Terry Hunter and Savannah Walling celebrate 50 years of creative collaboration
The artists are co-founders of Vancouver Moving Theatre and its flagship Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival
Savannah Walling and Terry Hunter have been collaborating in art and life since 1971. Photo (2020) by David Cooper
Terry Hunter first saw Savannah Walling in 1971, after he’d seen her perform at a Simon Fraser University dance concert. Six months later, they met, both having been hired by the SFU Mime Troupe to create and perform an interactive kids’ show that summer.
They fell in love, bonding over their shared passion for social dancing, world music, and live performance. They have been collaborating ever since.
Leaders in Vancouver’s arts community, Hunter and Walling are celebrating their 50th anniversary of creativity and togetherness this year.
Everything these artists do today can be traced back to the 1970s, when values of collaboration, sharing, and breaking and bridging boundaries prevailed. These values continue to inform their work.
Terry Hunter and Savannah Walling at 100 Block East Pender Street, Chinatown, circa 1980, Photo by Doug Vernon
Deeply involved in the dance, mime, and theatre programs at Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Communications and the Arts, the two worked together in the Vancouver Lab Theatre (1972); co-founded The Mime Caravan with other artists (1973-1974); and established an avant-garde dance collective with Karen Jamieson and others (1975) that became known as Terminal City Dance (1976).
Walling and Hunter moved to the Downtown Eastside in 1976. They married in 1978, holding a wedding reception at their live-work studio in the Lim Sai Hor Kow Mock Benevolent Association Building. Their son, Montana Hunter, was born in 1990 and raised in the Downtown Eastside.
Terminal City Dance was a frontrunner of the Canadian contemporary dance scene, regularly touring BC and Canada. Walling, whose dance training includes studying in New York City at the Merce Cunningham and Louis Nikolais Dance Studios, began creating more theatrical works, while Hunter became increasingly focused on fusions of percussion and movement. Eventually the co-founders left Terminal City Dance in 1983 and formed two new organizations: Karen Jamieson Dance Company and Special Delivery Dance/Music/Theatre Society, known today as Vancouver Moving Theatre. In 1986, Terminal City Dance Society transitioned into the VDC Dance Centre Society.
With VMT, the couple’s goal was to break down boundaries between music, dance and theatre; to bridge artistic disciplines and cultural tradition; to create accessible art; to step through imaginary fourth walls to interact directly with audiences; to take theatre out of the studio and into the streets and community; and to participate in places of celebration where people gather in a spirt of peace and hope for the future.
From 1983 to 1997, VMT developed a unique form of drum dancing and touring productions. They regularly toured BC, Canada, and the world.
From 1998-2004, the two ran a mini multi-disciplinary festival: the Strathcona Artists at Home Festival. The fest opened their eyes to the rich vein of artists, history, cultures and stories of the neighbourhood.
In 2002-2003, Hunter and Walling joined forces with the Carnegie Community Centre to co-produce In the Heart of a City: The Downtown Eastside Community Play, a large-scale play created with, for and about the Downtown Eastside.
The transformative production premiered to sold-out houses and standing ovations and launched the annual Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival (2004-present).
This has led to many theatrical productions and partnerships, including adaptations of literary classics such as Bah Humbug!; professionally led community-engaged productions; and theatrical tributes to the Downtown Eastside’s founding Black, Urban Indigenous, Coast Salish, Ukrainian, Chinese, Japanese Canadian communities.
Terry Hunter and Savannah Walling, Runners’ Tale, circa 2000. Photo by David Cooper
In addition to the productions and an annual multi-arts festival, the breadth of their artistic programming has expanded over the years to include evolving galleries and digital community art-making, opera, cultural ceremonies, canoe launches with protocol, public art installations, an Indigenous art market, symposiums, and arts institutes providing leadership training in community-engaged arts.
Working in alliance has been a key principle in their strategy and survival as resident artists in the Downtown Eastside, a community that Hunter and Walling have grown to love and respect.
This past summer, Hunter and Walling were adopted by carver and Hereditary Chief-in-Waiting Bernie Skundaal Williams into her Haida St’langng Lanaas-Janaas clan. Hunter was given the name nang gulgaa (Industrious one); Walling was given the name hl Gat’saa (supporter of all things). Receiving a name is a responsibility. For this creative duo, a primary responsibility is to support Indigenous presence in the Downtown Eastside.
VMT and its directors and partners have co-received multiple awards for their contribution to Canadian arts and culture, including Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards; City of Vancouver Cultural Harmony Award; Vancouver Mayor’s Award- Community-engaged Art; and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Medal (2013); among others.
For more information, see VMT
Terry Hunter and Savannah Walling (pictured in 2012). Photo by David Cooper