Surge

PROGRAM DIRECTOR & CHOREOGRAPHER

Sara Coffin is an award winning dance artist / educator, choreographer and Co-Artistic Director of Mocean Dance. She has been teaching and creating interdisciplinary contemporary dance for twenty years and has created over 30 dance works. She holds a MFA in Choreography (Smith College), BFA in Dance (Simon Fraser) and BSc Kinesiology (Dalhousie), and NS Established Artist Award (2018). Her research interests include the poetic junction between vulnerability, resiliency, and courage.

As a dance educator, Sara teaches at Halifax Dance and has taught as adjunct faculty at Smith College and Hampshire College in Massachusetts, as visiting artist at Universidad Rafael Landívar (Guatemala City), Earth Dance, and as a guest artist at Holland College School of Performing Arts (Charlottetown, PEI), NSCAD (Halifax) and University of Alberta (Edmonton). www.saracoffin.ca

GUEST CHOREOGRAPHER

Raised by the sea in Kjipuktuk (Halifax), Emma Kerson is a dance artist whose work has been developed in residencies thanks to adelheid, Arts Orillia, Citadel + Compagnie, Halifax Dance, Mocean Dance, MOonhORsE Dance Theatre, the National Ballet of Canada, Peggy Baker Dance Projects, and Shawbrook Residential (Ireland). She received the Diane Moore Creation Award in 2023. Emma founded Bare Nerve with Jane-Alison McKinney; their work hard wire was presented by Citadel + Compagnie in 2023 and by Ottawa Dance Directive and Arts Orillia in 2024. Emma has interpreted works by Julia Aplin, Patricia Beatty, Elizabeth Chitty, Jennifer Dallas, Robert Desrosiers, David Earle, Sylvain Émard, Lisa Phinney Langley, Michael Sean Marye, Alyssa Martin, Jane-Alison McKinney, Sharon B. Moore, Peter Randazzo, Simon Renaud, and Tedd Robinson. www.emmakerson.ca

SURGE DANCE ARTIST

Solène Bernier (she/her) is a dance artist and a graduate of École de Danse Contemporaine de Montréal (2019) and Dalhousie University (2025). Based in Kjipuktuk/Halifax NS, she has worked with local and visiting companies and choreographers including Alyssa Martin (Rock Bottom Movement), Nostos Dance Collective, Lydia Zimmer (ZIMMERDANS), Rooted Dance Projects, Mocean Dance, Emma Kerson and Liliona Quarmyne among others.

SURGE DANCE ARTIST

Cass Boutilier is an emerging dance artist based in Cape Breton/Unama’ki, Nova Scotia. Cass has danced from a young age and began training with Painted Dance Collective in 2019, now working as a company member and teacher at the studio. She has engaged in creative residencies with companies such as Mocean Dance and Rooted Dance Projects. Working as a freelance choreographer since 2020, Cass presented her first choreographic work at Lumière Art-At-Night Festival in Sydney, Nova Scotia (2023). Notable performances include Harmonia (Painted Dance Collective, 2021), Cabaret (Highland Arts Theatre, 2022), and For The Kul-Chuh (Run the Flex, 2024). Driven by determination and a commitment to authenticity, she strives to create work and pursue opportunities that align with and amplify her core values.

SURGE DANCE ARTIST

Gabrielle Greener is a Halifax-based whaacker who trains and teaches at House of Eights. While her dance experience includes a wide range of street and commercial styles, including house, heels, hip hop, jazz funk, and fusion, whaacking is the style closest to her heart. Gabrielle has recently begun her career as a choreographer for SOMOS UNO, a show created in collaboration with Carolin Mateus as one of Mocean Dance’s Emerging Artists in Residence for 2022, PANOPTICONICA, created alongside Nicola Popp for the 2023 Halifax Fringe Festival, and Life’s a Drag with director Anna Mona-Pia. She is also a battle dancer, competing in cities across Canada. Her performance credits include SOMOS UNO, Halifax Pride, Vibrancy Fest, Creative Nova Scotia Awards, HFX Mural Fest, and HFX NYE 2024.

SURGE DANCE ARTISTS

Marrin Jessome is a Halifax-based artist who studied Performance Dance at the Toronto Metropolitan University (2019). She now works as a freelance dance teacher, choreographer, adjudicator and performer throughout the maritimes. As a trained pianist, her movement is informed by her nuanced understanding of sound— arranging tension and release on a visceral level, to form a direct translation between the instrument and the architecture of the body. Her work has been showcased throughout the maritimes by: FODAR, Mocean Dance, The St. John Contemporary Dance Festival, Island Fringe, Kinetic Open Studio, The Underground Cabaret, Antigonight Fest, The Youth Dance Ensemble, Halifax Young Company, and The North End Revue.

SURGE DANCE ARTIST

Starr is a passionate and versatile dancer whose style blends hip-hop, fusion, street style, and Afro-fusion. A self-taught artist, she first explored dance in middle school taking few classes until she moved to Halifax and started taking drop-in classes at House of Eights in 2019. Since then, she has taught, performed, and participated in training programs with dancers she deeply admires, continuously pushing her artistic boundaries to further develop. For Starr, dance is more than movement—it’s a form of expression that allows her to communicate beyond words and discover new possibilities. With a vision to make dance a career, she remains dedicated to growth, creativity, and inspiring others through her journey.

SURGE DANCE ARTIST

Inspired by the intelligence of the human body, reg rose's work is somatically led. Having a lifetime dance practice across many forms, traditions and styles, reg’s presence and quality spans that of a multidimensional embodiment. Their work is rooted in the creative improvisation teachings and legacy of Jerry Granelli, the somatic wisdom of many ancient cultures then popularized through Westernization, and the symbolic languages of The Mysteries. The fusion of these threads, woven with contemporary dance technique, shape together a dynamic and expansive vision for creative process and works of art. reg’s practices and work are offerings upon the altar for collective liberation. They serve the unseen forces that move us collectively in hopes to model, through dance, new worlds to inhabit.