Kathleen Smith is a Toronto-based writer, filmmaker and web designer with an interest in the arts.

As a writer, she has investigated issues in performance and culture for many publications and platforms, both print and online, including NOW Weekly, Dance International, Pointe, Toronto Life Fashion, House and Home, the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail. Smith was Editor in chief at The Dance Current and thedancecurrent.com from 2011 – 2014.

As a film producer at Hellhound Productions from 2006 – 2015, Smith worked on short films and features for Channel 4, TV Ontario, Sundance Channel, Bravo! and the Knowledge Network and presented festival premieres at Hot Docs, Toronto International Film Festival, Regent Park Film Festival and Buenos Aires International Film Festival.

Prior to getting into film production, Smith was Artistic Director at the Moving Pictures Festival of Dance on Film and Video from 1992 – 2006. There, she directed and programmed an annual Toronto-based film and art festival with a year-round cross-Canada and international touring program. More recently, she was on the programming committee for the online Collection Regards Hybrides launched in 2023 and continues to program film at the biannual dance: made in Canada festival.

In 2024, she was course director for a 4th year seminar in video dance and intermedial performance at York University in Toronto.

Photo by Jennifer Watkins

Philip Szporer is a Montreal-based filmmaker, writer, and lecturer. He has been immersed in the Canadian dance world for over 40 years. Currently, he teaches in the Contemporary Dance department, the Faculty of Fine Arts, and the Loyola College for Diversity and Sustainability at Concordia University. In 1999, he was awarded a Pew National Dance Media Fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was the recipient of the Jacqueline Lemieux Prize in 2010, awarded by the Canada Council of the Arts. And he was recognized with a Distinguished Teaching Award from Concordia University’s Faculty of Fine Arts in Spring 2016.

In 2001, Philip along with Marlene Millar, co-founded the Montréal-based award-winning media arts production company, Mouvement Perpétuel. Together they have co-directed and co-produced a critically acclaimed collection of documentaries, short dance films, and installation work to great acclaim. Their award-winning films have been broadcast nationally and internationally, and widely circulated at festivals worldwide and at major events and spaces such as the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, the 2010 Shanghai Expo, a UNESCO tour of Latin America, a ten-city tour with the projection installation 1001 Lights as part of 1700 Years of Jewish Life in Germany, and throughout the UK with MABOUNGOU: Being in the World, a documentary on the life and work of dance artist and philosopher Zab Maboungou.

Collaborations in alternative forms of dance-media include: the multi-sensory VR project Skeleton Conductor; stereoscopic 3D installation research project Leaning on a Horse Asking for Directions (UCLA/UCSC); and Lost Action: Trace, a stereoscopic (3D) live-action/animated film (National Film Board of Canada).

Philip served as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts (2000-2016). He also was artistic advisor for interactive exhibits and installations, including the Corps rebelles/Rebel Bodies exhibition at the Musée de civilisation in Québec City, and the Toile Mémoire interactive map project created by the Regroupement québecois de danse (RQD).

Philip has guided dance-film workshops in Finland, Portugal, the United States, Israel, and Mexico. He has also worked as a choreographic facilitator in Montreal, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States. Mentoring emerging artists in research and dialogue remains an important part of his evolution. He has also given writing workshops and has lectured widely across Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Europe.

As a broadcast journalist, Philip’s activities have included stints at CBC Radio, Radio-Canada’s radio arts magazine Aux arts, etc., and as correspondent for The World (BBC/WGBH-Boston). His dance writings have been published in The Dance Current, Tanz, and Dance Magazine, among others.

Further publications include scholarly essays and chapters in the Oxford Handbook on Jewishness and Dance (Oxford University Press), Motion Pictures: Dance’s Duet with the Camera (Palgrave Macmillan), Envisioning Dance on Film and Video (Routledge), Dans in Québec (Concertgebouwcahier Brugge), Pilgrim Bodies (International Journal for Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage).

Photo by Saria Chatila