Artists

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    Justine A. Chambers

    Justine A. Chambers is a dance artist based in the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her work stresses collaboration, empathy and the choreography that she sees in everyday social behaviour; it has taken her from Hong Kong to Pennsylvania, as well as many festivals and venues across Canada. 

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    Vanessa Goodman (Canada)

    Vanessa Goodman is the Artistic Director of the Action at a Distance Dance Society. In her work, she uses dance and choreography to explore humanity in all its complexity—and to expand the range of possibilities for artistic inquiry.

    Vanessa Goodman lives on the unceded and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish peoples.

    Events

    • WAIL (Jan 26 & 27)
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    Tiziano Cruz

    Tiziano Cruz was born in Jujuy, Argentina. His interdisciplinary art uses the intervention of public space to subvert oppressive hierarchies. Cruz is the founder of the ULMUS Cultural Management Platform, which is dedicated to cultural exchange among South American communities. His works have toured Argentina, Brasil, México, Suiza and España.

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    Alan Lake

    Alan Lake is a choreographer, dancer, director and visual artist with a keen interest in the symbolic. He studied at École de danse de Québec and, In 2003, founded the Alan Lake factori(e) in Quebec City. Past productions include Ravages; Chaudières, déplacements et paysages; and Là-bas, le lointain.

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    Cole Lewis, Patrick Blenkarn, Sam Ferguson

    Guilty by Association (GbA) is an interdisciplinary performance collective that shifts its process with each new project. Led by Co-Artistic Directors, Cole Lewis + Patrick Blenkarn, they seek to expand what theatre can do, devising work from design ideas, exploring modes of storytelling, and scheming to fuse media to the stage.

    The Elbow Theatre dissects the human condition. We develop shows that question accepted truths. Our productions engage our audiences with the realities of our world. Through process and production, The Elbow presents theatre that promotes caring for, and understanding of, each other. The Elbow was founded in 2012 by Itai Erdal and is based out of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

    Cole Lewis (she/her) is a mom and mad theatre artist from St. Catharines, Ontario. She specializes in creating live performance from design ideas, exploring new modes of storytelling, and fusing technologies to the stage. Her practice includes directing, playwriting, and the design of moving image works. Twice nominated for Dora-Awards, Cole’s practice uses humour, design, and technology to explore notions of class and violence, expose questions of bias, and unsettle standard conceptions of ‘truth’ to explore alternative futures. She has an MFA in Directing from Yale and her thoughts on performance have been shared at LMDA, Howlround, FOLDA, Yale CCAM, and Canadian Theatre Review.

    Patrick Blenkarn (he/him) is an artist working at the intersection of performance, game design, and visual art. His research-based practice revolves around the themes of language, labour, and democracy, with projects ranging in form from video games and card games to stage plays and books, with subjects as diverse as the labour of donkeys to the valuation of art to historical date farming practices in Iraq. He is a polyglot, programmer, animator, musician, and stage director. He is also the co-creator of asses.masses and co-founder of videocan, the national video archive of performance documentation.

    Sam Ferguson (he/him) is an award-winning sound designer/composer from Toronto. After moving to Vancouver to study under acclaimed electroacoustic music composer Berry Truax he returned to Toronto where he became involved with theatre. This experience led him to enroll in the Yale School of Drama where he received an MFA for sound design. Since graduating he has returned to Toronto and has been working in the industry ever since.

    Artist Links

    Cole Lewis

    Patrick Blenkarn

    Guilty by Association

    Events

    • 2021 (Jan 23 & 24)
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    Tyson Houseman

    Treaty 6 Territory

    Tyson Houseman is a nêhiyaw video artist, performer, and filmmaker from Paul First Nation. Tyson’s practice focuses on aspects of nêhiyaw ideologies and teachings – speaking to land-based notions of non-linear time and the interwoven relations between humans and their ecologies. He has exhibited at various galleries, screenings, and festivals worldwide. Most recently he participated in artist residencies at MacDowell, Wassaic Project, Vermont Studio Center, and Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University. Tyson is a recipient of the 2025 “Open Call” commission at The Shed in NYC, a 2025 Forge Project Fellow, a COUSIN Collective Cycle IV Fellow, and a 2025 MacDowell Fellow. Along with producing his own works, Tyson is a touring performer on various live cinema performances created by DJ Kid Koala. Tyson has an MFA in Fine Arts from School of Visual Arts in NYC and a BFA in Theatre Performance from Concordia University in Montreal.

