Lose yourself to dance
New collective moves away from competition
SYDNEY — As the Fleetwood Mac song “Go Your Own Way” plays, a group of young women move gracefully across the burnished wood floors of an old church on a hot August evening.
Setting sunlight streams through stained glass windows as they move, creating shadows of light and dark around them. As they flex and move, these women show the easy finesse of those who have gone through years of dance training. And in truth, they are dancers, members of the island’s newest dance group, Painted Dance Collective. They are led by Hannah Sparling who, like the song being played, “goes her own way.”
“She’s my main inspiration to dance,” said Bree-Lynne Jennex, 15, of New Waterford, one of the dancers taking part in the session. “I’ve known her since I was seven — she’s always been my dance teacher and I love her.”
Most of the dancers there that evening echoed Jennex’s sentiments. They adore dancing and want to keep doing it for as long as they are able, an idea near and dear to Sparling’s heart.
First of all, Sparling wants to end the idea that dance is only for children and youth. The very idea that dance education ends after high school irks her.
“Right now dance seems to be the only art in Nova Scotia that people stop doing once they graduate high school,” Sparling said in a recent interview. “That sends a huge red flag for me — why is this the only art or sport that we stop doing once we graduate? You don’t put your guitar down, you don’t stop playing hockey.”
With that in mind, Sparling, 26, left a government job in Halifax to come back to Sydney to open up her own dance academy, Painted Dance Collective at 1681 George St., the former Immaculate Heart Church. Her goal is to take dance away from being a pursuit open only to youth and children and make it available to all ages.
Secondly, she wants to offer something besides the usual competitiveness.
Sparling, who has extensive studio training in contemporary, ballet, jazz, lyrical, modern, musical theatre and acrobatics, says her company is a non-competitive dance collective that emphasizes training, rehearsal and learning new styles rather than preparing for competitions.
“It’s more of a training space — that what happens in the studio stays in the studio kind of thing and people are able to come together outside of their competitive studios to dance with their friends who may dance in other studios,” she said. “It’s for people who want to take a step back from that and still dance but maybe not as competitively so they are able to find that balance. Dance for the sake of dance — it’s for the pure enjoyment of it and cultivating that community of ‘we dance because we love to dance.’”
Since the collective began a few months ago, Sparling has been arranging pop-up classes and drop-in classes, which have been popular, since they allow dancers to try different styles.
“I had 10 different instructors doing 10 different styles, 10 different classes and our numbers in the classes ranged from 20 to 50 and they were wildly successful,” said Sparling. “It gives them the opportunity to work with other dancers they may not get to dance with as often and it just helps them add on to their repertoire and training because we’re limited in that in Cape Breton.”
In addition to classes, Sparling’s resident dance company will be doing a performance sometime in October at the Boysenberry Café and Boutique in Sydney. So far, Sparling’s ideas are being greeted with open arms in the local dance community.
“It’s really nice to be a part of this,” said Tessa Worth, 19, of Sydney. “I’m the St. Mary’s University dance captain for this coming year and it’s really nice to take these classes over the summer so I can stay active and stay dancing.”
Staying limber is also important to Clara Reynolds-White, 18, of Sydney who’s on a wait list for a dance school in Ontario.
“I was actually supposed to go to Toronto for dance this year but I’m on the wait list for a school and was really scared about staying in Sydney because it’s very much a competitive scene here and there’s not a lot of more performance dance,” said Reynolds-White. “And when Hannah told me about this I was really excited about it and it made me even more at peace staying here, being at university and getting to dance with this.”
Sparling plans to continue her classes into the fall as well as offer programs for adults who may not have previous dance training.
“We’re exploring what will be of most interest but there’s been a lot of demand for adult classes which is exciting,” she said.
Getting those adults into classes could be a challenge since some may believe that you can’t dance past childhood, a myth Sparling wants to end.
“It’s such a false belief and I think that comes from fear,” said Sparling. “I want to make it as less intimidating as I possibly can. When you have the right teacher at the front of the room, you have the right community and experience and energy, then people will latch onto it very quickly and realize the fear wasn’t as intense as it might have seemed at first.”
For student Erica MacNeil, 19, of Sydney, the best part is having the opportunity to simply move artfully.
“I think it’s a really fun thing to do — to be able to dance with people from Cape Breton,” she said. “I like to do it for fun.”