Leading Edge After Performance (LEAP) Keynote Address, November 12, 2016

What a great privilege it is to be here today, among so many extraordinary individuals. I’m looking out, in awe, at a sea of astonishing artists and athletes; people who have dedicated themselves to the relentless work and heavy sacrifices necessary to rise above the ordinary and to perform at the very highest possible level. Your contributions and accomplishments have touched the lives of countless individuals. You have made art. You have made history. You have contributed to the culture of our nation and to the world that we all share.

I am feeling quite overwhelmed by the charge to speak today, as just one dancer on behalf of many, many others, but like so much else in my dance life, the necessity of rising to the occasion, in honour of the art form I am privileged to be a part of, instills a sense of purpose that allows me to overcome my misgivings. We must not be afraid to speak about issues of high consequence even though no single person can provide the insights and answers that we all need. I am adding my voice to this conversation despite being well aware of the limited contribution I can make.

Like every dancer here, I have loved dance and committed myself to dance with every fibre of my being. I have been dancing since I curled and twisted and thrust my limbs, floating in my mother’s womb. As a child I danced in the living room, down city sidewalks, in classes that met once a week, in community recitals and amateur musicals. I discovered modern dance at theatre school and, thunderstruck, I put aside everything else to pursue it.

I am gripped by the kinetic excitement and dramatic power of dance; the architecture of choreography, the intimacy of dancing with others; the formality of the theatre, the transformative impact of light and sound, the ritual of performance, the immediacy of an audience. I seek to penetrate the polished surface of dance technique to reveal an authentic expression of humanity. I consider dance to be a spiritual practice, and the commitment, patience, and empathy that have deepened through my work guide me in my personal and civic life.

Nothing in my dance life has been accomplished alone, outside the context of community. I am a product of circumstance and opportunity, lucky to be a citizen of a peaceful and prosperous nation, and free to explore beyond its borders. I practice a fragile, living art and I will not relinquish the responsibility I share for its continuity and vitality.

I’m 64 years of age – on the ragged, far edge of a long career in dance – and while I am no longer in possession of the physical abilities that won me my career, my personal evolution is sustained by the continuity of my art practice. What I am appreciating more and more deeply is that a very particular kind of awareness has taken root in me through the many years of devotion to a physical pursuit. Nurtured through deliberate, mindful practice, and fuelled by aspiration toward a goal that lies constantly beyond my immediate capability, this awareness delivered me to an extraordinary experience of realization in a recent yoga class. Toward the end of what had been for me, a very demanding session – and this was a class not for dancers or athletes, but for ordinary people 55 years and older – the instructor had us all take a sitting position, hug our knees to our chests, bow our heads, close our eyes and bring our attention to the sensations we were each experiencing, good or bad: heat, cold, tingling, throbbing, aching, tightness, expansion – and to locate these sensations very specifically. My sensations were vivid and varied, and each location was extremely precise. I was immediately struck by the clarity and nuance of my physical experience, and I thought to myself, ‘this awareness was won through all those many years in which I dedicated myself to exploring and nurturing my body’. Just as this thought had crossed my mind the teacher said, ‘Thank your body for these sensations, because your body is telling you what it feels like to be alive’.  And I loved it that she and I were both listening and speaking from the same source, and I appreciated her thought as being tremendously valuable and affirming.  Then she had us take our final pose – shavasana, the corpse pose, in which you simply lay on your back with your arms and legs extended. Shavasana is a reminder of mortality; you are laying on the ground as a corpse, acknowledging the inevitability of your death. Ordinarily, in shavasana I am ultra aware of my physical decline, my physical losses, and I lay there, consumed by my aches and pains; remembering the death of loved ones, and thinking about arriving at the moment of my own death someday. But on this day, once again, my teacher’s verbal cues were superb; she reminded us that the purpose of the shavasana is integration. The yoga practitioner attends to the stillness of this pose in order to allow the work they have just completed to fully saturate the body – in other words to possess the outcome of one’s efforts. And here is the moment where this ordinary yoga class offered me an extraordinary insight. Just a day or two prior I had been asked, if I would speak at this conference. So I’ve got that on my mind. And my teacher has guided my thinking down a slightly different path by asking me to thank my body for every sensation – magnificent or dreadful – because those sensations are telling me what it feels like to be alive. And furthermore, she has shifted me more strongly off of my usual course by reminding me that above all, shavasana is an invitation to integrate the exertion just completed, to truly arrive in the present. And so in shavasana, on a hot and steamy summer day in a bare loft in the east end of Toronto, I suddenly realized that the exertion I was integrating as I lay still was far more than the hour of yoga I had just completed. It was my life’s work as a dancer that I was feeling resonate in my flesh and blood and bones. Becoming a dancer was my greatest aspiration, being a dancer was my greatest joy, and in no longer being a dancer I thought I had experienced a kind of death. I suddenly realized that it is the integration in the present of what I accomplished in the past that is primary as I move forward in my life. Nothing died in me when I stopped being a dancer. I had simply lost the awareness and the appreciation of what I had so patiently and powerfully integrated over many years.