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    Plastic Orchid Factory / James Gnam

    Unceded Coast Salish Territories

    Plastic Orchid Factory (POF) is an interdisciplinary organization led by dance artists James Gnam and Natalie LeFebvre Gnam, on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver). For over twenty years, POF has created work that dissolves the boundaries between dance, theatre, installation and digital media. By inviting audiences to reconsider how movement, space and technology intersect, the company cultivates experiences that are both site-responsive and immersive. Committed to risk-taking, POF embraces experimental rigour while foregrounding collaboration with local and international partners to build bridges between artists, communities and contexts. POF has created more than twenty original works presented in galleries, theatres, studios and community halls across Turtle Island and beyond. Recent highlights include Entre Chien et Loup, presented at The Citadel (Tkaronto/Toronto), MAI | Montréal, arts interculturels (Tio’tia:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal) and The Fluid Festival (Mohkínstsis/Calgary); Digital Folk, shown at Omineca Arts Centre (Lheidli T’enneh/Prince George), Mile Zero Dance (Amiskwaciy Waskahikan/Edmonton), Swallow-a-Bicycle (Mohkínstsis/Calgary) and Crimson Coast (Snuneymuxw/Nanaimo); and The Door Project at Left of Main (MST Territories/Vancouver). plasticorchidfactory.ca

    James Gnam (he/him) is a Vancouver-based dancer and choreographer whose work  explores the reciprocal tensions between embodiment, technology and social exchange. A graduate of Canada’s National Ballet School, he has interpreted repertoire for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Ballet BC, EDAM Dance and 10 Gates Dancing, performing landmark creations by Crystal Pite, Twyla Tharp, Jiří Kylián, Mark Morris, Kurt Jooss, Peter Bingham and Tedd Robinson. Gnam is Artistic Director of Plastic Orchid Factory, a founding member of Left of Main, and an associate artist with Mélanie Demers’ MAYDAY and Jacques Poulin-Denis’ Grand Poney. James’ choreography positions the body as both subject and analytic instrument, extending dance into gaming environments, gallery contexts and civic spaces. Across more than twenty works with Plastic Orchid Factory, he has cultivated a practice that oscillates between meticulous introspection and architecturally scaled spectacle, consistently interrogating the conditions under which meaning—and community—are produced.

    His research and productions have been supported by Opera Estate (Bassano, Italy); Circuit-Est (Montréal); Centre Q and the National Arts Centre (Ottawa); and, in Vancouver, The Dance Centre, Electric Company Theatre, The New Forms Festival, The Vancouver Art Gallery, The Burrard Arts Foundation/Facade Festival, The Belkin Gallery and SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts. In 2010, the late Lola Maclaughlin nominated Gnam and his partner and collaborator Natalie LeFebvre Gnam for the City of Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award for Dance.

    Artist Links

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    UNIT Productions & Mammalian Diving Reflex, in collaboration with The Chop

    Canada

    Based in Germany and Canada, Mammalian Diving Reflex is dedicated to investigating the social sphere, always on the lookout for contradictions to whip into aesthetically scintillating experiences. They create site and social-specific performance events, theatre productions, participatory gallery installations, videos, film, art objects and theoretical texts, collaborating with non-artists to create work that recognises the social responsibility of art, fosters a dialogue and dismantles barriers between individuals of all ages, cultural, economic and social backgrounds. Mammalian brings people together in new and unusual ways around the world, to create work that is engaging, challenging, and gets people talking, thinking and feeling. They make ideal entertainment for the end of the world.

    U  N  I  Together  (UNIT) Productions is a multi-media producing company for theatre, film, television and the web. Combining the producing, directing, writing, dramaturgy and artistic design talents of duo Hazel Venzon and David Oro, UNIT produces culturally bending content that brings new stories to the forefront. UNIT is passionate about amplifying POC stories and voices and are especially interested in narratives that illuminate Filipino-Canadian experience and diaspora.

    The Chop is a company that brings together artists to create new Canadian theatre. It was founded in 2006 in Vancouver, BC by Emelia Symington Fedy and Anita Rochon. The Chop is recognized for work that is sophisticatedly “simple” – that is, the artistic propositions are spare and clear so that complexities come from the depth of the investigation. Productions are characterized by an intentionally live and direct connection with the audience. Now led by Emelia Symington Fedy, The Chop has moved our creation hub to the Shuswap BC. The touring of new works starts from our office space in Vancouver, but all creation, mentorship, residencies and community involvement happens rurally. With 19 new works toured nationally and a strong international profile for our “carbon lite” programming, we’re enjoying this additional role as rural artistic support system.

