Behind The Scenes with Mark Hammond

Arts administrators hold a unique and interesting perspective.

Roxy’s interest for the Archival Project was in the stories of those “behind the scenes”, in particular Arts Administration. She delves deep into the many figures in Dancemakers history who may not have ever received the credit they were due.

Too often, we as a dance community (and society at large) focus on the end result or the performance, only sometimes appreciating the many talents that help bring an idea to the stage. To be fair, this narrative has been changing over the last couple of decades.

Initially, my thoughts were that Arts administrators hold a unique and interesting perspective; there is a vast amount of knowledge about the numerous individuals they work directly with, answer to, and collaborate with, as well as an in-depth understanding of the systems in place for funding opportunities, paperwork, trends, and what else is happening in the dance community.

They tend to have the “inside scoop” on the finances, temperaments, gossip, generated ideas that never made it to fruition, and their own interpretation of a piece and all that entailed for it to get onstage. In many cases, successful art would never have been successful without them.

New questions arise—is this absence of division in Toronto due to a lack of funding or a lack of knowledge in integrating the arts with administration at the time (between 35 and 50 years ago)?

This research has opened my eyes to the immense fortitude of the Dancemakers’ founders and a few key individuals.

While sifting through boxes of Dancemakers files, which one might imagine being tedious, there were definitely moments of humour that showcased personality and intriguing stories.

In 2024, Dancemakers turned 50 years old.

This was a time of crucial and critical looking back for Dancemakers. As a way to commemorate this anniversary, we worked with Artist Researchers to read “against the grain” of our archive, which is housed at Dance Collection Danse (DCD) located at 2 Carlton St Unit 1303 in Tkaranto.

Each artist researcher was given a one-week (paid) Writing Residency at Dance Collection Danse (or remotely using DCD’s digital archives) with the intention to produce content that will permanently live on Dancemakers’ website.