That this insight arrived fully 8 years after my final solo concert speaks to the complexity of re-visioning and re-making your life in the wake of a performance career. Dancers describe feeling destroyed, hopeless, terrified; of having lost their identity, their sense of purpose, their value. The enormity of the transition out of dance is so deeply fraught for each individual, that to make an analogy to death does reflect the enormity of the upheaval. But this doesn’t make transition an end game. If death, then birth. And the great writer Gabriel García Márquez eloquently describes the necessity of undertaking the transformational act of re-birth speaking through a character in his magnificent novel Love in the Time of Cholera – “He allowed himself to be swayed by the conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over to give birth to themselves.” I’ve been writing this quote in birthday cards to my friends and loved ones for many decades, and the profound wisdom and inescapable truth of these words takes on deeper and more explicit meaning with each passing year. “He allowed himself to be swayed by the conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over to give birth to themselves.”

Through every aspect of our training and performance, athletes and dancers accrue qualities and abilities that do not lose their immeasurable value when they are translated to different circumstances. Integrity, passion, fortitude, daring, perseverance, and creativity do not suddenly disappear once they are ingrained in one’s character.

My father has been a huge presence and influence in my life and I have repeatedly turned to him to discuss viewpoints and options at times of great consequence. A university professor and a coach of swimming, hockey and football, he earned his doctorate in psychology in the early 1970s and worked as a sports psychologist with elite athletes for more than four decades. For many years he routinely sent me documents he had prepared for workshops and seminars with athletes and coaches knowing that the ideas would translate well to dance. If, for example, his document was titled Controlling Your Emotions to Perform to Your Potential in Hockey he would draw a red, arcing arrow with the point landing elegantly just in front of the word hockey and float the hand written words dance and life at the top of the arrow so that the title had been revised to Controlling Your Emotions to Perform to Your Potential in Dance, Life and Hockey. I always appreciated the fact that he passed on these materials to me because I got so much out of reading them. New ideas, new language – more refined, more explicit – for considering familiar themes, models for organizing thinking around elusive subjects. So the tremendously strong parallels between sport and dance, and an exchange of ideas from both fields, have always been central to the way I look at my art form. Among a host of other concerns we have in common are issues of training, injury prevention, rehabilitation from injury, the myriad of mental and emotional considerations in the performance and interpersonal spheres, and, of course, departures and transition. So as I continue speaking, I invite those of you who are engaged in sport rather than dance to employ my father’s red arrow technique and when I say dance you hear sport.

Each of us came to dance in a unique way and each of us navigates the transition out of dance, or into a radically different chapter of our dance life, on our own terms. My reply to people who ask me if I am still dancing is that “I’m no longer a dancer, but I do sometimes perform”. I do think of myself a dance artist, but I am no longer comfortable calling myself a dancer. Others in the milieu ascribe to the notion of once a dancer, always a dancer, or as being a former dancer or a retired dancer. While these definitions may seem to beg a point, finding the right words to describe who you truly know yourself to be can be extremely important to moving forward.

Dancers whose talents were unmistakable at an early age, or who entered into serious training as children, may never have known themselves as anyone other than a dancer. With an identity so completely aligned with one single, focussed pursuit, it can seem antithetical to consider that formation as providing a skill set that is flexible and easily transferable. But my own experience has taught me that when I have known anything in great depth, I can turn that lens to another field and immediately discover correlations that very quickly provide profound insights. Whether or not dancers are trained as children or came to the form a little later, a career in dance requires, and therefore builds in each artist, a broad and varied skill set, relevant and immediately transferrable to any other field of pursuit.

