Gabrielle Martin joins PuSh International Performing Arts Festival's leadership team
The aerialist-dancer joins Margo Kane and Jason Dubois as the organization works toward a 2022 event
Gabrielle Martin
GABRIELLE MARTIN has joined Margo Kane and Jason Dubois on a joint leadership team at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival.
She’ll help to lead programming and community initiatives for the 2022 festival, happening January 20 to February 6, as well as the 2023 event.
Raised here, Martin has worked as an aerial-circus and contemporary-dance artist and choreographer, performing and touring internationally with shows like equestrian-acrobatic spectacle Cavalia and Cirque du Soleil’s TORUK. She is also an artistic producer who holds a Masters of Arts in arts and cultural management; she comes to PuSh from her most recent job as festival manager at the Vancouver International Dance Festival.
Martin was appointed to the PuSh leadership team after a search process led by Jeanne LeSage, of LeSage Arts Management, and a committee comprised of PuSh board and staff members.
Board chair Camyar Chaichian says the collaborative leadership model is one of the key ways that PuSh is working through structural change—and adds it’s significant that Martin and Kane are also working artists.
“Its important to us as a board to have artists who are on that staff and on the board. This was the model we developed,” he tells Stir. “There’s been a vaccuum of having artistinc leadership on the leadership and board level. This fills that gap. It’s important to us that there are working artists there.”
In March, the PuSh board dissolved and theatre artist, educator, and consultant Chaichian came on with a new slate of members and a new mission to try to rebuild the organization. It’s still recovering from controversy that hit soon after COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. Facing a deficit, the organization cut the jobs of two high-ranking women of Asian descent (artistic associate director Joyce Rosario and audience services manager Janelle Wong-Moon). The cuts prompted an outcry from members of the arts community who saw it as a backward step for diversity. Then, PuSh’s board reacted to the objections on social media and in formal letters by announcing its new white male artistic director Franco Boni was “no longer employed”. The criticism only worsened, with some saying Boni, who had once helmed Toronto’s Theatre Centre, had been a long-time advocate for inclusion.
Margo Kane
The festival held a greatly scaled-back event in early 2020, then Chaichian threw his hat in the ring for chair at the March AGM to try to restructure PuSh and help it survive. With renewed optimism, he sees the pairing of Kane, a highly respected figure in Indigenous theatre and artistic director of the Talking Stick Festival, and Martin as strong additions for the organization to move forward.
“They’re both the right people for the moment. It’s exciting that their paths came together with PuSh’s path,” he says. “Margo brings the rich history from within the community; she’s experienced running a festival, she’s worked with PuSh in the past, and has deep roots in the community. She also has the Indigenous perspective. Gabrielle has impressive experience of her own, and she also brings that fresh new dynamic we’re looking for. So there’s this blending of past, present, and future.”
Chaichian acknowledges the 2022 festival will be smaller than usual, a mix of postponed works from two years ago and new offerings. The fest will include work presented with PuSh’s long-standing partners, including the Dance Centre, Theatre Replacement, Music on Main, Touchstone Theatre, the Firehall Arts Centre, SFU Woodward's Cultural Programs, and others. The program will be announced in November.
The plan is to host a full-scale event in 2023.
The organization will also continue its structural review process throughout the coming 18 months, Chaichian says. Its guiding principles are “To create a climate of healing and wellness for the PuSh Festival and its stakeholders; to begin transformation towards a responsible, equitable, and accountable organization; to get back to the business of giving cultural workers meaningful employment that enables delivering excellence in the performing arts.”
Martin, who was unavailable for interviews this week as she began her new job, released this statement: “As voices across the performing arts industry question a return to ‘normal’, it is a crucial time to nurture the type of innovation and dialogue at the core of PuSh's mission. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to do so as part of a shared leadership model that exemplifies a commitment to collaboration and decolonial practices.”
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