About The Dancing Word

Greetings and welcome to this blog, which will present my thoughts on the use of martial movement in the training of actors.

I’m a theatre artist specializing in the creation of original contemporary performances. The Dancing Word is an integrated approach to the training of performers that I am developing based on my studies of traditional Chinese martial arts, singing and rhythmic traditions from around the world, extended voice technique and contemporary approaches to actor training.

The name of the approach, The Dancing Word, comes from a Chinese calligraphy created by Winnipeg artist Joseph Lo for my colleague Olivier-Hugues Terreault and I in 1997. It shows the character for dance wu in an elongated form in relation to the character yu for word. My friend William Lau who is a Jingju (Chinese Opera) performer interpreted the calligraphy as Wu Dao, Yu Yan, or The Dancing Word.

I am the director of One Reed Theatre Ensemble, based in Toronto. Our first original performance, about the conquest of Mexico, Nor The Cavaliers Who Come With Us premiered at the 2006 Summerworks Festival in Toronto. We are currently hard at work on our next performance It’s Hard to Count to A Million. ‘Million is shaping up to be about numbers, Alan Turing and the belief that quantity can become quality. We presented some excerpts at the 2008 Rhubarb Festival in Toronto.

I did my academic work in the Doctorat en études et pratiques des arts at l’Université du Québec à Montréal, a practical, interdisciplinary arts Ph.D. Since July 2005 I have been an Assistant Professor in the Theatre Department of the University of Ottawa.

In theatre, I studied with Canadian director and teacher Richard Fowler and his company Primus Theatre from 1993-97. In martial arts I trained in Choy Li Fut Kuen (Cailifoquan), Tong Ping Taigek Kuen (a branch of Wu Taijiquan) and Zhi Neng Qigong with Wong Sui Meing in Montréal from 1993-2005. Since 2005 I’ve been studying Chen Taijiquan with Chen Zhonghua. The particular approach Chen Zhonghua teaches is called Shiyong Quanfa or Practical Method. In the spring of 2007 I spent a month on Daqingshan Mountain in Shandong Province, China studying full time with Master Chen.

The goal of this blog is to provide information and reflection in a concise and accessible format. While mostly everything I state here can be supported by academic citations, for brevity’s sake I will be emphasizing direct language, as opposed to a formal scholarly or overly personal style.

The writings on this blog are covered by a Creative Commons License:

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs.

I hope you enjoy this site and find the information useful.

Daniel Mroz, Ph.D.