My intensive contemporary dance training took place in Québec, Vancouver and The Netherlands. I’ve done additional workshops, intensives, and mentoring in historical dance, social dance forms and world dance styles, as well as physical training in clown, bouffon, mask, physical theatre, and voice work. As a performer, I am most interested in interdisciplinary work that blurs that lines between traditional art forms; dance-theatre and theatre-dance, vocal-body work, and public participatory art making. I think that community dance performances as well as social dancing are as valuable as dance performed by professional dancers for audiences. I have done a bit of both, and I think as individuals and as a society we can benefit the most when we appreciate and support trained artists and their achievements, and at the same time, consider ourselves to be artists and dance with our children, friends, in community, and in public non-professional shows or festivals.
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Dance Performance Highlights
International Theatre School Festival, (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Performance Symposium (Bristol, UK)
HKA Festival (Arnhem, The Netherlands)
Seattle Festival of Alternative Dance and Improvisation (Seattle, WA)
Vancouver Fringe Festival, Radix Theatre, Dancing on the Edge Festival, Vancouver Early Music Festival, 12 Minutes Max, Spontaneous Combustions and Link Community Dance Series (Vancouver, BC)
Greater Vancouver Historical Performance Society, company member and performer of accurate Renaissance and Baroque dance and songs in period garments, 1997-2019.
True North Performance Society, company member and performer of interdisciplinary work involving dance, theatre and voice in site-specific works and pieces made for theatre and festivals, 1992-2006.
Jie Delights! founding member and performer in an interactive trio of dancing sprites that performed for community art festivals and special events, 1999-2008.
Foolish Operations Ensemble, performer with my children in a dance group exploring a practice called "Dancing the Parenting" through structured improvisation and ensemble thinking, 2012-2016. (See article: Why Do Art With Our Kids?)
Music for My mind, body, and soul
More and more research is showing an unequivocal link between music and brain health and activity. This is modern understanding of something that has been part of human experience and existence since the dawn of time. Humans have always been music-makers, dancers, singers, artists. Music has been used in ritual, healing, storytelling, and community-building. After years of heavily focussing on dance, with smatterings of music experiences, I have begun a regular music practice in Nanaimo, starting with piano lessons during COVID, and then following my great love of Early Dance and Music to learn to play Renaissance recorder.
Renaissance Recorder practice group from 2023-2026
Hullabaloo Choir with Nico Rhodes 2025
Medieval to Modern Irish and Scottish Christmas concerts with Anna Atkinson 2024, 2025
Many musical experiences in Vancouver, such as the UBC Choral Union, Vancouver Early Music Festival, EDEN Improvisation workshops
Visual Arts practice
Old City Quarter Art Collective: a group of creatives who meet weekly in Nanaimo to experimenting with visual art modality and share comaraderie and ideas (painting, drawing, collage, felting, beading, embroidery, book-binding, alcohol ink, etcetera)