Michelle Silagy
Young Dancers' Program Director
BA (Hons) Drama, San Diego State University, California
Michelle Silagy is a graduate of The School of Toronto Dance Theatre’s Professional Training Program and has been active in Toronto as an independent choreographer, dancer, and teacher since graduation. She began teaching in the School’s Young Dancers’ Program in 1989 and is currently its Program Director.
Over the past 21 years, Silagy has received many awards through the Ontario Arts Council’s Artists in Education program to bring dance to schools throughout the province. As well, she has taught dance to youth at the Canadian Opera Company, Harbord Collegiate, the Institute of Child Study, Toronto French School, Unionville High School, and through the Creating Dances in the Schools program at Canada’s National Ballet School. As a mentor artist with The Royal Conservatory of Music’s Learning Through the Arts program, Silagy works across Canada and abroad as a creative movement specialist, including incentives in London, England, the Bloorview Macmillan Centre in Toronto, and Winnipeg’s Inner-city School Projects.
Silagy’s extensive work with youth joyfully informs her desire to create with artists of all disciplines through collaboration in dance. Her choreography, made in the company of Toronto’s independent community, has been referred to as “exquisite…filled with beautiful images that speak of rest, tranquility and hope” (Globe and Mail).
It has been presented at the Art Gallery of Ontario, du Maurier Theatre Centre [now Enwave Theatre], Dusk Dances, fFIDA, festivals throughout the country, and at Series 8:08, which she co-founded. She is the inaugural recipient of the Toronto Dance Artist Award (for choreography) from the Toronto Community Foundation.
Silagy created The Snow Queen which premiered at The Carlu as part of The National Shaw Rocket Project for Youth. Her full-length work, Necessary Velocity, premiered at the Winchester Street Theatre with the valued support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council.
Silagy recently collaborated with the youth-oriented theatre companies Theatre Direct and Jumblies Theatre. During the 2009/2010 season she traveled to Thunder Bay to perform and facilitate workshops within the Limnology Exhibit at The Art Gallery of Thunder Bay, and she also collaborated with celebrated author Helen Humphries at Queen's University to create connections between the dance process, performance, and dance pedagogy for youth.
In September 2010, Silagy traveled to London, England for the Youth Dance England Conference. Her dance work HOME was shown at DanceMatters in October 2010, at Douglas Dunn's Studio Series in New York City in 2011, and at the 2011 Guelph Contemporary Dance Festival. A film is currently being made of her solo danced to Margaret Atwood's passage entitled Time Folds.