portfolio + cv

Hope in a World on Fire

January 2022: Toronto, Workman Arts - Big Feels Symposium

A community performance where a group of people gathered to speak about their perfect day.

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The Feeling of Cold

March 2019: Toronto, Scouts Valley, Indigenous Cultural Production

A video piece detailing a folk story. Movement was performed indulging in the sensory experience of snow interacting with the body.

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Night Mother

December 2017: Toronto, Dancemakers/The RT Collective, Screen Moves

A video performance involving experiences of seclusion and despair while ill.

 

Autumn

October 2017: Toronto, Odonis Odonis + Beliefs, The Garrison

A plant that I killed was brought. A recording of Vivaldi’s Spring was slowed down was playing, sounding distorted. Sitting in the dead plant pot, I contemplated the seasons of decay. I made a slurry of the plant’s dirt and my own spit and applied it onto my body.

 

Seance Commissions

October 2017: Toronto, The Nookie

Archetypal and Earth-based images were projected. Contrasts between ugliness and beauty were explored and their location on a feminized body.

 

Cloud Office

May 2016: Toronto, Anamai Album Release, Smiling Buddha

A performance where there were projections of clouds. I crawled through a too small wooden picture frame.

 

Waves

August 2016: Toronto, Earth Spirituality Residency, Artscape Gibraltar Point

A video created during the Earth Spirituality Residency. This piece was performed while greeting the day, nude on a public beach. The illegality of the act was incorporated in the tone of nature worship.

 

Forest Clearing

August 2016: Toronto, Earth Spirituality Residency, Artscape Gibraltar Point

A video piece created during the Earth Spirituality Residency. This piece was an attempt to dance with the trees in communication with the surrounding beings and land.

 

Atlantis

August 2016: Toronto, Wavelength Music Festival, Artscape Gibraltar Point

An elaborate costume constructed from trash was worn. There were shells on fire dispersed along a beach. I slowly disrobed, removing the garbage as I walked into the water which was raging in waves against the shore. I disappeared for a short moment and reappeared with a message from the water. I spoke of the water being poisoned and that we were overlooking it, not listening.

 

Short Dance

May 2016: Toronto, Cafe Novo

A short dance study set to an experimental soundtrack of disjointed sounds.

 

Spirit Dance

October 2015: Toronto, Devil's Night, Geary Lane

A ritualistic dance performance involving previously explored conceptual pieces spliced together. A small harp was played by Hexuul’s David Jones. Movement was incorporated with speaking in tongues and communicating emotion without words. There was a kind of emotion-based story that played out. There was a confrontation of the audience’s attitude, which was passive and judgmental (as it often is). Themes of dialogue between performer and audience and the continual investigation of public ritual space and affective/semiotic play.

 

Vocal Experiment I

October 2015: Toronto, Kultur II, The Steady

A loop-based vocal experiment to do with creating vocal textures.

 

Talon

April 2015: Toronto, Dianetiks IV, Unit 2

An improvisational dance piece set to the sound of a metronome set in the space. The sonic space was that of time-keeping, and I attempted to respond to the regularity and assert my own rhythms.

 

Lamplight

January 2015: Toronto, Weird Dance, Videofag

A durational performance where I had found a large oil lantern and lit it, placing it between myself and the audience. I then ran back and forth between the walls of a narrow space, running myself into them until I was too tired and laid on the floor watching the fire.

 

Land Water

January 2015: Toronto, A Midwinter Night's Dream, Ratio

An improvisational dance performance involving vocalization. It seemed half-realized…

 

Voice

December 2014: Toronto, Cave Snow, 811 Gallery

An experimental channeling of voices through the motivating concept of speaking in tongues. I attempted to receive a message and pass it onto the audience.

 

River Song

September 2014: Toronto, Phantasmagoria V, Etienne Brule Park

Performed during a collaborative artistic walking tour and factory inhabitation (before demolition). I sang a historic popular opera song from the late-medieval period, dancing slowly near a pair of shells which contained small fires. The song was about falling in love and the sun set during the course of the performance. This was part of a larger walking tour that moved between performance spaces.

 

Spit and Tears

August 2014: Toronto, The Tide, 811 Gallery

A place-based performance where a single tone played while I explored an outdoor garden slowly spitting in various locations.

 

Dog Song

August 2014: Toronto, Dianetiks III, May Cafe

An interactive dance performance animated to the soundtrack of dogs howling. An experiment with inhabiting and dropping the performance space, entering into and out of casual relational attitudes. Evoking and dropping the posture of “art” as a demonstration of potential tonal shifts. In meeting the audience in ordinary consciousness as evoked through the style of pedestrian movement, the path between ordinary and trance consciousness was highlighted.

