Fondation

Dena Davida is an elder dance curator, scholar, artivist, ethnographer, educator, performer, writer and editor. Co-founder and curator of the Tangente dance presenting space (1980), she also initiated the Festival international de la nouvelle danse and the Candance network. She earned an M.A. in Movement Studies from Wesleyan University (1995), and her PhD in Études et pratiques des arts from the University of Québec in Montréal (2006), where she taught for 26 years. She has published widely on dance and culture and is the founder and managing editor for Turba: The Journal for Global Practices in Live Arts Curation. denadavida.ca

Vina is a queer Chinese born in Singapore and based in Montréal, working as an interaction designer and dancer. She is thankful to have found certain members of the ballroom community in Montreal where she has been able to express and discover her queer identity and expression. As a designer she has worked on editorial for print and designing multimedia digital experiences. She is studying the use of creative technologies using visual node-based programs to create multimedia content. Some themes and styles she is currently exploring are hyper-surrealism, somatic movement as healing, the duality of the real and rendered, and vulnerability as transformation.

Erin Hill is a choreographer, performer, and writer. Through durational practices, she works with her body and life as a site of experimentation, noticing habits of perception and critically questioning from where these habits arise, as well as where they lead to. Within dance, as a broad category, Erin seeks ways to practice a transfeminist phenomenological approach to identity; one enfolded in fluid, horizontal and somatic states. In 2018 she received a Masters from Das Theatre (formerly DasArts). Erin currently makes home as a settler in the traditional gathering place Tiohtiá:ke, the unceded Indigenous lands of the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation, also known as Mooniyang in Anishinaabemowi, and Montréal. Since 2016, Erin has lived and worked in Amsterdam, and continues to nurture her relations there as a part-time home.

Kìzis is from fields of manomin; tended, harvested and unforgotten.

Chéline Lacroix is Métis Canadian emerging artist in contemporary dance. She was born in the unceded Indigenous lands of Nłeʔkepmx Tmíxʷ and the Syilx tmixʷ (Penticton, British Columbia, Canada). In 2014, she followed her passion of dance and choreography to the unceded Indigenous lands of the Kanien'kehá:ka in Tiohtià:ke. (Mohawk nation in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.) After completing two years at Concordia University in the contemporary dance program, and graduating at École de Danse Contemporaine de Montréal in 2019, she has been involved in multiple projects and performances while also continuing to develop her own choreographic identity.

Priscilla Opazo Castillo was born in Chile, and has recently moved to Montreal. She studied pedagogy in physical education with a specialty in infantile motor skills, and has been practicing sport and dance since her childhood. Castillo is interested in bodily expression and the research of the freedom of the movement of the body. In Chile, she participated in various street interventions, the diffusion and creation of spaces allocated to sports and artistic practices, through workshops and social projects linked to schools in situations of social vulnerability. Since arriving in Montreal, she has participated in Collectifs Artistique Nómade and is currently part of Colectiva Tribu, a self-directed and self-organized group of women, immigrants, friends and feminists, to share the social issues experienced as immigrant women.

Trained at L’EDCMTL and at P.A.R.T.S, Simon Portigal has been based in Montreal since 2011. He has worked with Public Recordings/Ame Henderson, Brendan Fernandes, Chris Curreri, Eroca Nicols, Amelia Ehrhardt, Andrew Tay, Sasha Kleinplatz, Heidi Strauss, Adam Kinner, Ellen Furey, Dancemakers/Michael Trent, Stephen Thompson, Dana Michel, Dana Gingras, Annie MacDonell, and Isabel Lewis. After his most recent iterative solo work, lcr.i/2069/2015-2019, Simon will show a new group work, lcr.i/group/2019-2022, in May 2022 in Montreal. In collaboration with five Montreal-based performers, lcr.i/group/2019-2022 will experiment with choreography as a vulgarized social algorithm. He has shown his work in Toronto, Montreal, New York, Berlin, and Reykjavik.

Kim L. Rouchdy is a multidisciplinary artist from Montreal working in the dance world. She is alternately, a performer, choreographer and designer. She completed a BAC in contemporary dance at Concordia University in 2015. Her work as a choreographer is greatly influenced by her studies in scenography at Cégep de St-Hyacinthe and at the National Theater School of Canada. In 2015, she presented her first show Lumen Extra Terram during the Phenomena Festival. Since then, she has participated in several residencies as a choreographer (Top Chrono, La Mi-Lune by Fleur d´Asphalte, Nous sommes ici de La Serre les arts vivants). In parallel, she is also making her way as a performer working with various emerging choreographers such as Teoma Naccarato (III), Hélène Rémoué (It Will Take Women), Ariane Dessaulles (TOPO), Chloé Bourdages-Roy (Je fuis, j’oublie, je reste and Décalage vers le rouge) and Catherine Laframboise Desjardins (Violences ordinaires, Tacit Space).

Maxine Segalowitz is a queer, Jewish dance artist currently living in Tiotià:ke (Montréal), where she has immersed herself in creative communities as a dancer, choreographer, clown, drag+cabaret performer, and stand-up sleeper. As a dancer, she’s notably worked with Helen Simard, Yannick Desranleau+Chloë Lum and Ingrid Bachmann, performing locally and internationally. Maxine continues developing her solo-show Sexpectations, a reimagining of her experiences working as a stripper, focusing on navigating agency with coercion and blurring lines between fantasy and reality. She has presented versions of Sexpectations around Montreal at Studio 303, Festival Bouge d’ici, and in FRINGE festivals across Canada, receiving multiple nominations for Outstanding Choreography. Maxine’s somatics teaching/facilitating experience has recently bloomed with co-conspirator Aurora Prelević, with events at the Fonderie Darling, and their regular weekly outdoor teaching practice, Somatic Saturdays | Lez samedis somatique.

Florencia Sosa Rey is a multidisciplinary artist based in Tiohtià:ke/Moonyiang/Montreal. She holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Concordia University (2015). Questioning herself about the socio-cultural history that her body objects that surround her holds, she explores the notion of trace to communicate a relationship with oneself and with the world in constant transformation. Her projects are articulated through performance art, drawing, textile, the use of raw materials, drawing, video and collaboration. Her work has been presented at Concordia University’s Webster Library (MTL, 2013), at the artist-run centre Skol (MTL, 2015/2019), Galerie Les Territoires (MTL, 2015), artist run center Articule (MTL, 2015-2016), at Taleamor Park Residency, (Indiana, 2016), at Livart, (MTL- 2017), at Saga Residency, (Iceland, 2018), Casa del Popolo (MTL, 2019), Gallery 44 (performance with Ève Tagny, TO, 2019). Her collaborative work with the Auto-workshops project has been presented at the Darling Foundry (MTL, 2019), at FIFA (MTL, 2019), at VIVA! Art action (MTL, 2018) and Art Nomade (Chicoutimi, 2019). Her work with the collective Womxn Walk the Walk has been presented at Concordia University (2019), SBC Gallery (2021) and Place des Festivals, Montreal (2021). As an interpreter and performer, she has worked for Ève Tagny (Summer [Gestures to Reignites Fossilized Landscapes] (video), MACM, 2020), and English Roses (to come - MOMENTA, 2021) and for Olivia Boudreau (Lying Bodies, Standing Bodies, Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, 2014). florenciasosarey.com