When we get angry at society or politics, we’ll sometimes reach out to social media to express ourselves. Others might write a letter to a politician or take action through protesting, but have you ever considered dancing? Dance has been used as a form of expression for centuries, but perhaps it’s evolved enough to make a statement, show contentment or even tell a personal story. If you have something to say and you’re an artist, then your art can become your voice.
Jonathan Elliott – Director/Producer/Cinematographer recognized the potential to use dance as a vehicle for expression. He created a 7-part web series that features eight BIPOC dancers as they use their bodies and unique dance forms to confront systemic racism, preserve their cultural traditions and make space for future generations. With deeply personal interviews and original, improvised choreography, this series explores the politics, traditions and personal expression that only dance as an art form can provide.
What We Leave Behind, was a big winner at the T.O. WebFest last week with multiple awards. It’s outside the box, it’s entertaining and educational. I watched all seven episodes, I learned some new dance moves and I grew a new appreciation for the history of cultural dance.
It’s all very new to me, so I managed to track down the source of this unique project, Jonathan Elliot. We spoke over Zoom and he was terrific at explaining the entire concept. Roll the tape!
HNMAG “This is a great series that educates and entertains with each episode. Where did the idea of using dance to tell BIPOC stories initially come from?”
JON “I don’t personally have a dance background, but my partner, Grace Smith is the editor for a Dance magazine… so I’ve been inundated in that world for 7 years now, and I’ve seen some revolution in the dance scene. Some marginalized people are using dance as a vehicle to talk about social issues that propel their own narratives forward. It’s very interesting when you’re using your body and movement to talk about something. I had the idea back in early Covid and the George Floyd incident happened, then there was Black Lives Matter… things started happening in the Indigenous community, then there was the Indigenous Movement. It was really quite a rife political and social time and I felt that artists were having a difficult time speaking to these issues. I knew one of the dancers featured in the series. Arrie Evans has a company, Political Movements and I’d seen a few dances she was putting on. It wasn’t necessarily dance, but a fusion of political/social ideas mixed in with dance and more contemporary stuff, that I found really moving. The genesis for the idea came out of finding a way to talk about these important issues in a way that’s a little unexpected and unconventional.”
HNMAG “I think the dancing works very well as a vehicle and I think some people will really gravitate toward it. Who do you believe your audience is?”
JON “That’s very interesting because I’ve gotten a lot of different responses from many different audiences based on different components of the series. I did want to make this series for those people that did have an appreciation for entertainment and those particular styles, but I also wanted to create more appeal by adding the educational factor. It draws people in from those personal/cultural communities that are interested in seeing how they’re dance forms are portrayed or how they relate to different dance forms or different cultures. It’s geared toward a younger audience/people with an interest in dance but because we’re addressing many of these social and political issues through the dance itself, we’re also demonstrating the cultural importance of these dances. I wanted to make it educational for dancers and for people coming at it for the first time.”
HNMAG “Did you know which BIPOC subjects you wanted to represent before going into the project?”
JON “Not really. I am Mohawk, so I do like to have that representation in there and thankfully, Joe Martin was able to do that in the series. Because of what was happening at the time, my focus was on the Afro and Indigenous communities and representation. In going into this series, my focus really was streamlined on those two. If you cast that net too wide, it can get a little jumbled. I really wanted the component of those two communities to draw the parallels and tell their stories. I’d been wrestling with it for awhile and there were other communities I had reached out to for participation, but people had Covid safety concerns. Once I began to get confirmation from the other communities, I focused on them with the hope of building on them.”
HNMAG “How did you locate the rest of your dancers and did you have to do much research on the subject?”
JON “I knew the majority of them before shooting and I wanted each episode to be unique and have a different style from the others. I did do some research on the people involved, so I knew some facts, history and terminology to bring myself up to speed. As far as the other dancers that I didn’t know, I went through the other dancers for more and then we just threw it out to social media in the Greater Toronto Area. That’s how we found Nichole Leveck, Nazarene Pope and Christina Restoule. It was great, I really enjoyed working with them and they brought a lot of input into the project.”
