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Decidedly Jazz Danceworks

Overview

Decidedly Jazz Danceworks (DJD) is a Canadian jazz dance company and dance school based in Calgary, Alberta. The company was founded in 1984 and continues to offer regular performances and classes in the Decidedly Jazz Danceworks Centre, located in Calgary’s Kahanoff Centre. The company has performed in various locations in Canada, as well as the U.S. and internationally. Performance credits include the Toronto Fall for Dance North festival, and Jacob’s Pillow in Beckett, Massachusetts in the U.S. In 2022, the three founders of DJD, Vicki Adams Willis, Michele Moss, and Hannah Stilwell, were inducted into the Canadian Dance Hall of Fame in Toronto, Canada. This award honored their work in establishing the company and their creative contributions to the company since then. In addition, founder and former director Vicki Adams Willis has won both the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Arts Award (2021) as well as the University of Calgary’s Distinguished Alumni Award for Lifetime Achievement (2020). Current director Kimberly Cooper has also been honored with Dance Victoria’s Crystal Dance Prize in 2014 for her dance research in Brazil, as well as the 2002 Emerging Artist of the Year Award from Alberta Dance Alliance.

Company Beginnings

In 1984, University of Calgary jazz dance department head, Vicki Adams Willis, along with two of her graduating students, Michèle Moss and Hannah Stilwell, started Decidedly Jazz Danceworks. Their mission was to bring attention to the African American roots of jazz dance and create a concert jazz dance company. The three began their creative work in a one-room upstairs dance studio in Calgary, choreographing, rehearsing, and presenting new jazz dance pieces to live music. They received a grant to hire four dancers for two months: Stilwell, Moss, Jill Currie, and Sean Cheesman, and the show's success caused them to extend its run. Willis encouraged her younger co-founders to study dance in Africa and the Caribbean, in order to develop embodied knowledge of the roots of jazz dance. The two took their first research trip to Dakar in Senegal, Africa in 1986 to study dance.

By 1987, Decidedly Jazz Danceworks had ten dancers, all of them full-time. That was also the year that they created a dance school. They offered classes in jazz dance and related forms, while continuing to perform. Over time, they began to offer additional classes in a variety of dance styles. Their school developed both a recreational dance program and a professional training program. Founding Artistic Director Willis has won several honors and awards over the last decade, including the 2020 Distinguished Alumni Award for Lifetime Achievement from University of Calgary; 2021 Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Arts Awards, 2022 induction into Canada's Dance Collection Danse Hall of Fame, and a 2022 Queen Elizabeth 11 Platinum Jubilee Medal. In addition to travelling throughout Canada, the company performed at the Havana International Jazz Festival in 2005.

Company Aesthetics and Development

Because Willis urged her company members to travel in order to study the roots of jazz in a variety of cultures, her company members returned with a lot of knowledge to share with others. This idea of studying dance in African and African-diasporic communities still influences the company and school today. Individuals within the company have studied and taught many styles including swing, Afro-Brazilian, rhythm tap, salsa, South Indian bharata natyam, flamenco, and Afro-Cuban. All of these have contributed to the movement possibilities within the choreography.

Throughout the 1990s, Willis, as the primary choreographer for the company, transitioned away from the more balletic influences common to concert jazz dance companies in the late 20th century. Instead, she embraced the African-based forms that the dancers were learning. She also encouraged the dancers to generate movement through improvisation, instead of crafting every step of the choreography herself. This created a democratic approach, allowing the dancers' strengths to be revealed and integrated into the dances.

Willis has produced over 35 original works for the company since its inception. She continued her leadership of the company until 2013, when she transitioned to the role of Founder in Residence, and appointed dancer/choreographer Kimberly Cooper as Artistic Director of the company.

Under Cooper's direction, Decidedly Jazz Danceworks creates two to three original works each year, at least one of which has live music. Their philosophy is that jazz music is the foundation of jazz dance, and their collaborations have included work with Rubim de Toledo, Tommy Banks, Mark Murphy, PJ Perry, Jackie Richardson, and others.

Kathi Sundstrom is the Executive Director of Decidedly Jazz Danceworks, and has worked with them since 1993. In 2017, Sundstrom won the Calgary Award for Community Achievement in the Arts.

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