and fashion design artist who combined modern, Western art forms with traditional dances of the Africa diaspora. I share excerpts from my work to date, including my archival exhibition, It’s About Time: Dancing Black in Canada 1900–1970, to provide context for the circumstances that Black people danced in, socially and/or as performers. This is followed by a selection of photos from Skanks’s archival collection that illustrate the scope of her creative and community contributions. In conclusion, I offer a transcription of a speech I gave when Skanks was inducted into the Dance Collection Danse’s 2018 Encore! Dance Hall of Fame, alongside some of Canada’s most well-known dance artists and community builders. I detail some of the highlights of my meetings with her and also the profundity of the delayed recognition of a woman so far ahead of her time

Art · Art history · Contemporary dance · Context (archaeology) · Dance · Diaspora · Exhibition · Literature · Media studies · Modern dance · Poetry · Sociology · Visual arts · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Gender Studies · History