 

Sirens

May 2014: Toronto, Drone Alone, May Cafe

An experimental improvising tonal singing performance creating a sonic landscape.

 

Corpse Bride

October 2013: Toronto, Ghost Hole V, Artscape Gibraltar Point

This became part of a series of Butoh inspired performances, further examining the concept of the meat-puppet as dance prompt. A hallway was engaged as a kind of walkway. The walkway ended in a room which was purported to be haunted. The tone of the movement was yielding, as if one could dance out of existence through continually melting away.

 

Virgin Sacrifice

June 2013: Toronto, The Still Sun, Unit 2

A noise music performance with collaborator Hexzuul where the spotlight was constructed with undulating computer-generated and geometrically refracted images which coalesced into a throbbing light pentacle by collaborator Luis Hernandez. Performed in front of an intimate audience, there was an attempt to symbolically reclaim virginity. Virginity here was defined in the sense of asserting total agency over the body and sexuality. The body was entered with a stone dildo fashioned out of a river stone.

 

Fruit Birth

April 2013: Toronto, Fruit from the Ashes, Unit 2

A womb was constructed out of cellophane wrap, wrapped around my mid-body. The womb itself held strawberries, creating a pregnant belly and quarters taken unwillingly from a laundromat. There was drawn a pastel portrait of Oprah Winfrey done with care to capture her beauty. This was drawn on cardboard salvaged from a pizza box. A rendition of Wind Beneath My Wings was earnestly sung. After which there was a strawberry birth onto Oprah’s waiting image. A tonal melding of nostalgia and wealth imbued imagery.

 

Lupine

April 2013: Toronto, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, The White House

A performance that evolved out of wearing glitter stilettos. I brought my makeup and applied it to my face using a small hand mirror, attempting to deconstruct the practice by engaging abstractly. I crawled amongst the audience members rubbing myself on their legs like a cat. Wearing only the stilettos, there was an attempt to assert a sense of agency over the act of being feminized using the aggressive sensuality of a cat as a motivating metaphor.

 

Collab w/Zoe Alexis-Abrams

February 2013: Toronto, Coexisdance, Array Music Studio

A collaboration with experimental jazz singer Zoe Alexis-Abrams. Experimental improvised choreography responded directly to the sound of Zoe’s voice. I was attempting to respond to the felt emotional resonance perceived by my body.

 

Ghost Bride

December 2012: Toronto, Darkest Before the Dawn, Unit 2

An experimental dance performance inspired by the image of a spider possessing the body of a bride-to-be as part of an ongoing deconstruction of femininity. The dance score was inspired by the image of wearing the body like a meat puppet, inspired by the form of Butoh and its founders Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno.

 

Minotaur

September 2012: Toronto, In Somnem Ludere, Unit 2

Part of a series of archetypal-inspired performances. The internal experience involved an attempt to comprehend my queer identity. The Minotaur mask was used as an evocation of an inner spirit which I activated via improvisational dance. The metaphor of the Minotaur was embodied to create an abstract dance score.

 

Teke

September 2012: Toronto, Dada Reboot: Site Specific/Distillery District

An experimental improvisational dance performance with a video backdrop. The video was composed of a textured video quilt made of pieces of the body that appeared to pulsate created by collaborator David Jones. I danced alongside Annie Wong. We were both dressed in flesh-toned costumes and danced on a large stage with no set dressing. We moved separately, slowly, and somberly, interacting with each other.

 

Queer Sisters

May 2012: Toronto, Modern Literature and Culture Center

I performed poetry as the embodiment of the Baroness Von Elsa, an early Dadaist, engaging with a piece of feminist historical re-telling.

 

Water, Metal and Paper

February 2011: Toronto, Laurentina’s Improv Club

A ritualistic endurance performance involving the drinking of water. I wrapped myself in paper using a roll of tissue-like paper and then drank water sloppily, wetting the paper on the outside of my body and creating a sensation of being full of water inside.

 

Black and White

October 2010: Toronto, Project 165

A collaborative dance performance where myself and collaborator Lizzie Shipman embodied opposing polarities. We interacted through dance with passersby during Nuit Blanche.

 

Wish Circle

May 2010: Toronto, Project 165

A community performance held in a circle, where we each invented a wish and then devised a way to project it out into the world. We decided to make a ruckus using only our bodies to charge our wishes so we could send them out into the world.

 

Silent Roses

February 2010: Toronto, X-Pace Cultural Centre

A community performance where we stood in a circle and held rose petals between our palms. I would gently blow on the held hands and without speaking or explaining would slowly negotiate that each person unfurls their hands to reveal the petal, which we would observe together.