The History of MamaDances:

MamaDances was created by dance artist, Eryn Dace Trudell. Eryn had moved to Montreal to pursue her career as a professional dancer. Her plans changed radically when she became a mother, and soon after, a single mother.  She found herself alone in a city where the working language was not her own. At this challenging  intersection between mothering and pursuing a dance career, intuition and necessity conspired to transform her personal journey into a professional trajectory in developing a unique niche, now with almost two decades of experience and thousands of mothers, babies, and families accompanied through dancing. 

The Mom and Baby Dance Workshops were constructed intuitively, based on Eryn’s dance  experience and  the necessity to support herself and her small family, despite the instability of her chosen profession.  She wanted to make something to bring mothers together, with their babies, in dance. Unaware of any precedent, she began with what she knew: modern, and contemporary dance. Since then, embodiment practices, somatic movement education and mindful movement including Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT) and Contact Improvisation interwoven with more tradition-based forms, including Circle Dancing, Social Dance and Cultural dances.

Eryn’s Story:

Childbirth was the most powerful and transformational experience of my life. I was lucky to birth my daughter at La Maison de Naissance with a midwife, without medical intervention or complications. However, following the birth, I partially herniated a lumbar disc and became completely dependent upon my child’s father for a period. The conjugal relationship collapsed and left me feeling psychologically, financially, emotionally and physically defeated. I felt alone. I had recently moved to the city to pursue a career. Therefore, I had no family support, and I could not work outside the home. I was abandoned by friends who could not understand what I was going through and the person I had become. With my child custody agreement, I felt forced to stay in a place where the dominant culture and language were not my own. This experience affected my self-identity profoundly. Within dance and particularly my Contact Improvisation Dance community in Montreal, I found support and solace.

The inspiration for MamaDances came to me (Eryn) from a memory of an informal performance at Earthdance, where dancers were sharing their work in progress. What had been planned as a duet between two adult dancers became an improvised, authentically frustrating, yet playful duet unfolding between the mother/dancer and her toddler. The toddler had a temper tantrum that could only be resolved by his mother bringing him on stage, at which point he became very animated.  He stole the show by attempting to climb out of a window; she caught him just in the nick of time and performed the rest of the choreography carrying him on her hip. The performance was riveting.

Eryn started MamaDances after searching for a fun and engaging way to bond with her own baby. 

As a new and inexperienced mother, alone without family, living in a language that was not her own, recently separated from her childs father, Eryn quickly realised the benefit of a community of like-minded people and the positive impact these classes had on both mothers and babies, and ultimately the demand for them was growing. 

With a passion for dance and a desire to make a difference, Eryn created the MamaDances Certified Instructor Training program to help other instructors bring this unique experience to their communities.

MamaDances | MamanDanse, is offered out of community centres, perinatal resource centres, women's centres, churches, cultural events and libraries, parks, local dance and yoga studios, daycare centres and Post secondary dance facilities. Thus  MamaDances has touched the lives of thousands of families in Montreal and its surrounding areas.

Dedicated to promoting the holistic health of parents, children, families and communities through music and movement, MamaDances enhances parent-child bonding and forges social connections through an active, playful, creative and celebratory experience. Its existing programs include: Parent Child Dance and Mom and Baby Dance and a Facilitators Training Program. The first incarnation of the MamaDances concept was a performance called Mama Dances: Milles Mains which premiered at Festival Quartier Danse in 2005. It involved six professional dancers dancing with their babies in a site-specific location (the rooms of Chateau Dufresne) in Montreal.

The first weekly Mom and Baby classes were offered to the public in 2006 followed later by a Parent Child dance program. In 2013 transmission of the work to other facilitators began. In 2014 MamaDances expanded to other cities and in 2015 a workshop for teachers was presented in Floriannopolis, Santa Katerina, Brazil. 2018 saw the first International Teachers Training and a choreographic commission (Momentum)  in celebration of the 15^th Anniversary of Quartier Danse.

Local public gathering of the families involved in MamaDances come together to perform, dance, play and to behold the beauty that MamaDances embodies. 

The boundaries between art and modern life are fading, out of necessity. Young families have little time or space to keep them separate. A simple dance activity based on beauty, playfulness and caring, can influence our culture by bringing mothers and their babies, and parents with children into the arena of creative artistic exploration and practice.