Marie-Josée Chartier is a choreographer, performer, stage director, vocalist and educator crossing boundaries in dance, theatre, opera and multi-media. Her work has been presented across Canada, Europe, Asia and Latin America. She receives numerous awards and her work has been featured on documentary films. She deeply believes in collaboration creating with artists from different generations and cultures. mariejoseechartier.com chartierdanse.com
Emma Kerson (she / her) is a dance artist newly returned to Kjipuktuk (Halifax) after fourteen years of living in Tkaronto (Toronto). Emma's choreographic works have been presented by platforms across Canada and developed in residencies with adelheid, Arts Orillia, Citadel + Compagnie, Mocean Dance, MOonhORsE Dance Theatre, the National Ballet of Canada, Peggy Baker Dance Projects, and Shawbrook Residential. As an independent dancer, Emma has worked with Julia Aplin, Phin Performing Arts, Patricia Beatty, Blue Ceiling Dance, Elizabeth Chitty, Jennifer Dallas, Robert Desrosiers, Dancetheatre David Earle, Sylvain Émard, Michael Sean Marye, Jane-Alison McKinney, Sharon B. Moore, Peter Randazzo, Simon Renaud, and Tedd Robinson amongst others. Emma is a graduate of Dalhousie University, The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, and in 2021 she completed an M.A. at the Centre for Drama, Theatre, & Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. As a dance educator, Emma has been on faculty at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre and Quinte Ballet School, and has taught in a variety of roles through Canada’s National Ballet School, Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre, the National Ballet of Canada, Toronto District School Board, Tarragon Theatre, DanceWorks, and recently, Halifax Dance. emmakerson.ca
Yamini Kalluri is a distinguished Kuchipudi dancer, choreographer, and educator based in the US and India. Trained under the legendary Padmasri Dr. Sobha Naidu, she has performed and taught internationally from a young age. Yamini's artistic vision is shaped by her studies at Potti Sreeramulu Telugu University and the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance. As the founder of the Kritya School of Dance, The Kritya Ensemble, and Kritya Dance Company, she blends Kuchipudi with modern influences, creating innovative works that have been showcased at prestigious venues worldwide. She has collaborated with celebrated artists and has been featured in prominent publications. Her mission is to redefine Kuchipudi for a global audience while preserving its essence, inspiring a new generation of dancers and musicians through her teaching and choreographic work.
Shion Skye Carter (she/they) is a dance artist originally from Gifu, Japan, who lives and dedicates time to their artistic practice in Vancouver, Canada on the unceded, traditional lands of the Coast Salish peoples. Through choreography hybridized with heritage art forms such as calligraphy interacting with objects and design, Shion’s work utilizes a sensitive intensity to navigate the body’s complex internal and external worlds through performance. Recent presentations of Shion’s work include Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), FTA/OFFTA (Montréal), Expanse Festival (Edmonton), Tangente (Montréal), and Kinetic Studio (Halifax). As a performer, they have worked with artists such as Anya Saugstad / Furious Grace Dance Theatre, Vanessa Goodman / Action at a Distance, Company 605, Wen Wei Dance, plastic orchid factory, and Ziyian Kwan / Odd Meridian Arts. Shion holds a BFA in Dance from Simon Fraser University, and is the recipient of the Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award (2022) and the Chrystal Dance Prize (2023).
Richard Ramcharan has been practicing and coaching Animal Flow for 6 years. He is passionate about movement and is continuously exploring different methods of training movement.