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    Archa – Centre of Documentary Theatre

    Czech Republic

    Archa – Centre for Documentary Theatre continues the work its founders Ondřej Hrab and Jana Svobodová carried out for over 30 years at the renowned Archa Theatre in Prague. The Centre operates both locally and internationally. It actively collaborates with international theatres and artists, as well as with the rural community in the village of Dvakačovice, where it now focuses much of its activity. The Centre produces theatre performances, organizes the International Summer School of Documentary Theatre, hosts artistic residencies and workshops both in the Czech Republic and abroad. Its work focuses on documentary and socially specific theatre projects that emphasize collaboration between professional artists and representatives of diverse social groups.

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    Cherish Menzo / Frascati Producties

    The Netherlands / Belgium

    Cherish Menzo (°1988, The Netherlands) is a choreographer and dancer, who works from Brussels and Amsterdam. In 2013 she graduated from The Urban Contemporary (JMD) at the ‘Hogeschool voor de Kunsten’ in Amsterdam.

    Cherish has appeared in the work of Lisbeth Gruwez (THE SEA WITHIN), Jan Martens (THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER, any attempt will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones), Nicole Beutler (6: THE SQUARE), as well as collaborations with the likes of Akram Khan, Ula Sickle, Olivier Dubois and Eszter Salamon. Her powerful movement language also comes into its own in her own work, which tours internationally.

    In 2016, she and Nicole Geertruida made EFES, an exhausting duet in which perfection and fallibility raise intriguing questions about how we like to see human beings. Sorry, But I Feel Slightly Disidentified… (2018), a solo made by Benjamin Kahn for (and with input from) Cherish, was an attempt to create a cartography of how we experience and meet the other. The seeds for this production were laid within the framework of Fraslab, after which an artistic dialogue between Cherish and Frascati Producties was initiated. Hereafter, Cherish made LIVE (2018), a cross between dance performance and pop/rock concert in collaboration with musician Müşfik Can Müftüoğlu.

    In 2019 Cherish worked at Frascati Producties on JEZEBEL, a dance performance inspired by the phenomenon Video Vixen from the hip-hop clips of the 90s. Jezebel, a contemporary hip-hop honey, refuses to be defined by others and shakes off her image by deconstructing and redefining it.

    In May 2022, during Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, D̶A̶R̶K̶MATTER premiered, a duet in which she and Camilo Mejía Cortés, with the help of the distorted rap choir, search for ways to detach their bodies and the daily reality in which they move from a forced perception. In the context of D̶A̶R̶K̶MATTER , Cherish also gives workshops on the chopped & screwed technique, a process from hip-hop music that Cherish applies to the moving and performing body in the performance.

    As part of Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam’s research programme Welcome To Our Guesthouse, Cherish made KILLED AND EXTENDED DARLINGS: SUBTLE WHINE in autumn 2023, an audiovisual performative landscape that embraces the subtle nuances and mechanics of gyration.

    Cherish is currently touring with FRANK (premiere May 2025, Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels). In continuation of JEZEBEL and D̶A̶R̶K̶MATTER, in FRANK, distortion is once again one of the main ingredients to generate material. In addition, Cherish looked into the action of decay and discovered how something gradually breaking down and getting less or worse can be another attempt to distort a form or information.

    Cherish received the Amsterdam FRINGE and FRINGE International Bursary Awards 2019 with JEZEBEL. JEZEBEL was selected in 2020 for both the Dutch and Flemish Theaterfestival, which presented a jury selection of the best performances of the season and received the prestigious Charlotte Köhler award by the Prins Bernhard Foundation (Amsterdam) in 2022.

    D̶A̶R̶K̶MATTER was selected for both the Belgian Theater Festival and its Dutch counterpart. With D̶A̶R̶K̶MATTER, Cherish received the BNG Bank Theater Prize (2023) and the Dutch Drama Jury prize for best direction (2023).

