About
Philip Szporer is a Montréal-based writer, filmmaker, educator, and cultural journalist whose work has explored the intersections of dance, memory, place, and the moving image for more than four decades. He teaches at Concordia University’s Loyola College for Diversity and Sustainability and previously spent more than two decades teaching in the Department of Contemporary Dance. Philip has long been recognized as one of Canada’s leading voices in dance, dance film, and screendance culture.
In 2001, Philip and filmmaker Marlene Millar co-founded the award-winning media arts production company Mouvement Perpétuel, where they have co-directed and produced documentaries, dance films, installations, and interdisciplinary media works presented internationally. Their projects include Lost Action: Trace, a stereoscopic (3D) live-action/animated collaboration with choreographer Crystal Pite and animator Theodore Ushev; 1001 Lights, a large-scale installation work; Bhairava, a site- specific dance-for-camera film featuring renowned dancer and choreographer Shantala Shivalingappa; MABOUNGOU: Being in the World, a feature documentary exploring the life and philosophy of dancer, choreographer, and thinker Zab Maboungou; and Mercy, an award-winning dance film inspired by the poetry of Phillis Wheatley and the writing of Cornelius Eady, reflecting on Black womanhood, language, memory, and resilience through movement, voice, and image.
As a journalist and broadcaster, Philip has worked with CBC Radio, served as dance commentator for Radio-Canada’s arts magazine Aux arts, etc., and contributed as Canadian correspondent for The World (BBC/WGBH Boston). His writing has appeared in publications such as The Dance Current, Dance Magazine, Dance Collection Danse, Tanz, and numerous scholarly anthologies. His essays and chapters have been published in Motion Pictures: Dance’s Duet with the Camera (Palgrave Macmillan), Envisioning Dance on Film and Video (Routledge), and The Oxford Handbook of Jewishness and Dance (Oxford University Press), among other publications.
Philip has also served as artistic advisor for numerous cultural initiatives and exhibitions, including Corps rebelles / Rebel Bodies at the Musée de la civilisation in Québec City and the Regroupement québécois de la danse’s interactive digital archive project, Toile Mémoire. In 2018, he co-founded dance+words with Kathleen Smith, a collective devoted to fostering critical discourse, creative exchange, and public engagement through projects such as the Wikipedia Dance Project and Dance Dialogues.
Writing, dialogue, and cultural literacy remain at the heart of Philip’s practice. He has conductedwriting and dance-film workshops across Canada and internationally, mentored emerging artists, facilitated audience engagement activities, and collaborated with artists, educators, and communities around the world. From 2000 to 2016, he served as Scholar-in-Residence at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts, one of the world’s most celebrated centres for dance, a role that deepened his commitment to documenting, interpreting, and contextualizing contemporary performance.
Philip’s work has received international recognition. He was awarded a Pew Fellowship through the National Dance/Media Project at UCLA in 1999, received the Jacqueline Lemieux Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts in 2010, and was honoured with Concordia University's Distinguished Teaching Award in 2016. In 2025, Philip and Marlene Millar received the Screendance Award from Spain’s Choreoscope Festival, recognizing their longstanding contributions to the development of dance on screen and screendance culture internationally.
Through filmmaking, writing, teaching, and public dialogue, Philip continues to champion the power of movement, storytelling, and critical reflection to connect artists, audiences, and communities.
Featured Distinctions
-
-
Featured on:
-
Featured on:
-
Featured on:
