Julian Diego has been a SKETCH fixture for over 10 years serving as Program Coordinator. He hosts space for youth to deepen their artistic practice and facilitates our Wednesday morning kung fu workshop. He tells us why it’s important for everyone to have a relationship with their body and shares his excitement at the amazing movement offerings at SKETCH this year.
SKETCH: How did your movement journey begin?
Julian: The first movement class I recall was at the Toronto Dance Theatre in the 1970s when I was doing a ballet class. I didn’t go much deeper into the dancing but I always loved dancing and had a fascination with martial arts from the movies.
It took me a while to find a place I could study at as well as the time and the money, so that started roughly 20 years ago when I started studying Kung Fu at Hong Luck Kung Fu Club.
SKETCH: How would you describe that 20 year period? What have you learned about yourself by practicing kung fu?
Julian: It’s been really positive to have a practice where I can further understand the relationship between myself and my body and work out tension, stress, and anxiety. All of those things are really connected to how we feel physically. It’s connected me to a community of other practitioners and it’s also taught me a lot about the role fear plays in our life and how to have a relationship with it that doesn’t freeze you or close things down so much.
SKETCH: What did movement programming at SKETCH look like when you started?
Julian: We didn’t really have much movement programming when I started at SKETCH. I wanted to promote a practice that meant so much to me and was really valuable to people living on the margins. I was a little hesitant because I was concerned about the aspect of violence that’s apparent within Kung Fu. I was worried about how to properly contextualize that offering but I got a lot of support from the team and after a few false starts, I think we got something going.
SKETCH: What have you noticed in youth participation in terms of their own movement journey at SKETCH?
Julian: A lot of movement of activities, like every art form, it can take a long time to develop a proficiency or a fluency or the ability to feel like you can do what you want or express how you want to. Frankly, it’s something that’s still accessible to people who can’t necessarily guarantee that they’ll be here every week or might drop late or leave early.
So, I think every facilitator has a goal that people will leave feeling better than they did when they entered that class. Part of my thinking behind that is that we carry a lot in our body and particularly people who are marginalized and who don’t have a family network or business contacts, their bodies is the credit that they have, what they borrow against.
So, whereas, someone else may get a loan to set up a business or get a loan to get tools to get money, people borrow against their own health by not sleeping properly, not eating properly, taking jobs that are risky or unsafe physically, jobs with high stress and weird schedules. People will eventually start to disassociating from their bodies a little bit because their bodies now become a source of pain or it’s experienced through pain and fatigue.
I believe even if you’re a visual artist or musician, you still need to have an relationship with your body to be able to to work through some of this stuff so that you’re not carrying it all the time. It builds up over time and the effects of living impoverished really play out in your body so I think that in addition to the really good food we have here, I think there should be consistent access to different ways to interact with your body.
I’m really happy that we have things that are internal like yoga, things that are interpersonal like dance and martial arts and now things that are connected to your body in relation to space like Parkour.
SKETCH: How would you suggest that all of us can start our own movement practice in our individual lives?
Julian: I think something as basic as walking or hiking is a great way to both getting your body and connecting to electricity. Something that’s transportation-related like biking or longboarding. There’s also a lot of programming in community centres across the city. Some of that is free or at least more affordable than the private market. There are so many ways to do it like swimming, aquafit or gymnastics. You can also look online and a lot of schools have a community class that are low cost. So it’s all about trying to figure out what type of movement you’re interested in and trying to find that in the city.
The main thing is to decide and start. My kung fu instructor used to say every season, there’s always a reason not start. Not everyone has to be an Olympian, but a few gentle starts can make a difference.
SKETCH: What the future of movement at SKETCH looks like?
Julian: I feel that if a somebody is in a shelter and they have a sketchbook, somebody might tell them about SKETCH. If someone rhymes a lot and makes music and they’re out in community, somebody might tell them about SKETCH. But I don’t think we’re on the radar for movement in the same way so that’s one thing I’d like to change. I feel like right now we have really incredible offerings.
We’ve got UNITY providing Street Dance, Black Lotus with Deshawna and Sivananda with yoga, I’m teaching kung fu, Mandy Lam and Joel are leading Parkour.. Nigel Edwards [SKETCH Community Artist] is doing an amazing dance and movement class. So the movement programming is pretty sweet right now and it’s all about getting the word out there and hoping people show up
SKETCH: Is there anything else you want people to know?
Julian: One thing, the kung fu practice that I developed, in one single class you should leave feeling better, more grounded, excited and knowing one or two moves. In the longer term, I noticed that I used it to influence my interactions and my planning for projects in relation to community. At one level, kung fu is only about managing interactions if you think about.
Participants have asked for some links on the internet or different ways to keep practicing in between sessions, however, a lot of the stuff I saw talked about the how to do something but never the why or when to do stuff. So I developed a guide from my practice which I share with participants, and I now use it myself whenever I teach conflict resolution and there’s really strong metaphors I’m able to use in a lot of different places for my work now. The literal translation of Kung Fu has nothing to do with fighting. Rather, it’s what happens when you work hard in a particular field for a long time. So, I love the fact that SKETCH provides so many different ways for people to develop their Kung Fu!
Photo credits: Jessica Cho