Meredith Kalaman (Contemporary, Ballet) - Meredith is a Contemporary Choreographer and Performer born and raised in Greater Vancouver, B.C. Meredith is known for her innovative vision and for creating thought provoking dance theatre works. She began creating solo’s on herself because she wanted to move the way her body was asking for and interested in moving. Since then she began exploring her ideas on other bodies and found that she loves both dancing in other people’s works and making her own work. For Meredith, both practices inform and grow each other. As a dancer, Meredith has worked with the Karen Jamieson Dance Company, Dancers Dancing, Judith Marcuse Projects and Movent and performed works by Noam Gagnon, John Ottmann, Kate Franklin, Farley Johansson, Michael Kong, Julie Lebel and Kirsten Wiren. She is a graduate of the Ballet BC Mentor Program. Her own choreography has toured Canada, the US and throughout China. Meredith is a recipient of the 2015 & 2017 Chrystal Dance Prize from Dance Victoria. Her first full length work, Femme Fatales premiered in May 2017 at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts in Burnaby, Canada and then made its European debut in Berlin at Uferstudios in August 2017. Meredith enjoys teaching, learning new things about herself and life everyday, energy, magic, seeing the world and most recently began training in Counter-technique with Charles Slender-White and Joy Davis in San Francisco at Fact/SF’s Summer Dance Lab. It has changed her life! meredithkalaman.com
Solène Bernier (she/her) is a dance artist and a graduate of École de Danse Contemporaine de Montréal (2019). She has performed in work by Bradley Eng for Festival Quartiers Danses and collaborated on Cheline Lacroix’s dance film May the Best Loser Win (F-O-R-M Festival Vancouver). Currently based in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, she has worked with local companies and choreographers including Votive Dance, Mocean Dance, Emma Kerson and Liliona Quarmyne. Solène has also participated in various choreographic and research-based workshops such as Nova Scotia Masterwork’s Future Master’s Program, Mocean Dance’s CLEaR Forum, the Creative Music Workshop in association with the Halifax Jazz Festival. Recent creative highlights include performances in The Devil’s Intervals by Lydia Zimmer (ZIMMERDANS) for the Live Art Mainstage series, and in Metonym Circus’ Lizard of Pause: Girly Epic, choreographed by Alyssa Martin (Rock Bottom Movement). Solène has also furthered her professional development at the b12 festival for Contemporary Dance and Performance Art in Berlin for two consecutive summers (2023, 2024). Furthermore, she will be completing a Bachelor of Arts from Dalhousie University this fall.
Sam Penner - see Mocean's People page
Sara Coffin - see Mocean's People page
Sally Morgan (she/her) lives in K’jipuktuk/Halifax. She is intrinsically an improviser and a performer and continues to question and practice ‘how to prepare to be present’ every day. She is a mother, an interdisciplinary dance/performance artist, and a dance/somatic movement and place-based/environmental educator. Sally works within an ecosomatic framework and on/in/with the borderlands between body and place, performance and ecology, improvisation and the everyday. Her work is practice based and rooted in critical place studies, relational embodied ethics, slow pedagogies, and site responsive practices. As an educator she works towards an
immersive and experiential praxis that highlights theory, practice, and reflection and strives to support and create the conditions in which participants can give themselves permission to notice, feel, think, listen, and move.
Sally holds a BFA (Hons) in Dance and trained at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. She holds a Master of Environmental Studies and an Advanced Graduate Diploma in Sustainable and Environmental Education. Sally has completed several years towards her PhD in Dance Studies and is currently a student of Body-Mind Centering® training. Sally teaches through Eastward Moving Somatics, works under the umbrella SLOW DANCE LAB, and with the artist collective the sense archive. Current projects include the gallery exhibition This Body of Work: rendering, reassembling, and performing motherworlds with the sense archive (live performance work and publication forthcoming), and The Diane Moore Legacy Project (in process). www.eastwardmoving.ca ~ www.thisbodyofwork.ca ~
www.sallymorgan.ca
Lisa Phinney Langley (Contemporary)- From Halifax/K'jipuktuk, Lisa trained at Halifax Dance and professionally at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre. After touring with several dance companies and co-founding Mocean Dance, Lisa founded Phin Performing Arts, focussed on producing her choreographic work and contributing to the community through artistic opportunities. Concurrent with her dance career, Lisa completed an honours BSc in Physics and Earth Systems Science and an MSc in Atmospheric Science, and has held employment as a scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada. lisaphinney.ca
Sarah Hopkin (Contemporary) - Sarah Hopkin is a freelance dance artist from Nova Scotia. She is currently dancing for the Ottawa Dance Directive led by artistic director Yvonne Coutts, and is a CSJ Production Assistant for Mocean Dance. She has danced for TAKE UP SPACE led by Elizabeth Emond-Stevenson, and for choreographers Peggy Baker, Cathy Kyle Fenton, and Allison Burns. She has danced as a junior company member for Toronto Dance Theatre (2015-2016), an intern for Mocean Dance (2015), for Nostos Collectives (2014-2015), and in Dance Ontario's Dance Weekend (2015). She has worked as a demonstrator for Peggy Baker at Canada’s National Ballet School, and taught contemporary dance at The School of Dance in Ottawa for five years. Sarah collaborated with composer Pierre-Luc Clément through her work at The School of Dance, and received a research and creation grant from the City of Ottawa (2020) to further develop work with Clément. Sarah has choreographed and performed in the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival and in Ottawa’s Dark Horse Dance Projects (2017). In 2016, Sarah was commissioned by composer Julia Mermelstein to choreograph a solo with the support of the Toronto Arts Council. Sarah has recently moved back to Halifax, and will be teaching at Halifax Dance in the fall of 2021.