HNMAG “Was this series always intended to have each episode under 7 mins?”
JON “I believe I had made that conscious decision to keep the episodes between the 5-7 min range. I believe in the adage of ‘shorter is better’ for online specific content. I always want to believe that people will want to watch an entire episode and if it’s floating around the 10-minute mark, you run the risk of people being less engaged. I also knew we had limited time with the locations we were in and we had to shoot it within 5 hours maximum per episode. It’s not a lot of time to do the interview, shoot all the B Roll footage and the dance. I was really driven by those 2 factors and I didn’t want to ask too much of their time and have them burn out.”
HNMAG “Did you treat each episode separately or did you film back-to-back, then edit all the footage?”
JON “We actually shot quite a few of them back-to-back. We also tried to schedule 2 per day and managed 4 episodes in 2 days. The rest had scheduling conflicts which resulted in separate shooting days – sometimes driving from one end of the city to the other to maintain a different shooting location for each episode. The majority of them were shot in Toronto except for 2. One was shot in the Peterborough area and Joe Martin’s episode was shot on my reservation of Six Nations because he lives there. We actually shot it in the backyard of my aunt’s property. It was nice and open with full access, which was great.”
HNMAG “Is this your first cultural/BIPOC project and do you want to continue to cover more social issues like this?”
JON “I’d say that the majority of my projects that I write and direct all tackle a variety of different issues. A lot of the projects that I shoot and direct but aren’t necessarily my own, also deal with a lot of Indigenous issues as well. It’s something that I’m quite passionate about and want to continue doing. I want to tell those stories about Indigenous communities that don’t necessarily get the same platform as other voices. I want to continue propelling that forward by telling our stories from our perspectives. It’s really the only types of projects I want to do going forward and thankfully I’ve been lucky enough to be given the opportunity to work on different projects that are within our mandate. That’s absolutely my focus going forward.”
HNMAG “What does the title, What We Leave Behind refer to?”
JON “It was based on the quote that Christina Restoule says in her episode, Jingle Dress. It’s an idea that is common amongst Indigenous and other BIPOC of the practice of passing on information to the next generation. For myself, as a Mohawk person – we’re taught to always think ahead, for the next 7 generations ahead. You’re always preparing and laying the groundwork for your grandkids and 5 more generations of grandkids, so they can thrive and have information, access to their culture and their teachings. This series was meant to be part of that education while providing a glimpse into these different styles of dance. Most of these dances come from a very long and culturally significant background. Those teachings have been passed down to us and we’re taking them into this modern context and passing that onto our future. What kind of example do we want to set and what kind of world do we want to build?”
HNMAG “Did you win any awards in the T.O. WebFest for your series, What We Leave Behind?”
JON “Yes, I was really shocked and honoured that it won a few awards, including the BIPOC Spotlight, which I believe is a new award this year. It’s geared toward those series that tell BIPOC stories, shed a light on BIPOC perspectives with BIPOC creators. I was so happy that we won that award in particular because that was the goal of the series – to tell these stories and speak to these larger issues communities are facing. The entire series was built on that foundation. We also won in the music category, which was also great. My good friend Sutra Song did a lot of great compositions for a lot of the episodes and composition pieces. It really elevated and spoke to themes of the interviews, as well as making them fit the tone of what they were saying. We also had a lot of live music performed in multiple episodes which also helps to tell the stories as well through their own art forms. I believe we had also received an honourable mention, which they don’t often give out but I was very happy about it. I really wanted people to connect to this project and I’m really happy that’s the case.”
HNMAG “If you could be any animal, which would it be?”
JON “I always have an easy answer for this because it’s my favourite animal – a gorilla. They seem like they have a nice relaxing life in the wild. They’re still quite smart, they know how to use tools, they have a lot of fun and they have a lot of family time (laughing).”
HNMAG “If you had a super power what would it be?”
JON “It would have to be teleportation. It would make life so much easier, but I tend to get into the minutia of how the powers operate. If it’s just a matter of thinking about a location, then going there – absolutely!”
This series has something for everybody and if you enjoy new forms of expression that are unconventional and outside the norm, then please watch What We Leave Behind.