Physical Therapy Cabaret Curator's Statement | Samantha Ketsa

Fluid Fest 2019 – Physical Therapy Cabaret

Curated by Samantha Ketsa

A chaotic and delightful mainstay of Fluid Fest, this year’s Physical Therapy Cabaret brings you up close and personal with bold, new creative minds in the Calgary and National community. Curated by local emerging artist Samantha Ketsa, the 2019 Cabaret breeds experimentation in motion is not to be missed.   

Curator’s Statement

To me, the core of Fluid Fest (and any arts event, really) is community. This year, as a guest curator, I intend to share a slice of my community, my peers, with the Festival. You are invited, in the intimate DJD Community Living Room, to acquaint yourself with eight young female choreographers and their uniquely brave and curious works. I want to personally encourage you to be open to the moments they will share with you. 

In this “eye of the storm” moment, the programming in the 2019 Fluid Fest prompts a questioning of identity. The cabaret riffs on this same theme, sharing a range of distinct perspectives on being young, female, and a dancer. One thing that particularly strikes and inspires me is that each of these artists holds community activation central to their practice. The cabaret artists are leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs, whether it is through their own companies Future Leisure (Julianne Chapple) and Maddox Dance Company (Janelle Maddox), an active and dedicated teaching practice (Taylor Ritchie), questioning conventions of performance as independent artists and interpreters (Sarah Mitchell, Hilary James, Laura Donaldson), or instigating and bolstering the discourse around dance in Calgary (Cindy Ansah, DanceYYC – Christahh Ahh). It is empowering beyond words to be able to connect and support my fellow young female movers and shakers through the platform of the Physical Therapy Cabaret.

It is my observation that Calgary desperately needs to actively seek and support community over competition. It can be so easy to fall prey to back-biting and isolation as a result of the larger culture of perceived scarcity that all artists live and work in today. This, quite simply, can only be detrimental. My role as an emerging curator is clear: to use the Physical Therapy Cabaret, a playground for experimentation, to issue a call to courage, embracing failure, and compassion as the backbone of creativity and community. This may be a drop in the ocean, but I can only hope that the ripples will be felt deep enough to create change, however small. I hope the cabaret, as with the whole of Fluid Fest, gathers us in the spirit of community to embrace the delight of the unexpected.