Meet: Daisy Thompson
With SFU's fall Convocation ceremony on Thursday, October 10, 2024, it's time to profile one of our graduands. And so – please meet Daisy Thompson, who's graduating with her PhD (which was by Special Arrangement with us, started before our PhD in Contemporary Arts was official). As she discusses, Thompson also has an MFA from the SCA and is currently an instructor, too. We can also say that she's very friendly, generous, and hardworking. Lucky students! Lucky us!
Meet Daisy ~
SCA: You already have an MFA from the SCA. What made the SCA the right choice for your PhD, too?
Daisy: As I have children established in their schools and the local community, my 2 choices were UBC or SFU. They say that it is good to have an MFA and PhD from different institutions, however, there was not a department that my research fitted in to well at UBC. The SCA was my first choice anyway. Largely because of the access to facilities, excellent supervisors, and the liveliness that comes with having an interdisciplinary department.
SCA: In a nutshell, what was your PhD work about?
Daisy: My PhD merges dance and politics. It looks at the anarchic gestures, or gestures of resistance, that we do in dance aside from the artwork itself. I name such anarchic gestures Kinesthetic Strike – a resistance dance that attends to what releases when we detach from a society that presents only fixed possibilities The central focus of kinesthetic strike is to discover the capacity of contemporary dance to counter routine and utilitarian exploitation of the labouring body with a body in motion that produces joyful, positive, and durable relationships.
SCA: What are you working on now?
Daisy: I have been fortunate to begin working as a Limited Term-Lecturer in the dance area at the SCA. Also beginning to dream up a symposium around kinesthetic strike.
SCA: Anything on the horizon of the future for you?
Daisy: The symposium...after taking a temporary breather.
SCA: Finally, what advice might you give to prospective SCA students at any level?
Daisy: Imposter syndrome is real...but stick the middle finger to it and keep going. You are here for a reason!
Biography
Daisy Thompson is an English settler living on the unceded territories of the Skwxwú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaɬ and xʷməθkwəy̓əm Nations, also known as Vancovuer. As a dance artist who performs, creates, educates, and writes, she seeks to extend ideas of the dancing body as a key site for the questioning of embodied power relations, and considers how the dancing body interrupts cycles of contemporary logics of control in relation to culture and identity.
After completing her dance training at the Laban Dance Centre in London, Daisy has had the fortune to work as dancer/performer with the Trisha Brown Dance Company (USA), Eva Karczag (Amsterdam), Emmalena Fredriksson (Sweden/Vancouver), Ugo Dehaes (Belgium), Lee, Su-Feh (Vancouver), Mascall Dance (Vancouver), and O’dela Arts (Vancouver), amongst more.
She has presented her own choreographic works internationally and locally, has worked as choreographer/movement coach for theatre including The Frank Theatre Company and Ruby Slippers Theatre, published several articles including the Performance Matters Journal and the Canadian Theatre Review, and regularly teaches in a variety of spaces in Vancouver, including Simon Fraser University, Training Society of Vancouver, WeDance and Polymer Dance. She gained an MFA in 2013 and a PhD in 2024, both from the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University.
Daisy is the proud mother of Obi and Sola.