Crossing Cultures…
Cape Breton, Collaboration, and the Next Chapter for Slanjayvah Danza.
As 2025 reaches its halfway point, Jen Wren, Artistic Director of Slanjayvah Danza, reflects on a whirlwind of travel, collaboration, and discovery.
From launching new access and sustainability initiatives to dancing eight hours a day in Cape Breton, her year so far has been equal parts grounded and exhilarating. Here’s what she had to say…
Phil Sanger (PS) – I can’t believe it’s already seven months since our 2024 wrap-up!
Jen Wren (JW) – Don’t. The time has gone so fast! Guess that’s what happens when you’re planning in every direction at once.
PS – So, what’s new in the world of Jen Wren and Slanjayvah Danza? I know you’ve just come back from Cape Breton, but before we go into that, what has your year looked like so far?
JW – Yeah, don’t get me started on Cape Breton, it was incredible, such an amazing trip. But yes, the year leading up to then has been busy indeed! Ha ha, now I’m trying to remember exactly…. Oh yeah, we kicked off 2025 with a remote residency supported by The Work Room, which supported time to reconnect with my body/physical practice in the studio, where I was joined with Pat Kinevane for some creative conversations on a new idea I’d been brewing.
PS – Amazing. So, 2025 got off to a pretty good start?
JW – Definitely. It was really refreshing to have a flexible timetable through that residency and local studio access, supported by Mòr Artspace. Working with Pat allowed us to get excited about working together and make a skeleton action plan on what we’d be doing. It felt like a great start.
What happened next? Ah yeah, I was in Cordoba again, collaborating with our colleagues over there, I worked with Scottish Dance Theatre playing with some project ideas, and I went to Leeds to join you in Yorkshire Dance in your PhD research sessions!
PS – Yes! How was it being back in the studio with me again?
JW – Awful. [Laughs] Just kidding. It’s always lovely. I enjoy being part of someone else’s project — it lets me stop leading for a while and simply experience the work. And honestly, when you and I collaborate, something special happens. Even though your PhD work made me cry — good tears! — I came away with new things to consider and progressed some of that in the studio as I was completing The Work Room residency. The insights from the PhD research process have instigated new processes that I can now weave into my own practice
PS – And you were back in Leeds again in April, right?
JW – I was, yeah. I was invited through a commission with Dance Action Zone Leeds (DAZL) to lead a new Fast Creative Task Challenge with their current youth group.
During lockdown, I created a model for making short dance-for-camera projects, restricting time to as close to 24 hours as possible. Although the visual ideas brew in my head for some time, the physical act of creating the short is … well, its all done in the moment really, everything is done in the timeframe from scrabbling for costume, putting on make up, going to the site, choosing angles, directing dancers in the moment. It’s absolutely bonkers crazy because there is no time to set up anything or be artistically picky. The challenge is to see what I can capture on screen, and whatever that is, is all I have to work with. I love it. It never goes to “plan” (laughs), but always surprises me what can result from such limitations. In all cases, it’s the cast that are the most impressive at taking on the spot direction, jumping into tasks without any time to think. DAZL Youth were simply amazing; they blew me away with their trust and abilities. Our theme was environmental, so I chose the hot topic of Wildfires, and that was it, we just went for it. The end result was called “Flames of the Forest”, which you can find on both DAZL and Slanjayvah Danza’s social media channels now.
PS – I’ll look it up! What else have you been up to?
JW - In Spring we attended The Touring Network “The Gathering” in Strathpeiffer – an amazing 2 days full of chats, introductions, performances, social time and more. It’s a great way to connect and share time with people you don’t get to see very often and sometimes don’t get to chat too much either because everyone is on their own journey, making and implementing plans. It’s pretty much a weekend of fun, learning and connecting.
I had been approached and supported by The Work Room and The Touring Network to do some public speaking (yikes! – laughs), in an informal chat with the wonderful Jenny Munro (she’s an arts promoter on the West Coast of Scotland, in Arnisdale) – about rural touring and the partnership we’ve built — how our touring model worked, its successes, and the relationships it’s fostered.
Later in the year, I was also pleased to sit on an artist panel in the Galway Dance Symposium, organised by artistic peer and colleague, Rob Heaslip. I hadn’t worked with Rob since I was rehearsal director for Straw Boys, so it was lovely to be in the room with him, share some of my experiences and hear from others who also navigate working within both traditional and contemporary dance forms.
And finally, between that and all the fundraising, I was still consulting with Mòr Art Space in its development as a professional and community hub of rural activities and performance events, which is slow but steady.
It is evolving as a beautiful wee space and starting to explore what a community arts programme might look like. Still plenty of 'what ifs,' but it’s starting to feel very exciting.
PS – I can’t wait to hear Mòr (laughs) about that when you’re ready to share! But let’s talk Cape Breton — How was that? What was so amazing about it?
JW – First, I have to thank the Lisa Ullmann Travel Scholarship Fund. It’s the second time they’ve supported me, and it’s such an invaluable resource. Deep research and work like ours can’t continue without that kind of support, and I’m incredibly grateful.
