Too “Too”: A Memoir on the Essential Nature of Movement
Article By Chloe Lundrigan
I was so eager to graduate out of my storybook-esque hometown of Sackville, New Brunswick, that by the time I did, I had made my metaphysical departure months prior.
Throughout school I had been a dancer, but it was something I had fallen out of love with. Despite our turbulent relationship, dance had been a saviour of mine during that period, and it has only taken a global pandemic to properly thank it.
Recently, as this corner of the world began to wake for the first time in over a year, I visited my old home. There are few things in my life that mollify nostalgia, but in this time away, Perpetual Motion Dance Studio has become one of them. It has the same beautiful tin ceiling, the same wonky mirrors, and most of all, the same Renée.
Renée Rioux (Moncton, NB) trained professionally at Les Ballets Jazz Montreal and toured alongside Canadian dance legends with the Paula Ross Dance Company and Julie West Dance Company before founding The Renée Rioux School of Dance, which eventually evolved into Perpetual Motion Dance Studio.
We couldn’t hug, which hurt my heart.
After a moment of comedically sorrowful silence, it felt like before. I told her about what I’d been up to, and finally this article – I wanted to write about how much the space meant to me, how it felt to be a kid in a marsh and have someone see a light in you.
In true Renée fashion, she encouraged me to write whatever made me happy, suggesting that perhaps a memoir would be more powerful than a history or an interview anyway. She wanted me to emphasize what a joy it is to finally be back in the studio, but off hand comments revealed other truths as well. This year, owning a dance studio was non-essential work.
In 2020, the performing arts were demolished, leaving established companies and theatres with no choice but to close, and yet this tiny studio, south-east of nowhere, remains, waiting quietly for its students to return. The fact that it survived may seem miraculous, but it speaks to Renée’s resilience—a person who, in the span of a few years, graduated from teaching dance classes in the attic of a curling rink to the studio she painted her favourite colour (turquoise) and who can still do the splits. She’s some form of superhero.
Performing artists are stubborn in that respect: when you’re a dancer, you know how to get back on your feet.
Perpetual Motion has always been a DIY environment; every production is choreographed, staged, light, costumed, designed, built, stage-managed, advertised, and photographed entirely in house by New Brunswick-ers. There have been many an afternoon painting plywood in the back parking lot for sets and hauling armfuls of garment bags into the backseat of my car at the end of a show. To keep something like that going for students from 2 to 82, you need to be resourceful.
And that spirit has imprinted on the dancers at PMDS tenfold: they’re unstoppable. They out-do themselves every year; they organize student-led workshops, choreographies, and performances everywhere from cancer research fundraisers to punk shows. Graduates have gone on to The Royal Winnipeg Ballet, The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, and Sheridan College for Performing Arts. Students can enter the studio for the first time as insecure middle schoolers (if I recall correctly, I cried) and graduate with a sense of identity and calf muscles that would put anyone to shame.
When I started, I was a little too gangly, a little too shy, and a little too old, but none of that mattered to Renée. She took me in, as she’s done with hundreds of kids who’ve felt a little too “too”. She has a talent for finding the ones who need to dance most; it cannot stay with anyone forever, but its lessons: discipline, teamwork, and creative problem solving, do.
I’m glad to see that now and watch as that gift continues to be freely given. Even one day of watching students find themselves through artistic expression in community, should be proof enough that, at least in the abstract, Renée’s work is the farthest thing from non-essential.
Chloe Lundrigan
@c.lndrgn
Chloe Lundrigan is an interdisciplinary artist, BFA student, and amateur radio host based in the Siknikt district of Mi’kma’ki, otherwise known as Sackville, New Brunswick. Their current practice explores abstract timekeeping and existing beyond binaries though audio, craft, and the radical joy of movement.