Tiffany Tjosvold’s own physical issues inspired her to create a group for people of all abilities wanting to dance and perform.
She has arthritis and other chronic conditions, and started Embrace Performing Arts in 2013 in part because there wasn’t a place where her challenges could be accommodated.
“I got very frustrated that there wasn’t, at the time, dance programming that was available for me.”
The real push to start the group came from a friend with cerebral palsy who also enjoyed dancing, Tjosvold said.
“She said: ‘You are going to school to be a teacher and you dance, so you could sort it out so that I could take dance class.’”
The group soon followed, and became the non-profit Embrace Arts Foundation in 2017 — with a goal of having a broader scope.
“We’re a disability-led, disability-centred organization, and we run performing-arts classes, camps and community events,” Tjosvold said. “We also have a professional-performance company that has disabled and non-disabled artists.”
Many of the people in the professional-performance group came from the less formal, recreational side of the program, she said.
There is a wide variety of members in the organization — which focuses on dance and music — including those who are physically disabled, neurodivergent or have chronic health issues like Tjosvold.
“It’s very much anyone and everyone is welcome,” Tjosvold said.
A $20,000 grant from the Victoria Foundation has been “a huge game changer” in moving forward, she said.
“It really supports a lot of the community events.”
Funding also comes from the provincial government, usually for specific projects or shows, as well as donations.
The foundation gained charitable status last year, and efforts are made to keep the price for participants down — with many of the offerings either free or very low-cost, Tjosvold said.
She said performances happen at all sorts of venues.
“The last show we did was at the YMCA in the swimming pool,” she said with a laugh.
Children were invited a few at a time into the pool area to watch what Tjosvold described as “sensory theatre.”
“So were in a shallow pool and we did puppetry and sang songs and did some dancing,” she said. “It was a thrill for us and it was also very well-received by the young audiences we had.”
Right now, the foundation is working with Dance Victoria on a dance film and organizing a new slate of classes to start in January.
Participants in the Embrace Arts Foundation range in age from five to 95, Tjosvold said.
“Throughout the course of a year we work with about 200 people locally, and we also have some online programs so our reach is about 250-plus individuals that we work with regularly.”
Liaising with other groups such as Community Living Victoria helps build the clientele, Tjosvold said.
She said there are other organizations that offer “integrated dance” like the foundation, with Vancouver’s All Bodies Dance Project one of the best known. The Vancouver group helped her as she was getting up and running, Tjosvold said.
Bringing music director Erin Koop into the fold in the early years was also a key to success, she said.
More on the foundation is available at embracearts.org.
