Raising the barre: Ottawa dancers make moves to diversify city's dance scene

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In a small dance studio located in the Routhier Community Centre in Ottawa's Lowertown neighbourhood, Chloë Bonnet leads a team of eight young women in an intricate dance routine. 

On the longtime dance instructor's count, the dancers sweep their legs out, throw their hands up and lean back in tandem.

It's a practice session for a video Bonnet and dance friend Zeeggy Mercy dreamed up as an ode to female empowerment and a celebration of multiculturalism in the dance community. 

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A self-taught dancer, Mercy says she and Bonnet bonded over the lack of diversity in Ottawa's dance scene. To bring the video to life, they decided to reach out to dancers across the city who'd felt excluded from dance spaces.

"I want to show that women from different backgrounds and ethnicities have talent … especially [in] the city of Ottawa," Bonnet said in a video documenting the experience, put together by Mercy's brother, filmmaker Benjamin Shimwa, in collaboration with CBC Ottawa's Creator Network. 

1 step forward, 2 steps back 

Bonnet, who grew up in Ottawa, started dancing at age three, beginning with ballet.  

"Dance for me is a passion. It's a form of expression," she said. 

But when she tried to join dance troupes in university, she felt out of place. 

"I feel like the dance world in Ottawa is very homogeneous," explained Bonnet, whose background is Haitian. "There's a lack of diversity when it comes to the big dance teams that we have here."

She said that's why she decided to take her talents to a city she felt did reflect its diversity — New York. 

"I wanted to get trained in dance professionally, and I also wanted to dance with people that looked more like me." 

But after training at three dance schools in New York where she worked with choreographers from around the world, returning to Ottawa during the pandemic felt like a step backwards. 

"I wanted the image of the dance community to change, but unfortunately I feel like we still have work to do," said Bonnet, who noted the dance community in Ottawa is mostly focused on contemporary, ballet and jazz.

"It's for a very particular group," she said, and not representative of the diversity of dancers who she's met as a teacher at École secondaire publique De La Salle where she teaches as a guest artist once a week. 

Bridging cultures 

That diversity of style is what attracted Tanya Adesara to the project.

The recent Carleton University graduate grew up in India practising Garba, a traditional Gujarati dance. 

When she moved to Canada five years ago, she wanted to branch out into different dance forms, but she struggled to meet people from different backgrounds at classes in the city. 

"I wanted to exchange ideas — you know, that's what dance is about — just connecting to different people."

As part of the dance project, Bonnet and Mercy asked participants to share their own experiences of feeling excluded from dance spaces. Stories ranged from cost barriers to a feeling of having to work twice as hard to prove themselves.

For Adesara, the project helped her feel the connection she'd craved.

"This is what was missing. This is what I wanted to find," she said. 

Creating opportunities 

For dancer Temitayo Oyenola, the project is another way to create the missing spaces for a range of dancers — something she'd already done when she created her own dance group.

"I couldn't find a dance team that helped me express my gift," said the second-year health sciences student at Carleton University. 

"So I decided, why not start mine?" 

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Oyenola, who founded an Afrobeats dance team at the school in 2023, said she wanted to pass on that message of possibility and action to fellow dancers.

"I realized that there are actually a lot of students out there with the same dream and goal as me," she said. 

Longtime dancer and teacher Alea De Castro is happy to see more projects like these in this city. Growing up dancing ballet and jazz, she'd also felt like she never truly fit in.  

"I was one of the only Asians … in my class and I felt it. I just didn't feel like I belonged." 

After taking a few years off from dancing, she co-founded Moov Ottawa in 2018, a street dance company that offers workshops and dance classes and performs at events. 

De Castro says she wishes there was more support from the city and elsewhere to help legitimize urban dance and promote more diversity in the dance world.

"I would love to see more folks hiring people that look like me … more [people of colour]."

A step in the right direction  

Shimwa, who documented the project says he wanted to capture the beginning of what he believes can be a much larger movement in the dance world. 

"Some people just want that instant change ... but we forget that there's steps to getting there," he said, explaining why he chose the title Steps to inclusivity. 

"The moment you take one step you motivate everybody else," Shimwa said. 

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For Mercy, this project is that step, and she hopes it will inspire more change. 

"I feel like there's a lot of talented people trying to make it out there, but they don't have the opportunity," said Mercy. "If no one is giving you an opportunity, don't wait for it. Go create your own opportunities."