Community Conversations

Photo of Susan Lee during In Good Time by Fran Chudnoff

Community Conversations responds to the needs of Asian diasporic dance artists by creating a space for dialogue, connection, and mutual support. Rooted in the belief that collective knowledge creates abundance, these gatherings ask: What can we learn from one another? What do people need? How can we better support each other through sharing resources, experiences, and care?

Through meet-and-greets, resource-sharing, and co-learning sessions, artists from across Canada connect as a way to exchange resources, questions, and ideas around topics such as training, creative process, access to space, sustainability, and community care.

Above all, Community Conversations offers welcoming opportunities to gather, share experiences, and strengthen connection, solidarity, and support across the Canadian Asian diaspora dance community.

Photo of CAD Community Meal 2025 by Fran Chudnoff

Connection - building relationships across the community

Resource Sharing - exchanging knowledge, tools, and experiences

Sustainability - discussing long-term artistic and community well-being

Previous Community Conversations

  • Community Conversations is a casual gathering space where artists are encouraged to share resources and speak to their unique experiences relating to space in dance. Can we create sustainable abundance with a network of support through sharing information? What can we learn from each other? What do people need?

    Where do you dance? Who is hosting these spaces? How does the availability of space shape your practice or training? What alternative methods have you found for navigating the precarity and lack of dedicated dance spaces? What are your dream conditions for creating and gathering with other artists? What access barriers continue to arise for you in dance spaces?

  • What challenges and points of connection emerge when organizing as an Asian dance artist working in Montreal? What do organizers need right now, and what do you feel you can offer to your community? How do language differences and cultural silos shape the ways people organize and imagine collective work?

Community Conversations - Space Recording

CanAsian Dance is situated in Tkaronto, a Mohawk word meaning “the place in the water where the trees are standing.” It is the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples, and it continues to be the home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples.

This land is under the Dish with One Spoon covenant, an agreement between the Anishinaabeg and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. This land is a dish to be shared and cared for and we all share one spoon; the spoon is to be used to take only what is needed and to leave enough for others, thus ensuring a viable and abundant future. We recognize the enduring resilience of Indigenous peoples and we acknowledge that we are accountable to these relationships and these agreements. 

We carry these values of responsibility in sharing and caring in abundance with consideration of not only ourselves but of our communities that we share together.

Land Acknowledgement

We are grateful to the following funding partners for their ongoing support