the Dance

Discipline : Art & Photography

Categories : Art Projects / Artwork - Public Space : Silver certification

The Dance is an integrated Public Art Work that marks and celebrates 2SLGBTQ+ history, presence, and community within the City of Toronto.  A dance floor, revealed outside the confines of obscuring walls, publicly presents itself as an ‘other’ space within George Hislop Park.  The Dance stands in for spaces created, appropriated, and claimed by members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community to celebrate, love, play, exist, resist, demand, care and remember.  Whether private, public or civic, these spaces provided a haven and witnessed the resilience and success of the community.  In turn, the actions within these spaces altered and evolved Toronto towards the inclusive city we celebrate and hold accountable today.  

The project originated with a call from the City of Toronto to include a self-identifying 2SLGBTQ+ artist/designer to be included on the Consultant team for the redevelopment of a series of linear parks that run above the subway line adjacent to Yonge Street.  The project location was identified to be within George Hislop Park with the intention to commemorate and celebrate the City’s 2SLGBTQ+ history, leadership, excellence and resiliency.  The park is located within the city’s largest 2SLGBTQ+ neighbourhood, Church-Wellesley Village and named after the influential gay rights activist and one of the first openly gay candidates for Toronto City Council and the Ontario Provincial Legislature. The project took great effort to broaden references to address the various perspectives, histories, and positions contained with the 2SLGBTQ+ collective identities.  

Intentionally avoiding a token sculptural element added into the park, that could as easily be removed, the Dance exists of the material fabric of the park itself. It is the park, but distinct; simultaneously holding the same and separate ground.  Individual materials present differently creating new relationships suggesting an ephemeral counter space within the landscape.  Colour distinct pavers and aggregate ground cover, cut and polished granite boulders, steel arches that flare open with exposed reflective bodies, and shifting coloured lighting are the manipulated materials that behave independently and communally to evoke a three-dimensional environment of the Dance.  

Coded with references at various scales of detail and urban reference, the artwork is intentionally non demanding but open to multivalent interpretation. Whether in distracted passing, finding delight while inhabiting the colour, unlocking coded references or seeing oneself reflected as an individual or group within the space of the Dance, the artwork aims to engage with the public at an individual’s respective willingness and scale of attention.  At times it is a dancefloor, a queer civic space.  At other times it appears emptied after an event and remaining still with a nostalgic air or waiting patiently for future actions that awaken a new Dance.

The project in images