Maria Osende is an award-winning professional dancer, choreographer, and teacher with a rich background in ballet and flamenco. She began dancing at a young age, training first in Madrid, where she achieved high honors at the Conservatorio de Danza de Madrid, and later continued her studies at the School of American Ballet in New York, supported by a Fulbright Scholarship. With a decade-long career performing as a soloist with the National Ballet of Spain and the Berlin Ballet in Germany, Maria brings her extensive experience to her ballet classes in Halifax. Her training with numerous ballet masters and her performance repertoire, which spans classical, neo-classical, and contemporary dance, deeply influence her teaching. Maria emphasizes precision, musicality, and expressive movement in her classes. She owns and operates her dance school, teaching flamenco at Happy Soul Dance Studios and open level ballet at Halifax Dance on Sundays and at the LightHouse Arts Centre (DanceSpace) on Tuesdays. For more information, please visit: flamencoschool.ca/maria-osende
Anastasia Wiebe (Contemporary) - Anastasia Wiebe is a Halifax-based dance artist. She completed her post-secondary training at the Peridance Capezio Centre in New York, graduating from their Certificate Dance Program in 2015. Performance credits include Petite Danse with Maire-Josée Chartier, Striketone with Vanessa Goodman, Inhabit with Kyana Lyne, Wild Within with Sara Coffin, and Sonderlings with Lydia Zimmer. She is currently the co-artistic director and dancer with Nostos Collectives and dancer with Mocean Dance.
Kate Holden (she/her) is an award winning dance artist, and has originated and interpreted the works of many esteemed Canadian choreographers, with performances across North America, Europe and Asia. She was a company member of Dancemakers, under the direction of Michael Trent, and of Danny Grossman Dance Company. Kate is a graduate of the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and spent many years in T’karonto engaged in the dance community as an interpreter, rehearsal director, teacher, creator, and producer. Her dance practice is influenced by her work as a Craniosacral Therapist and Reflexologist, and her curiosity for finding ease and pleasure in an expansive moving body. Associate Artist with Peggy Baker Dance Projects from 2019 to 2022, Kate is deeply grateful for the experience of working and learning with Peggy Baker for more than 20 years. Kate is currently based in Mi’kma’ki/Nova Scotia where she plays, learns and works by the Pijinuiskaq (Lahave River).
Gillian Seaward-Boone (Contemporary) - Originally from Nova Scotia, Gillian Seaward-Boone completed her professional dance training at l’Ecole de Danse Contemporaine de Montréal (EDCM). Upon graduating, she worked with Sinha Danse (Montreal), Pigeons International (Montreal) and Sasha Ivanochko (Toronto), before joining O Vertigo Danse (Montreal) as a full company member until the direction of Ginette Laurin. During her time with the company, she performed and taught extensively throughout Europe, Asia, and North America. Since returning to Halifax in 2013, Gillian has worked as an independent artist, performing the works of Alexis Cormier, Lydia Zimmer, Lisa Phinney-Langley and Vanessa Goodman (Votive Dance). Gillian has danced with Mocean Dance for eight seasons, performing works by Serge Bennethan, Marie-Josee Chartier, Sara Coffin, Sharon Moore and Parts+Labour_Danse, and was Rehearsal Director for Danielle Desnoyers, Heidi Strauss, Sara Coffin and Lydia Zimmer. Gillian is currently in Phase 3 creation for Home Economics in collaboration with Alexis Cormier, Sarah Murphy and Genevieve Boulet. She is also delighted to be in creation for Everywhere the Edges, a collaboration between choreographer Rebecca Lazier and visual artist Janet Echelman, to premiere in 2022. Gillian is a senior member of the modern dance faculty of Halifax Dance's Intensive Training Program and regularly teaches technique classes to the professional community in Halifax and beyond.
Ross Burns is a professional musician, performer, capoeira player, and teacher based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Training in the Afro-Brazilian dance/martial art form capoeira since 2003 Ross has led Mestre Azeitona’s Capoeira Group Dendê - Halifax since 2007. His musical résumé ranges widely across different territories - jazz, rhythm & blues, Brazilian, Jamaican, modern art music and free improvisation - as a guitarist, singer and percussionist.
Zoe Davidson (Contemporary) is a Nova Scotia based dance artist that enjoys the collective energy dance brings. With a background in various dance styles, Zoe deepens her practice by continuously exploring new territory in her art form, and is extremely curious to find truth and deliver clear meaning through movement. In her class she offers a space where dancers can explore their physicality and move