The physical realm is perhaps the most obvious, and here we discover dancers to be highly energized individuals, who are willing to exert themselves for extended periods of time and whose actions display clarity, articulation, rhythm, flow, finesse, sensuality, grace, nuance, prowess & daring.

In the realm of mental skills, dancers display tremendous powers of concentration, focus, awareness, imagination & invention. They are accomplished at recognizing and memorizing patterns and compositional forms; at formulating strategies; at thinking intuitively, analytically, systematically & pragmatically. They question & innovate. They understand and employ the language of metaphor and analogy. Dancers come to every pursuit with a sense of purpose. They have a fundamental commitment to life long learning.

In the emotional sphere, dancers are composed, tenacious, sensitive, empathetic, patient, determined, excitable, resilient, ardent, devoted, courageous. Dancers are able to set, sustain and manage short and long term goals. They are able to handle the routine of hard work, incremental improvement, pressure, set backs, failure, and success. Dancers bring themselves to their work with passion, authenticity and integrity.

Dancers are team players who easily embrace a shared sense of purpose. They know how to listen, respond and adjust. Attentive, responsive, interactive, trustworthy, co-operative, and collaborative, dancers “play well with others”. 

Within the public sphere dancers proceed with decorum and a sense of occasion. They are often eloquent speakers who balance honesty and tact. Their expertise in dealing with situations and circumstances of high consequence allows them to maintain grace under pressure.

My partner is a huge soccer fan. He has been following international soccer since he was a teenager and I sometimes enjoying sitting beside him while he’s watching a televised game because he knows all of the players and, like longtime fans of dance or of any particular sport, he has witnessed the career arc of hundreds of individuals in great detail and with tremendous appreciation. During a recent game he pointed out a player on Italy’s national team who is now considered the ‘old man of Italian soccer’. (This player is something like 32 years old.) At any rate, my partner is watching this player’s situation unfold with real curiosity. He sees this player as facing just three choices: Will he move to a less competitive league to keep playing? – in which case he might even have the stature to become a marquee player like David Beckham with LA Galaxy. Will he try to make the move into coaching? – in which case the intrigue of alliances, rivalries, coaching philosophies and playing styles will be a continuing story line of intense interest for fans. Will he retire? – in which case he’ll fall off my partner’s radar pretty quickly and be remembered in a historical context. I found this short list of next steps proposed by my soccer-loving partner extremely blunt, and kind of jarring. But considering the issue of transition in relation to soccer, as opposed to dance, really did simplify things for me as our conversation around the Italian soccer player progressed. Similarities and differences in the realities of competitive sports and the art form of dance made we realize that for individuals making a career transition in dance there is actually lots of room to maneuver.

Looking through a dance lens at the case study of the Italian soccer player, I’ll start by with option one: moving to a less competitive league in order to keep playing. Here I’m thinking of the dancers – and I include myself in this group – with the desire and ability to transform their careers to such an extent that they are able to shift into a dramatically new chapter within the context of an on-going, but in many ways reinvented, career. Even that transition is fraught with difficulties, as it most certainly requires a fundamental recalibration of physical practice as well as a major shift in performance style. Within contemporary dance this transformation is almost always undertaken incrementally, over a relatively extended span of time. But every dancer does not succeed as an older performer, and this option is generally available only to dancers whose reputations put them in a league of their own. In the ballet world principal dancers have the leeway to give up roles over the last years of their career, and ballet dancers who are especially good actors may become principal character artists. In many dance forms – flamenco, bharatanatyam, butoh, for example – older dancers are especially revered, but again this possibility is generally reserved for the dancers of especially high profile. Even for artists who continue as performers, phases of transition may be times of extreme turmoil that require considerable support.  

Dancers who do not have the option of continuing their performance career due to injury, illness, personal circumstances – or because they don’t want to dance beyond their physical prime – might make a lateral shift within the profession becoming, for example, a teacher, rehearsal director, choreographer, or artistic director. They might stay connected to the dance world by becoming an arts manager or administrator, a costume or lighting designer, a theatre technician, a photographer or videographer. This parallels the second option for the soccer player: “Will he try to move into coaching?” Again, this is a complete loss of identity as a performer, a brand new role within a familiar context. The artistic and support alliances that one hopes to forge may or may not materialize. Like every alternative, this course of action is not an easy change or a sure thing, but it is an option full of tremendous possibility.

