It’s that time of the season for the UW Dance Program — no, not turkey and stuffing season, not even hunting season — Fall Faculty Concert season. Bustling with preparations and long rehearsals for the 20 to 30 students expected to perform, Lathrop Hall has had the honor for the past two weeks of hosting guest artists-in-residence, Toronto modern dance choreographers, teachers, filmmakers and co-directors of company Kaeja d’Dance, Allen and Karen Kaeja. Catching up with Allen in a cozy coffee-shop corner, he talks jovially about making the transition from combat sports to dance, teaching and how fatherhood affected his dance life.

Kaeja, who competed in judo and wrestling for 11 years before taking his first dance class and was in the Olympic trials phase by age 20, recalls being attracted to movement even before realizing he wanted to take dance classes and train formally.

“When I was a teenager … I used to go out to clubs three to four times a week and dance four to five hours a night. I was so insane that it was difficult to find somebody to come up and dance with me for four hours, so I ended up going to these clubs and just dancing solo, but I was driven.”

One of Kaeja’s fellow classmates studying child psychology at the University of Waterloo in Canada persuaded him to join a ballet class with her. In a serendipitous turn of events, Kaeja ended up never seeing again the girl who helped open the door to his life work after their first class together. Kaeja immediately realized he wanted to take the art form into his own hands and create choreography, rather than simply perform the work of others.

“I don’t remember her name. I only remember what she looks like, but I knew when I was in that first dance class that this was my life, this was my future … One thing dance gave me that my [combats] didn’t was the creative process. And literally, when I started dancing, I started choreographing. Up to that point, I had no creative outlets.”

With the body structure of a wrestler, Kaeja realized early on that achieving the lines of the dancer’s body would be a years-long undertaking and that without one-on-one competition, he could no longer gauge his personal improvement on how many matches he won. Adjusting to dance’s give-and-take, life-long learning mentality was his greatest challenge.

“Competitive to compatible was the hugest transition, and especially in contact work, being able to what I call ‘listen’ to my partner rather than always initiate and take control of my partner, was one of the largest and most difficult transitions that I as a male had to make — to become an equal contributor to a dance, as opposed to being the decision-maker.”

From the beginning, teaching has been as important to the Kaejas’ dance lives as choreography and performance. Rather than deal with the distractions of infamous food-service jobs for their financial livelihood, Allen and Karen paid bills and stayed immersed in the dance world by teaching. For the last decade, they have served on the faculties at Canada’s National Ballet School, the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and recently Ryerson University, where they teach contact dance. They also present “Express Dance” workshops, designed for public school teachers with no dance teaching experience, across Canada. Two provinces in Canada, including Ontario, require dance as part of their education curriculums.

Though one normally wouldn’t think of contact improvisation as an important part of the aspiring prima ballerina’s training, Kaeja explained that the ballet school is very progressive and open to alternative learning methods. Contact improvisation, in particular, helps facilitate the elusive effortlessness required for pas de deux work.

“There’s a whole new generation of choreographers making greater demands from their dancers, wanting the dancers to not only be involved with the creative process, but to have a much fuller ability to be able to partner with anyone and that means being elevated or elevating. We have these tiny little ballet girls hiking their huge guys around and that’s just part of the process, is that contact (dance) equalized partnering. It’s a biomechanical process as opposed to a pushing-weight process. Contact is not strength-based, but [deals] with leverage, momentum, transfer, kinetic intuition toward someone’s center and how to elevate that center in space.”

Kaeja has choreographed for and co-directed with Mark Adam 11 films and seven award-winning dance films that have been screened in over 65 international and national festivals since 1997. New films supported by the Canadian Broadcasting Company and Bravo!FACT network are in development. Though his dance films have no text and performers have no speaking lines, he typically works from a written screenplay that becomes a storyboard through imagery.

“My works are imagistic narratives, so that I’m dealing with images to create a through-line. I’m not building works that are just kinetically informed, that are just physical landscapes. My real passion is building narratives, where you can follow a character, relationships, community or this environment, garner experience from it and actually live inside it.”

The experiences of Kaeja’s father, a Holocaust survivor and Polish army POW who lost his entire immediate family in concentration camps, formed the basis for several of his films. Kaeja’s desire to understand his own fears of loss and to fully appreciate his new role as father after his first daughter was born prompted him to further explore his father’s lost relationships.

“‘Old Country,’ my most recent film, is about the disintegration of a community. Growing up [even in the early 20th century] … you lived in a community. To have this betrayal (the breakdown of the community structure) … I talked to so many people who said this betrayal was worse than the actual death camp, because you grow up in a community that is based on relationships … And to have that disintegration was horrific. It’s incomprehensible to lose your entire family in such a short period of time.”

Kaeja mentioned Canada’s Banff Centre for the Arts as his favorite place to work, but draws most of his creative energy from people and relationships. Impressed by the passion and commitment of every UW dancer who auditioned for his piece, he decided to include all 11 dancers rather than choreograph for a specific number. “One thing for me when I come into a new environment is I’m fascinated with the community and I’m fascinated with individuals.” For the Kaejas, no matter what the time, place or season, it is sure to be one for dancing.

UW Dance Program faculty members presenting with Kaeja include Jin-Wen Yu, Maureen Janson, Marlene Skog, Li Chiao-Ping and Peggy Choy.

The Fall Faculty Concert opened last night in Lathrop Hall’s H’Doubler Performance Space. Tickets for Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. cost $12 for general public and $8 for students.

The Kaejas will screen the 24-minute made-for-television film “Old Country” at the Dance Friday Forum today at 3:30 p.m., also in the H’Doubler Performance Space. For a look at the duo’s dance film work, check out www.kaeja.org.