11 QUESTIONS
“I motivate people by being excited and passionate about the work we do together. I invite others to share in that passion. If you aren’t excited about what you do, you can’t expect others to care about it.”
WHO Vitek Wincza
COMPANY Artistic director
TITLE Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts
LOCATION 126 James St. S.
1 I once read about the “bicycle philosophy” in a book. Sometimes your wheels turn fast and sometimes they turn slow, but if they stop, you lose your balance and fall. That image stays with me. I make sure my wheels are always turning and that I’m always moving forward in life and in my career. 2 The Baltic coastline of Poland. I’m Canadian by choice but Polish by birth. That country is my mother. 3 Bayfront Park. I love strolling through nature and looking out at the water, particularly at dusk. Our nonprofit organization, HCA Dance Theatre, presents a yearly festival called Dusk Dances at Bayfront, which is a beautiful event that brings the community together to watch professional Canadian dancers perform in the park at sunset each summer. It’s a culmination of everything I love. 4 I love to sit down with some good wine or brandy while listening to classical music or jazz. What I listen to depends on my mood, but Chopin and Chet Baker are two of my favourites. 5 I motivate people by being excited and passionate about the work we do together. I invite others to share in that passion. If you aren’t excited about what you do, you can’t expect others to care about it. 6 I’m good at breathing life into ideas and turning them into reality. I’m resourceful when I work on projects. I love the creative process and building things from the ground up. 7 I never consider past mistakes or failures as regrets. I see them as opportunities to learn. If something does not go as well as planned or I’ve made a mistake, it’s OK to feel upset for a moment. After that, I break down the issue in pieces and build something with them! Mistakes happen for a reason — they mean that you have something more to master. 8 The diverse population and mixture of social classes, all living and working together. We can learn from one another and create a strong community. Also, geographical location. We’re close to Toronto and Niagara Falls, so it feels like Hamilton is the centre of something great — a hub in Ontario. 9 We need to work hard to alleviate poverty, particularly child poverty. Our nonprofit arm of HCA, Culture for Kids in the Arts (CKA), is doing its part by bringing free arts education to children. We work with many kids and families in difficult financial circumstances and have provided high quality arts programming to 50,000 children in 15 years through CKA. To us, participation in the arts is a right, not a privilege. Everyone should have equal access to arts, regardless of background or social class. We want to help disrupt the cycle of poverty and create a livable city in which there are opportunities for all people. 10 HCA aims to create a safe, creative and inspiring environment for the Hamilton community to learn, grow and achieve in the arts. 11 When I was nine and living in Poland, my neighbour brought the newspaper to my house. I saw an advertisement announcing auditions for a boys’ ballet school. It featured a young man flying in the air, in midjump. In three seconds, I knew I wanted to be that child. He had a magical and elegant weightlessness in that picture and an expression of pure passion and joy on his face. I never went to the theatre as a child. I didn’t know what an audition was before that moment. But I tried out for the school and was one of 50 boys out of 400 to make the cut, and one of seven to graduate from the school. It was a turning point, a door swinging open to my future. I had found my passion for dance and arts in an instant.