The final option in the scenario of the old man of Italian soccer is of retiring and moving into a completely different field of endeavor. In the dance world, these are individuals who need to identify employment opportunities or a career path that they can be passionate about, that provides a platform for their talent and expertise, and that will allow them to grow and develop personally and professionally. These individuals have a lot of work to do in order to identify interests outside of dance that are intense enough to work toward from the ground up. They will be going back to school, training on the job, interning, seeing if they can build a hobby, a talent or an interest into a profession. These people, once at the very top of their field, will be starting from scratch in a new profession. However, they are entering into that new context with extraordinary skills and attributes that will allow them to excel and to make spectacular contributions.

If the demands of a career in dance produce individuals in possession of remarkably strong, rich and transferable skill sets, what’s the problem? This profound contradiction signals a confrontation with the heart of the matter: identity: who am I? A talent that we feel we authentically possess, and that is validated by a rise to prominence, by accomplishments, victories, accolades, and acknowledgement, that kind of talent we can feel truly defines us. I am a professional dancer! I am an Olympic athlete. We know this. It is a source not just of pride, it is a clear statement of identity. And that identity is positioned within a matrix of significant people and of the community – the subculture – that one’s work takes place within. Many of us can recall the episode in which we felt ourselves to be fully embraced by the world we so ardently desired to be a part of, and that we so deeply believed we would thrive in and contribute to. In that early stage of breaking in, of making it, there is a strange tension between the dread of complete failure, of utter rejection, of never being chosen, with a kind of self knowing that says, ‘yes, despite some early failure, or rejection, or of not initially being chosen, this is where I can truly be myself. I belong here’. So to have survived that rite of passage and to have succeeded in one’s chosen field confirms this identity one has always known at the deepest level. And add to that the identity of the team, the dance company, the culture of the milieu that values you and through which your identity is affirmed.  And then, there is your love of the life that you have within that community – your colleagues and friends and family – all of them connected to and invested in the charge and consequence of your endeavours. The ritual and deep satisfaction of the daily work; the big, important events; the travelling; the ardent interest and appreciation of colleagues and of the audience, the fans, the critics, the commentators – the world at large. So it is absolute culture shock to suddenly find yourself on the outside of all of that.  And now you face a sudden dilemma, a full blown crisis of identity that throws you into a complete tailspin: I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know what to do now.

And this is why it is CRUCIAL that agencies and practitioners dedicated to transition be a fully integrated aspect of the milieu itself. And this is what the DTRC, the Dancer Transition Resource Centre, has done so brilliantly since it was initiated by Joysanne Sidimus; this agency functions within the dance world, for the sake of the dance world, in service of the dance world, because dancers who leave the stage will never stop being a part of the world they helped create.  As each individual is confronted by the monumental task of transition knowing that they continue to be deeply valued is key to gaining autonomy and agency in the next phase of their life.

The dance milieu is a multigenerational matrix in which every single participant plays a crucial role, and in which the generations roll over ceaselessly. Our art form cannot thrive without the engagement of individuals of all ages, representing every stage of life’s journey: the spontaneity of childhood, the aspirations and determination of youth, the ardent ambitions and innovations of the young adult, the ever deepening commitment and virtuosity of those in their prime, the perseverance and sublime artistry of middle age, the perspective and hard won wisdom of the elder. And the dance world is not an island or a bubble. It is a crucial aspect of society and a driving force of culture. The perspective and contribution that dancers bring to every aspect of community and civic life is hugely positive and highly constructive.  We know how to push ourselves as individuals in order to provide more strength, resilience and integrity to the whole.

Whatever the parameters of your situation, whatever the pathway of your personal journey, what the future promises is ever more change through a succession of profound transformations that will deliver you again and again to the core of your self and to the threshold of something brand new.

In January of 2011 I lost my husband of 20 years. He was a musician who was especially gifted as an improviser, and he credited his highly tuned expertise in improvisation as being crucial to negotiating the complications of multiple sclerosis. As his functional loses rolled out at an alarming rate he continued to meet every situation he encountered with remarkable invention and touching grace. As he lost the use of his legs and then his hands, I was at the peak of my performing career. Every day as I left home for the studio or the theatre his last words to me were ‘Dance who you are today’. He knew that change is constant, that we need to be honest with ourselves in order to navigate that change, and that the primary act is to discover oneself rather than to invent oneself.  I still think of those beautiful, wise words every day and because of them, I know that I am still dancing, even if I am no longer a dancer.  