    For her artistic work, she is interested in the transformation of the body on stage and in the “embodiment” of different physical images. Implementing distortion, decay, and dissonance, Cherish attempts to detach bodies from forced perceptions and their daily corporeal realities, underlining the complexity and contradictory nature of images that seem recognizable at first glance. Glitching the ‘’common’’ lexical, the lexical of the speaking being, she seeks the Uncanny, the Enigmatic, and the Monstrous to give shape to – and materialize speculative forms and fictions.

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    Jerahuni Movement Factory

    Zimbabwe

    SoKo Jena is a Zimbabwean multidisciplinary artist, choreographer, and founder of jena_practice, a platform bridging traditional Zimbabwean performance with contemporary artistic expression. A graduate of the University of the Arts (Philadelphia, USA) and the Dance Trust of Zimbabwe, Jerahuni has collaborated with influential mentors such as Peter John Sabbagha, Nora Chipaumire, Ja Willa Jo Zollar, Boyzie Cekwana, and Mamela Nyamza. His work investigates identity, resilience, and spirituality through movement, sound, and ritual, often combining live singing with contemporary dance.

    His creations, including Kamwe Kamwe / One by One and The Architecture of Blackness, have been presented internationally at festivals and venues such as SPIELART Theatre Festival (Germany), In2IT International Dance Festival (Norway), Atelier Automatique (Germany), and Festival de Dança Itacaré Danse (Brazil). Through his practice, Jerahuni continues to expand Zimbabwean cultural heritage into a global dialogue, offering audiences powerful performances that merge tradition, innovation, and political urgency.

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    Khalil Albatran / Bilal Alkhatib

    Palestine

    Khalil is a Palestinian theater director, performer, and music composer. He works independently across performance and sound under the name BTR / Batr, and believes in theater as a free, resistant, and engaged act. He founded Mushtabik, a platform exploring how art can confront reality through live, interactive performance.

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    Akpik Theatre / Theaturtle 

    Canada, Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), Sápmi (Norway)

    Dr. Reneltta Arluk

    Writer/Director/Producer

    Reneltta is an Inuvialuk, Denesuline, Gwich’in, Cree mom from the Northwest Territories. She is founder of Akpik Theatre. Raised by her grandparents on the trap-line until school age, this nomadic environment gave Reneltta the skills to become the multi-disciplined artist she is now. For nearly two decades, Reneltta has taken part in or initiated the creation of Indigenous Theatre across Canada and overseas. Under Akpik Theatre, Reneltta has written, produced, and performed various works creating space for Indigenous led voices. Reneltta is the first Inuk and first Indigenous woman to graduate from the University of Alberta’s BFA Acting program and is the first Inuk and first Indigenous woman to direct at The Stratford Festival. There she was awarded the Tyrone Guthrie – Derek F. Mitchell Artistic Director’s Award for her direction of Governor Award winning playwright, Colleen Murphy’s The Breathing Hole. She also directed The Breathing Hole at Canada’s National Arts Centre. She co-directed award winning Messiah/Complex with Against the Grain Theatre, with soloists from every region of Canada, including many Indigenous performers singing in their language. In 2024, Reneltta received an Honourary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Alberta for her commitment to decolonial change.

    Alon Nashman

    Writer/Producer

    Alon is a performer, director, creator, and producer of theatre. Selected acting credits include: The Breathing Hole (National Arts Centre), Birds of a Kind, Hirsch (Stratford Festival), I send you this cadmium red (Art of Time Ensemble), Much Ado About Nothing, Forests, Scorched, Democracy, Remnants, Alias Godot (Tarragon Theatre), Hamlet, All’s Well That Ends Well, Botticelli in the Fire/Sunday in Sodom, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, THIS (Canadian Stage), The Wild Duck (Soulpepper), Hedda Gabler (Volcano/Buddies in Bad Times), If Jesus Met Nanabush (De-ba-jeh-mu-jig Theatre), and Tales of Two Cities (Tafelmusik). Alon established Theaturtle in 1999 to create essential, ecstatic theatre that touches the earth and agitates the soul. With Theaturtle, Alon has been involved with the creation and touring of numerous theatre pieces, such as Adam Nashman’s The Song, Wajdi Mouawad’s Alphonse, Kafka and Son developed with Mark Cassidy of Threshold Theatre, and The Snow Queen, scored for string quartet and narrator by Patrick Cardy. Alon wrote the libretto for Charlotte: A Tri-coloured Play with Music which premiered at Toronto’s Luminato Festival and has toured to Taiwan, Israel and Europe, including the Czech National Opera.

