Seika Boye
Seika Boye is a scholar, writer, educator and artist whose practices revolve around dance and movement. She teaches practical and lecture courses and is the Director of the research-oriented Institute for Dance Studies.
From 1995-2010 Seika performed and presented her choreography across Canada. She danced professionally with Ballet Creole, Electric Company Theatre, Judith Marcuse Projects and many independent artists. Most recently, Seika has worked as a movement dramaturg with artists including Natasha Powell/Holla Jazz, Syreeta Hector, Mix Mix Dance Collective, Deanna Bowen, Heidi Struass/adelheid dance (re*research choreographic intensive) and Djanet Sears.
Invested in movement histories and the archive, Seika’s research explores blackness and dancing in Canada and embodied learning and pedagogy. She curated the archival exhibition It’s About Time: Dancing Black in Canada 1900-1970 (2018) and co-curated Into the Light: Eugenics and Education in Southern Ontario (2019). Her publications include writing for Dance Chronicle, Canadian Theatre Review, alt.theatre, The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, Performance Matters, Dance Collection Danse Magazine and The Dance Current. From 2004-2010 Seika worked in various archival and editorial capacities at Dance Collection Danse Archives and Publisher. Seika is the co-editor/contributor with Thomas F DeFrantz, of Configurations in Motion: Performance Curation and Communities of Colour, 3rd Edition (2017).
Seika is an award winning and sought-after speaker, instructor and consultant in the performing arts sector. She is the recipient of the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (2011-12) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellowship (2012-14). She was an Artist-in-Residence at the Art Gallery of Ontario (2018), Toronto District School Board's African Heritage Educators’ Network Arts Honoree (2019) and a 2020 recipient of the Lieutenant Governor’s Heritage Trust Award (co-curator, Into the Light). Seika is currently a co-investigator on Gatherings: archival and oral histories of Canadian performance (SSHRC Partnership Development Grant).
Seika lives and works in Toronto with her husband and their two sons.
- BFA, York University
- MA, York University
- PhD, University of Toronto
- Into the Light: Living Histories of Oppression and Education in Ontario (Into the Light : 2022)
- 102 Years of Beautiful Resistance: A Guest Article Photo Essay (Dance Current Magazine : 2021)
- How We Gather Now: A Finding Aid (University of Toronto Press : 2021)
- Ola Skanks: Delayed Recognition of a Dance Artist Ahead of Her Time (University of Toronto Press : 2021)