Flashback

As dance students, we took up space in a huge studio we unofficially called “the fishbowl.” Fitted with floor-to-ceiling windows, it was inviting and bright, and the ceiling seemed endlessly high. It was the largest dance studio on campus at the time, located in the fine arts building, and usually reserved for ballet. Thirty years ago, I entered it after hours to improvise and cut loose at the end of a long day of dance classes. I felt completely uninhibited knowing that no eyes were on me. The people who usually watched us ­dancers from the other side of the glass on the landing above had all gone home. All, that is, except fellow dance student Karen Morch (BA ’84), who had her camera lens focused on me playing around. I was a shy late bloomer to dance, having just started my training with York’s dance program, and I remember that it was the first time I found freedom in my off-balance body. Everything I’ve done since, from performing in New York to launching, in Toronto, Kaeja d’Dance, the company I’ve collaborated on with my husband Allen Kaeja (MA ’09) since 1991, has been informed by that fishbowl moment. I continue to seek freedom in a destabilized world through the essence and ephemerality of dance.  ■
— Karen Resnick Kaeja (BFA ’84)