Artist-Scholar
Movement & Performance
Place-Based Research
Based in Vancouver, on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil Waututh First Nations, I am an artist-scholar of mixed European descent. I specialize in post-studio and site-responsive performance, expanded choreography, social practice, urbanism, and embodied writing pedagogies.
RESEARCH
Fresh off a Shadbolt Fellowship (Urban Studies, Simon Fraser University), I am currently working as an independent artist and Term Lecturer in Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts. My praxis centres on a combined academic-artistic approach: I draw on movement creation, performance, and analysis to examine the spatial and social politics of choreographies (official and unofficial) through public spaces. My book project, Moving Publics (under contract with MQUP), takes expanded choreography as a frame through which to examine urban circulation and relation.
Formerly a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow (Theatre, York University) and a Trudeau Scholar, I hold a PhD from Simon Fraser University (2016). I continue to present my research both nationally and internationally, and was recently recognized with Canadian Association for Theatre Research's Robert Lawrence Prize for emerging scholars (2019).
CREATION
My artistic practice is interdisciplinary, spanning movement, performance, and writing. Across practice, I explore the relationships of moving bodies to their sites, to gravity, ground, and one another. I thrive in collaboration.
Having just completed a season as Artist-in-Residence at Vancouver's Dance Centre and a collaboration with SFU's Community-Engaged Research Initiative, I continue to pursue artistic research on social choreography and urban mobility with an embodied practice-based research approach. My work is currently funded by a Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation grant.
TEACHING
I teach across practice and theory; there is a praxis component to all of my teaching. I teach performance practice, devising/composition, movement analysis, close-reading, contextual analysis, and university research and writing skills. I move between theory and embodied practice to help attune students to how art shapes social spaces.
I have taught at Simon Fraser University, York University, the University of British Columbia, the University of the Fraser Valley, and Capilano University. I prioritize public-facing research, and have been invited to present and teach in a range of public venues, ranging from studios to galleries and theatres, and from conferences to festivals.
PERFORMANCE
I have performed professionally for over a decade. Both federal and provincial arts councils have supported my dance career. I have danced on theatre stages and in studios, as well as in public spaces and immersive, intimate performance settings.
I launched my professional dance career as a company member with EDAM Dance (2006-13), and have since danced with numerous dance makers, including Justine A. Chambers, David McIntosh and Su-Feh Lee (Battery Opera), Martin Chaput and Martial Chazallon (Project In Situ), and others.