Location: Barbara McIntyre Theatre
Moderator: Alex Ferrone
Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston, “Randia’s Quiet Theatre: Performing Care and Activism with a Romani Elder”
Drawing on my book, Randia’s Quiet Theatre: Performing Care and Activism with a Romani Elder, this paper examines performance ethnography and autofiction as political sites for imagining alternative futures, more-than-human ethics, and practices of worldmaking. I focus on dramatic storytelling sessions with Randia, a talented Romani storyteller and performer, which aimed to document her life as an elderly and disabled woman in post-EU accession migration-era Poland. Randia, the mother of eight, saw many of her children move to England, and when old age and disability prevented her from fortune-telling, she became a “prisoner of the fourth floor”—a condition defined by loneliness, lack of basic amenities, silence, and the absence of “quiet care.” In our dramatic storytelling sessions, Randia stepped into her characters, and the roved—between the past, the present, and the future, between different locations, and between the world of the living and the world of the spirits. Through performance, her characters changed history and the lives of others. They could even undo death. I argue that Randia’s performances were a form of quiet activism—a mode of listening and being present—that rehearsed alternative lives, worlds, and futures for herself and her loved ones. She articulated an ethics of care among individuals, communities, and spirits. Ultimately, I examine the potential of performance ethnography as a means of intergenerational knowledge-sharing that imagines a world where elderly can live dignified lives.
Heunjung Lee and Julia Henderson, “Dementia in Opera: Analyzing Dementia Narratives through a Citizenship Lens”
In recent years, a small but significant number of opera productions have centred on aging characters living with dementia as protagonists. This paper analyzes the emergence of new dementia narratives in two contemporary operas: Bluebeard’s Castle (2025), produced by Edmonton Opera, and Sky on Swings (2018) by Opera Philadelphia, written by Canadian playwright Hannah Moscovitch. Both productions foreground love stories—Bluebeard’s Castle explores enduring and evolving forms of care between a couple married for over forty years, while Sky on Swings traces the new connection between two older women at different stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Through our analysis, we argue that these operas challenge the dominant, stigmatizing narrative of dementia as a story solely of decline and loss. They portray the struggles faced by characters living with dementia, and at the same time, foreground dementia as a condition that can foster deep love. Bluebeard’s Castle stages a couple’s enduring mutual love across time; however, aspects of its composition, design, and staging mean it does not fully escape conventional dementia narratives. Sky on Swings, on the other hand, stages a more radical narrative of connection, as love emerges not despite memory loss but through it, and characters are “released” from conventional identities and rational selves.
Zhuohao Li, “From Body to Embodiment: Chinese Calligraphy as Methodology in Somatic Practice”
This paper investigates how Chinese calligraphy provides a methodology for dancers in somatic practice through the exploration of character imagery, metaphorical meaning, and writing principles. Scholars such as Barbara Clark and Nancy Topf have developed approaches to cultivating bodily awareness by visualizing anatomical structures and attuning the body to language sounds. While Clark and Topf emphasize phonetic engagement in developing somatic awareness, this study turns to the pictographic features of Chinese characters as an alternative modality of somatic imagination. As a logographic system that retains its pictorial legacies, Chinese writing offers dancers a visual and conceptual resource for reimagining the body through the act of inscription.
This framework finds choreographic realization in Lin Hwai-min’s Cursive trilogy (2001–2005) with Cloud Gate Dance Theatre. Here, the gestural dynamics of calligraphy—its rhythm, pressure, and release—are translated into choreographic principles guiding movement and spatial composition. Lin reimagines the brushstroke as a kinetic impulse arising from breath and internal energy, transforming the stage into a living scroll where ink becomes movement and inscription becomes embodiment. Calligraphy thus functions not merely as an aesthetic motif but as a somatic methodology that cultivates ecological awareness by revealing interrelations encoded in pictographic character formation, categorization, and writing principles. By tracing the perception of the body in calligraphic practice, this paper demonstrates how Chinese calligraphy, as a living legacy, reframes contemporary dance in the Sinophone world and explores its potential application in somatic practice beyond Chinese-language speakers.
Biographies:
Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston is Associate Professor of Theatre at York University. Her research interests lie in performance ethnography, autofiction, and research-creation. Her recent book Randia’s Quiet Theater (2025) was awarded the Association for Women in Slavic Studies 2025 Heldt Prize for Best Book Introducing New, Innovative, and/or Underrepresented Perspectives into any Area of Slavic/East European/Eurasian Studies.
Dr. Heunjung Lee is SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Calgary. Her project, Cultural Dance for Dementia, investigates how a culturally tailored dance program can support the identities and creativity of Korean older adults with dementia.
Dr. Julia Henderson is assistant professor in the Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at the University of British Columbia and holds a PhD in theatre.
Zhuohao Li is a PhD candidate in Performance and Theatre Studies in the Department of Drama at the University of Alberta. Her research investigates the saturation of Lyricism in Chinese calligraphy and contemporary dance in terms of performers’ training methods, choreography, and mise en scène. She is also a dramaturg, performer, calligraphy practitioner, editor, and Chinese- English translator.