    Rawdna Carita Eira

    Writer/Cultural Envoy

    Rawdna is a Sami/Norwegian writer and playwright, born in Elverum and raised in Brønnøysund. She writes in Norwegian and Northern Sami. As a playwright, Eira debuted with the monologue Elle muitalus / Elens historie in 2003, where she played the lead role. She has since written several plays for the Sami National Theater Beaivváš. In 2012, her play Guohcanuori šuvva / Sangen fra Rotsundet, was staged at Beaivváš Theater. The play was nominated for the Ibsen Prize. Eira now lives in Guovdageaidnu and works as a director at Beaivváš Sami National Theater. Eira is also a lyricist and vocalist in the band Circus Polaria with musicians Roger Ludvigsen and Kjetil Dalland. Eira has written the text in the Sami part of the opera Two Odysseys: Pimooteewin / Gállabártnit. In 2020, the opera was nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award for “Outstanding Opera Production” and was awarded the prize for “Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble”.

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    Fana Adjani

    She directed the short film TIERRA, which has been selected for various film festivals such as the Fairy Tales Queer Film Festival in Calgary, Canada, where it won the Programmer’s Choice Award for Best Short Film, also at Guanajuato International Film Festival 2022, MICGénero 2022, and most recently at the Seattle Queer Film Festival and the prestigious Outfest Fusion QTBIPOC Film Festival 2023 in Los Angeles, California, also in Los Angeles, the short film was featured in an exclusive screening for the GAVLAK Gallery of Contemporary Art; and in 2023 TIERRA was included in the film archive of the University of California, Los Angeles, UCLA, for preservation. Rolling Stone magazine (USA) commented that TIERRA was “wonderfully directed.”

    She has had exhibitions as an artist in museums such as the Museo Universitario del Chopo (UNAM) where she served as the general coordinator of the TIERRA Cycle in 2022, and presented her work/installation SE ENCUENTRAN, SE ACOMPAÑAN with the support of the Nelson Mandela Department and the Botanical Garden of the Biology Institute of UNAM. Her work has also been featured in the MUAC (University Museum of Contemporary Art-UNAM) and in spaces such as the National Palace of Fine Arts. Her audiovisual work WHOLE BODY was presented at the Overkill Festival in the Netherlands and later a ForbesLife Exclusive. In 2018 she served as part of the Danza UNAM Advisory Council directed by Evoé Sotelo.

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    Miguel J. Crespo

    Journalist and photographer. He studied photography at the FARO de Oriente and is a graduate of the Carlos Septién García School of Journalism. He has published in media such as Aristegui Noticias, Yaconic, Animal Político, and Fusión. He won first place of the German Journalism Prize Walter Reuters 2018 for the documentary “Dicen de mí: la historia del Mijis”, published in Fusión.

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    L’École Parallèle Imaginaire 

    France

    The École Parallèle Imaginaire (ÉPI) is a nomadic space that invents experiences in theaters, museums, public spaces, and for territories. Playing on the boundary between reality and fiction, it works to expand our imagination and create contemporary rituals. It is directed by Simon Gauchet who is an actor, director and scenographer. 

    Le Beau Monde (The Beautiful World) has been initiated by Remi Fortin who has gathered Arthur Amard, Blanche Ripoche and Simon Gauchet to create this show.

    RÉMI FORTIN trained with the 2013 promotion of the TNS (Théâtre National de Strasbourg) drama school. Since graduating in June 2016, he has performed under the direction of Mathieu Bauer, Simon Delétang, Adèle Gascuel, Thomas Jolly, Frédéric Sonntag, Christophe Laluque, Anne Théron, Cendre Chassanne, and Olivier Martin-Salvan. He also collaborates on the radio with Blandine Masson, Chris Hocké, Laure Egoroff, and Juliette Heynemann In cinema, he has worked under the direction of Loïc Barché, Clément Schneider, Anna Luif, Arnaud Khayadjanian, Clemy Clarke, and Arnaud Simon.

    Alongside his acting career, he also enjoys creating his own projects in which he performs and crafts the original idea. Without being a director himself, he offers to fellow actors to embark on a theatrical experiment together, like his first solo project, Ratschweg, a walking performance inspired by Büchner’s, Lenz, rehearsed in itinerancy with director Charlie Droesch-Du Cerceau and dramaturge Pierre Chevalier during a journey on foot through the Vosges from Strasbourg to the Théâtre du Peuple in Bussang.