Michael J. Baker Studio opening, Dancemakers, February 2008

(Speech delivered by Carla Smith, Peggy’s sister.)

A musician who could play any instrument he picked up, Michael Baker took tremendous pleasure and satisfaction in supporting other people’s creative efforts. He had a gift for collaboration, and his collaborators always became his friends. He met one of his dearest friends, Jim Adams, when alphabetical order threw them together as lab partners in high school. He struck up lifelong friendships with the gang of musicians he played in bands with, and with the aspiring actors, playwrights and dancers he met through theatre projects at the University of Alberta. He and the poet John Lent became a folk music duo when the Edmonton buddies both moved to Toronto in 1971. And he landed in Toronto through no grand design of his own, but because his young wife wanted to move there to study dance. Waiting around for her at the studio he fell into playing for classes. He fell into the dance scene. He fell in love with the dance scene. The friends he made so effortlessly drew him into their projects. He loved being involved with others in making art. He got caught up in the fabulous fringes of seventies Toronto; splicing together reel-to-reel sound tape for shows, appearing in Elizabeth Chitty’s Extreme Skin and inside a gigantic balloon for Louise Garfield, putting together a brass quintet with Cam Walter, copying parts for the composers of the day, playing trumpet for a Milton Barnes score with TDT. In 1974 his wife became part of a fledging troupe called Dancemakers and he helped out any way he could. By 1977 the company’s office was installed in their living room and as soon as the company incorporated he was on the board. In the end, Michael contributed in more ways, and over a longer span of time, than anyone else who has ever been a part of the organization.

Michael studied composition and conducting. He played trumpet in a CanStage production of Mother Courage. He created MusicDanceOrchestra with Holly Small. He harmonized as a singer on Kirk Elliott’s music for CCDT’s WinterSong. He joined forces with composer and musician friends to create, run and direct Arraymusic. He worked with Heidi Strauss to compile information on music and composers for The Encyclopedia of Theatre Dance in Canada. He volunteered his time to serve on boards. He got out and saw work; dance, theatre, music, visual art, film. He drew cartoons. Told jokes. Made meals. Drove around in his truck. He learned to speak French, beautifully, the best way possible, by falling in love with a gorgeous Quebecer. He did all that for and with other people. Alone, he wrote music.

Standing as it does now, a magnificent body of work, his music sounds complete and confident. But the people who knew him intimately know that he agonized when he was composing. He could go for days and not get a single note down. He was often wracked with doubt and misgiving. He never delivered his music on time. But I think what got him through was the notion that the work was for someone else; the musicians, the choreographer, the dancers, the audience; and that the work transcended them all. He believed in the necessity of creating and experiencing art.

***

Naming is a powerful act. The artists that cross the threshold to work in this studio will surely be touched by the qualities that Michael embodied: curiosity, patience, doubt, determination, respect, humility, generosity, good humour, empathy, kindness.

I join with everyone here tonight, and with the friends, family and colleagues who could not be present, in expressing deepest gratitude to Serge Bennathan for initiating this inspired act in Michael’s memory. Sincere appreciation to Michael Trent, for embracing the history of Dancemakers so genuinely and for seeing this project through with such grace. And to Marie-Josee Chartier, profound respect for the enduring love that sustains you. I am awestruck by your dedication to Michael’s legacy.

Al and Malka Green Artists’ Health Centre opening, November 6, 2002

This is not my first visit to Toronto Western Hospital. But today I didn’t need to get a bracelet and I don’t expect to be sedated. I have had three knee surgeries here, the first by Thomas Wright in 1991 and two, more recently, by Darrell Ogilvie-Harris. That medical care, and the physiotherapy that has followed with my great friend Penny Fleming, has allowed me some of the richest years of my dance life. At the age of fifty I am still very much a dancer, and I owe the miracle of that to the healthcare providers who are my collaborators.

For an artist, the drive to practice one’s art is as powerful as any instinct for survival. Underlying this drive is a sense that the expression is not of or for oneself, but rather the practice of art is, itself a forceful expression of our humanity. The arts lie at the core of our shared societal experience, our culture. And whether or not we are conscious of it, we all require their sustenance as a response to the deep questions of what it is to be human.

