Mr. Philip Szporer
- Part-time Instructor, Contemporary Dance
- Part-time Instructor, Loyola College for Diversity and Sustainability
- Part-time instructor, Fine Arts
Are you the profile owner?
Sign in to editContact information
Biography
Philip Szporer is a Montreal-based filmmaker, writer, and lecturer who has been immersed in the Canadian dance world for over 35 years. He teaches in the Contemporary Dance department, the Faculty of Fine Arts, and the Loyola College for Diversity and Sustainability at Concordia University. In 2016, he received the Distinguished Teaching Award from Concordia’s Faculty of Fine Arts.
He was Scholar-in-Residence at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts (2000–2016), and in 1999 was awarded a Pew Fellowship (National Dance/Media Project) at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2010, he received the prestigious Jacqueline Lemieux Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts.
In 2001, Szporer co-founded Mouvement Perpétuel, an award-winning Montreal-based media arts production company, with Marlene Millar. Together, they have co-directed and co-produced numerous acclaimed documentaries and short dance films, which have screened at international festivals and events, including the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, the 2010 Shanghai Expo, and a UNESCO tour of Latin America.
Their innovative work explores the intersection of dance and film, often incorporating new technologies. Notable projects include Lost Action: Trace (a stereoscopic 3D film with Crystal Pite and Theodore Ushev, produced by the NFB), Leaning On A Horse Asking For Directions (a multi-channel S3D installation), 1001 Lights (a gallery/museum piece), CRU (a street dance web series for La Fabrique culturelle), Bhairava (a site-specific film with Shantala Shivalingappa shot in India), and MABOUNGOU: Being in the World (a documentary on choreographer Zab Maboungou).
Szporer’s most recent work, Mercy, is based on the poetry cycle of esteemed African-American poet Cornelius Eady. The project draws inspiration from the legacy of Phillis Wheatley, the first published Black poet in the United States. Mercy weaves Wheatley’s poetry and imagery—centering on the complex dynamic of a slave learning the language of her captors—with gesture, movement, and voice to form an intricate meditation on Black womanhood.
Szporer has also created Inquiry Into Time and Perception, Study #1 and #2, installation works that act as “windows” into physical and emotional states, addressing the senses, intellect, and imagination. He has served as artistic advisor for interactive exhibits such as Corps rebelles/Rebel Bodies at the Musée de civilisation in Québec City, and the Toile Mémoire project by the Regroupement québécois de la danse (RQD).
Deeply committed to public engagement and literacy in dance and dance film, Szporer has led workshops in Finland, Portugal, the United States, Israel, and Mexico, and has worked as a choreographic facilitator in Montreal, the UK, Germany, and the US. He is an active mentor and lecturer, having taught writing and led discussions in Canada, the US, Mexico, and Europe.
In 2018, he co-founded Dance Words with Kathleen Smith, a platform that fosters cultural dialogue through projects like Dance Dialogues, Critical Conversations and the Wikipedia Dance Project.
Szporer’s work as a broadcast journalist has included CBC Radio, Radio-Canada’s Aux arts, etc., and The World (BBC/WGBH-Boston). His writing has appeared in The Dance Current, Tanz, and Dance Magazine, among others. Scholarly contributions include chapters and essays in Motion Pictures: Dance’s Duet with the Camera (Palgrave Macmillan), Envisioning Dance on Film and Video (Routledge), Dans in Québec, Concertgebouwcahier Brugge, Pilgrim Bodies (IJRTP), and the Oxford Handbook on Jewishness and Dance (Oxford University Press).
Lost Action: Trace (co-directors Marlene Millar, Crystal Pite, and Philip Szporer)
Photo: Anthony McLean
Inquiry Into Time and Perception, Study #1 (featuring Mariko Tanabe & Rachel Harris)
Photo: Bill Kerrigan
Bhairava (featuring Shantala Shivalingappa)
Photo: Kes Tagney