As for Cape Breton… where do I start? Uff, it was a summer of utter joy! It wasn’t difficult to find me, I was pretty much at square dances every night across the island, spent many a time at the Red Shoe for Gaelic and music events, spent a week training at Melody Cameron’s School of Cape Breton Step Dance at Beinn Mabou, was invited behind the scenes on Mary Janet’s 'Tunes and Wooden Spoons' (with then guest Natalie MacMaster), had one on one mentoring with the fabulous Jenny MacKenzie (co-director of A Timeless Art) and stayed with Cheryl McQuarrie and her wonderful family — which meant countless house parties and spontaneous music sessions. Folks would pick up fiddles or start playing the piano, and before you knew it, someone was dancing. It’s beyond contagious! I think there were days I danced for eight hours straight! And if you didn’t find me there, or chatting to someone I’d bumped into on the street – (it’s amazing how many people remembered me from my 2023 visit and they are all so frickin’ lovely), I was on the beautiful West Mabou Beach. It all felt so alive, so connected — I keep telling people I spent my summer in the “land of the fae”
PS – Wow! It sounds so rich with culture and community. What was your reason for going there in the first place?
JW – Well, oh gosh, that’s tricky to answer. In a nutshell, and I’m happy to expand on this as a blog in itself, I started learning “Scottish Step Dance”, just over 10 years ago, but 2 years later I discovered “Cape Breton Step Dancing” when I met Jenny MacKenzie from Mabou during an intensive week of Scottish Culture in Barga (facilitated and hosted by Hamish Moore). Following that week, I literally had no further access to that form (and it’s a long story as to how the two are connected, but yet verrrrry different in a lot of ways) until I met Frank McConnell in 2019. Working with Frank on and off since, he was the one who insinuated that I couldn’t really experience the true form until I experienced it first hand. I also discovered that he and Jenny MacKenzie are, in fact, distant cousins through a family connection on the island of Eigg, Scotland. With the respect I have for Frank as a mentor, I took his advice. So…. I first went to Cape Breton in 2023, where I lived and trained with Jenny and her family, also attending my first week at Melody’s camp in Mabou. It was only then that I felt the connection with what the dancing and its music (and much more than that) make it what it is, and what it’s all about. I never looked back. As a technically trained dancer, I could never find a consistency with “Scottish Step Dancing”, in its form or its presentation through the body, something that is very strong in Cape Breton Step Dance. Whilst its not directly exposed, the dancers who do deep research into the form in Mabou, have over years studied, researched, identified and shared this form, but the truth is, to truly understand all that it encompasses, (like all the times spent in Cordoba and Spain to absorb that cultural art form), you really have to go to the place where it lives and be with the people who live it. And, before you ask, yes, I’m going back, and back again, and I’ve caught the Cape Breton bug! Laughs, I actually wrote a wee story called “The Cape Breton Bug”, when I got back, but that’s for another time.
PS – So would you say part of your trip was spent doing ethnography!
JW – [Laughs] Yes, if this were academia, I suppose it would be called that. But in reality, it's just about experiencing the people, the place, the culture and most of all, it was, … like I said before, I felt I was living my best life in great company with incredible down-to-earth people and artists.
PS – Tell me more about what you discovered about Cape Breton culture.
JW – Cape Breton remains very much a Gaelic culture — it’s alive, not historical. The traditions aren’t preserved behind glass or only in books or recorded; the arts, language, crafts and community ethos are not practised….. It’s a way of life. I don’t think the community would exist in the way it does otherwise. The music, the dancing, the language — it all forms part of the same living community spirit. It’s fascinating because many of these traditions came from Scotland originally, but in Cape Breton, they’ve both held and evolved and still hold this lifestyle, while still retaining authenticity. As Frank and I have now discussed many times, it’s hard to imagine or really grasp, until you either live something similar yourself or have been there, more than once, to actually feel it and know what it might be to live it. That’s why I had to go, and that’s why I’ll go back, and that's why I call the form I dance, Cape Breton Step Dance (albeit, the form originated in Scotland many moons ago).
PS – What was your biggest takeaway from the trip? Or what blew your mind the most?
JW – Uffff, jeeso, where to start?
The people and their generosity. The depth of learning — cultural, musical, human — that comes from being fully immersed. It’s hard to articulate, but that experience is the foundation for understanding how traditional dance really lives in the body. And I can’t stop coming back to the kindness of the people and how they took me under their wing and made me feel part of the community.
What blew my mind…. Not ‘performing’ the dance, not having to perform it – you are simply part of it. The dancing isn’t about 'look at me,' but about being at one with it all. Like I said, it’s huge to try to explain. That perspective shift was huge. It changes how I think about performance in modern-day contexts itself.
PS – It sounds like quite a big impact in the sense that…. Will this experience shape how you create work moving forward?
JW – I think it has provided a huge reminder as to who I am as an artist, what is meaningful for me and whilst I have already been building models of creating, through on-going engagement with communities, yes, it definitely will, alongside other experiences (such as those specifically with my Spanish friends/family/community) influence how I create work moving forward. The experiences are ongoing. It’s definitely not a one-stop learn all kind of experience. It’s a lifetime of connections that shape my work, and it’s a lifetime of searching, absorbing, sitting with it all, enveloping it all, to both stir and settle the soul through artistic expression, both input and subsequently output. Does that make sense? I guess that’s what I’ve been doing since I graduated – whether people know that or not. I never stop enquiring. I’m too curious as to the growth from the input and, equally, the growth from the output. (Whispers)… Which is why I’m reaaalllllly excited about Slanjayvah Danza’s next project, but I will share more on that next time.