In the constant engagement of their work, artists routinely push their bodies to extremes in very particular ways. It’s not necessarily a simple case of ergonomics with a writer who insists on working in longhand, or sitting for months at a stretch on their computer or at their twenty year-old typewriter. A painter may be able to go on without interruption while they are recovering from an ear infection, but a concert violinist would be out of commission - and a sprained wrist would do them both in. Twisted ankles, paper cuts, failing vision, hearing loss, a sore throat; maladies that are insignificant to one are crucial to another and for an artist, the onset of a minor affliction can actually be a crisis.

***

A dancer friend once told me about a workshop she attended where the participants were asked to tie or pin red fabric to indicate the places on their bodies where they had been injured. Had I been present at that event, I would have been virtually mummified! A brief, but incomplete, synopsis for me includes: a subluxated kneecap, a fractured sesimoid bone, a laterally sprained ankle, a severe bunion, shin splints, a calf tear, a torn hamstring, lower back spasms, a degenerated lumbar disc, dislocated ribs, sprained intercostals, strained adductors, strained abdominals, a repeatedly (though only partially) dislocated shoulder, necks spasms, strained quads, achilles tendonitis, torn meniscus and that doesn’t take into account my podiatry appointment of yesterday…

Ironically, I would have to say that while all of these injuries produced pain, emotional upheaval, disruptions and threats to my professional life, they were also a source of learning and growth. This, because I was fortunate to be assisted and guided in my recovery by excellent practitioners. It is almost always the case that a dancer’s technique improves following an injury because of the strategic retraining, the heightened awareness, and refined precision it instills. An injury can also provide the impetus to focus on specific elements of one’s practice. I know a pianist who broke his right arm at one point and who took it as an opportunity to get some serious skill building done with his left hand. A dancer experiencing chronic ankle problems, and who an interest in using text with choreography, shifted her focus to the text driven angle of her work with results that have catapulted her to a new level of artistry and acclaim.

***

Early in my career there was little or no idea in the modern dance world of treating an injury. The idea was to stop for a few days. The alternative was to go on. And there was always an undercurrent of blame to be carried, the notion that some personal failing had brought about the injury.

The truth is, dancers will be injured and singers will catch colds. And to imagine that we can obliterate that eventuality leads nowhere, as it is utterly impossible. But I take comfort here in an analogy. A lesson about perfectionism, the pursuit described by the brilliant classical pianist Murray Peharia as “both futile and dangerous”. Among the artisans who weave Persian carpets it is believed that no carpet is complete, what they would describe as perfect, until, by error, the weaving is flawed. This flaw is never intentional, but when it occurs the weaver is deeply relieved, the carpet will be a work of art. The weavers believe that a flaw is the only portal through which “the spirit” may enter. I have recounted this story to generations of dance students. And when my former student called to tell me about the ankle injury that shifted her focus to text, she mentioned that story, explaining that it had helped her accept the reality of her injury with some measure even of gratitude. And without a doubt, the spirit is fully present in her art.

***

Artists are experienced collaborators. We are all used to working with colleagues, editors, directors, teachers, dealers, managers… We do not generally come to experiences passively and you will not find that we come to healthcare passively, with the expectation that we will be taken care of without our commitment and sacrifice. As a group we are generally extremely demanding in needing to the know the statistics, risks and alternatives. We will be rigorous in following through on rehabilitation and do our best with changes to life style, but changes to our art practice can be harrowing.

***

I have a colleague who likes to remind me backstage that we hold performance in our bodies before the concert begins. “The whole show is right here inside us,” she says. Each human is a body is of knowledge. We literally carry our history and our potential in our flesh and blood.  And we navigate a world of landscape and circumstance with which we are constantly interacting. Healthcare practitioners who work with artists become a part of that artist’s world and work by virtue of their interaction just as the patient becomes part of the practitioner’s professional life and personal history. We are great and crucial collaborators.

The creation of the Al and Malka Green Artists’ Health Centre has been a labour of love for the visionary people who are responsible for bringing it into being; the board of the Artists’ Health Centre Foundation and the directorship of the University Health Network. And it would have impossible without the generosity of the many who could easily have put their money elsewhere, above all Al and Malka Green. Toronto boasts one of the world’s most vibrant and cosmopolitan art scenes. And it now boasts a health centre designed to meet the needs of its artists. And for all of us here: we share an appreciation of the essential, the unquantifiable and the sublime.