Digging Deeper: Deep End Week... Reflections on Rest
Metcalf Artistic Director Intern, Dainty Smith, reflects on Deep End Week 2024:
“Rest is radical because it disrupts the lie that we are not doing enough. It shouts: “No, that is a lie. I am enough. I am worthy now and always because I am here.”
Deep End Week began by laying down. A room full of artists from diverse backgrounds, a sea of South Asian, Afro-Caribbean, Asian, and Indigenous bodies sitting, reclining, and laying down on a soft fluffy green fabric, covering the hard floor. Scattered about the floor were large pillows and cushions, incense burning was in the air, and soft, calming music was playing in the background. It was an invitation. The invitation said, ”come in, come rest here, you are welcome here.’’
The very concept of this is radical. How do People of Colour, Black people, Indigenous people rest? How do artists who move through the world as marginalized people moving and living against the grain, constantly using our energy and talent applying for funding, grant applications, getting over rejections and creating artwork anyway, how can we possibly rest?
The insistence of the Deep End Week, hosted by Nova Dance and created by founder and artistic director Nova Bhattacharya is that we must rest. We must stop pushing our bodies and art against the often-locked doors of a systems that doesn’t always want to grant us entry.
Rest is important, and the art that we make can’t happen without it. The week offered various guest artists and facilitators to come and share their art practice with us and offer us ways that ease and self-care and and should be accessible to us.
Guest artist Blessyl Buan guided participants in decoding and writing our names in Baybayin, a Filipino script, on plain brown paper. She also showed us how to express our names through gentle, free-form movement.
Rebecca Singh, an audio describer and artist, encouraged us to honor our own pace, reminding us that art-making can happen in unconventional ways without putting pressure on ourselves.
Justine Woods, a bead-maker and creative scholar, led us through the artistry and craftsmanship of ancestral beadwork. She taught us the six-bead technique, showing us that beadwork is not just about making but about engaging in community building. Through this, she taught us to appreciate patience, connection, and humility.
Beadwork is a slow process and practice. I felt very humbled by my lopsided beaded flower, with its many lumps and bumps. But what I also felt was a tremendous sense of pride and accomplishment. I had paused. I had stopped the constant to-do list in my head, I wasn’t thinking of which email I needed to send or how hard I needed to work on a project and the project that would inevitability follow that. I simply had to sit there, learn something new, allow myself to make mistakes and discover how beautiful the process can be mistakes included.
Artists, particularly artists of colour are forever trying and doing, applying, pushing, breaking down walls and barriers, trying our best to save ourselves and our community. And trying our best to make art that is both heart-centered and innovative. And we are often going up against a system that feels exclusive and uninviting, forcing us to prove our artistic talents and that we belong repeatedly. But seeing rest as a necessity and not for only the very few or very privileged, but something incredibly valuable that should be accessible for everyone means offering ourselves grace and compassion. Resting says, I am human and that is enough. The time spent in the Deep End Week at the Theatre Centre became an incubation period of sorts. A week to be intentionally slow moving. A time to reset and reconnect with our creativity in new ways.
There was no pressure to try to make ourselves or our art perfect. Contemporary dancer and facilitator Angie Cheung reminded us that ‘’Process is equal to performance’’ and when I heard those words, it felt like a full body exhale for me. I would imagine that it felt like that for the other artists as well. A room full of people from intersecting and differing cultural backgrounds with multi-generational bodies, various lived experiences, varied dance and movement disciplines artists being reminded that perfection is not the goal; the creation process is, community is the goal, relationships are the goal, nourishment is what’s needed.
Multidisciplinary artist Yolanda Bonnell in conversation spoke about the importance of seeing ourselves in each other's artwork. That there can be so much healing in seeing our reflection in theatre and dance. It is a reminder that across all of our differences, we have more similarities and more points of connections than what separates us. It is in coming together, sharing space, sitting and laying down together, dancing and moving, and sharing rituals and skills that we can find this. Peace of mind and of body is not impossible in a capitalistic world, with indifferent systems that cause so much hurt and harm. Peace of mind can be found; we can make it for ourselves and each other.