Seika Boye
Seika Boye wears many hats as a writer, scholar, educator, and artist, all with a focus on dance, movement, Black culture, archives, museums, and teaching through physical experience. She's not just an academic; she's also a professional in the world of modern and postmodern dance. In fact, she's worked as a dance artist and even dabbled in archival and publishing work at Dance Collection Danse. Oh, and did we mention she's a dance writer and editor, too?
Seika is all about championing the importance of dance and embodied knowledge, way beyond just the stage. She's all for sharing her knowledge with the public, as seen in her impressive archival exhibition called "It’s About Time: Dancing Black in Canada 1900-1970" which won awards in 2018. She's also co-curated another fascinating project, "Into the Light: Eugenics and Education in Southern Ontario," which earned the Lieutenant Governor’s Heritage Trust Award. Not to forget her recognition from the Toronto District School Board's African Heritage Educators’ Network Arts Honoree in 2018. And she's even the first-ever recipient of the Dance Studies Association Dance in the Public Sphere Award in 2021. Quite the achievements!
She also did a residency at the Art Gallery of Ontario from 2018 to 2019, creating "This Living Dancer," an exploration of archiving methods, self-determination, and privacy. Research is her jam, and she's part of Gatherings: Oral and Archival Histories of Performance and an Experiential Learning Faculty Fellow from 2023 to 2026. Plus, she's got support for her research website, www.dancingblackcanada.ca, through the CDHI UX Accelerator and Emerging Projects Fund.
Seika's not just an academic; she's also a prolific writer. You can find her work in various publications like the Canadian Journal of History, Dance Chronicle, Canadian Theatre Review, alt.theatre, and more. She's even co-edited a book and has a forthcoming manuscript and an edited essay collection in the works.
As a movement dramaturg, she's worked with various artists, lending her expertise to projects with Natasha Powell, Taisha Paggett, and many others. She's also a sought-after speaker and arts consultant all across Canada. Between 2018 and 2023, she was closely involved with the CanDance Network, the national network of Dance Presenters.
And of course, she's grateful for her mentors, hailing from Hamilton, Ontario, and having spent some time in Vancouver and Montreal, she's called Toronto home since 2003, where she lives with her husband and their two kids.