    From 2018 to 2021, he was an associated actor at the Théâtre Public de Montreuil. He is currently working on his next creation, La Peur (The Fear), for which Adèle Gasquel will write the script. It will be premiered in the autumn of 2025.

    BLANCHE RIPOCHE began her theatre training at the Regional Conservatory of Rennes under the direction of Daniel Dupont. Holding a Bachelor’s degree in Performing Arts and a Diploma in Theater Studies, she joined the TNS drama school in 2013. Since graduating, she has appeared in productions directed by Thomas Jolly (Le Radeau de la Méduse), Mathieu Bauer (Shock Corridor), Rémy Barché (Stoning Mary, La Truite by Baptiste Amann), and she assisted Suzanne Aubert in the creation of Baleines at the Comédie de Reims. Blanche also leads theatre workshops, especially in EPHAD (nursing homes) and the Conservatory.

    She is also an actress in Espace Furieux, a production directed by Mathilde Delahaye, as well as in Noces d’Enfants by Hélène Bertrand. Since 2018, she has been working with Sylvain Creuzevault on the productions Les Démons and Les Frères Karamozov.

    Blanche has also co-founded the company 52 hertz with Margaux Desailly and Hélène Bertrand. Together, they created their first production, Sirènes, which was first performed in November 2022.

    ARTHUR AMARD graduated from the 27th class of La Comédie de Saint-Étienne, sponsored by Pierre Maillet. He has worked with Élise Vigier and Marcial Di Fonzo Bo on the creation of M comme Méliès, and more recently with Pierre Maillet on Le Bonheur (n’est pas toujours drôle) and Théorème(s). Since 2012, he has been a member of the Compagnons Butineurs, based in Eure. During the 2018/19 season, he was in a co-residency at La Cascade, Pôle des Arts du Cirque, where he joined the itinerant workshop, a collective interdisciplinary working group. There, he continued his research on circus performance.

    In 2019, he co-founded the collective La Dernière Baleine, with which he created Tant qu’il y aura des brebis – portraits de tondeurs et de tondeuses at the Comédie de Caen, along with Léa Carton de Grammont and choreographer Cécile Laloy. Since 2020, he has been dancing under the direction of Mathilde Papin in Serein. As an accordionist and pianist, he regularly incorporates music into his work.

    SIMON GAUCHET works as an actor, director, and scenographer. After studying at the School of Fine Arts in Rennes, he enrolled at the École Supérieure d’Art Dramatique of the Théâtre National de Bretagne, from which he graduated in 2012. He is the co-creator of the École Parallèle Imaginaire, a utopian structure that combines education, experimentation, and the production of artistic works.

    As a director and scenographer, he crafted about ten productions and performances across Europe since 2004. At the TNB, he created L’Expérience du feu for the Mettre en scène festival in 2014. In 2015, he directed a choreographic study for three dancers blending dance and archaeology, titled Pergamon Altar, performed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Rennes and at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris. In 2016, he created the participatory performance Le Musée recopié, where 150 people were invited to transcribe the Museum of Fine Arts in Rennes. He also led the project Radeau Utopique, an expedition on a raft in search of the island of Utopia.

    He created Le Projet Apocalyptique based on Saint-John and Günther Anders at the TNB and CDN de Lorient during the Festival Mettre en Scène in 2016. In 2018, he was awarded the 2018

    Kujoyama Villa residency to develop the project L’Expérience de l’arbre, which was first performed in 2019. His latest production, La Grande Marée, will be released in November 2023 and will be presented at the Théâtre de la Bastille (Paris). As an actor, he has collaborated with Eric Lacascade, Stanislas Nordey, Eric Didry, Yves-Noël Genod, François Tanguy, Thomas Jolly, Benjamin Lazar, and Bernard Sobel.

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    Rainbow Chan 

    Australia/Hong Kong/Weitou

    Rainbow Chan is an award-winning vocalist, producer and multi-disciplinary artist. Her practice bridges popular music and contemporary visual arts, exploring themes of cultural representation, (mis)translation, matrilineal histories and diasporic heritage. Central to her work is the research and reimagining of women’s oral traditions, particularly the fading bridal laments of Weitou women, Hong Kong’s first settlers, to whom she has deep ancestral ties. Through pop music, performance and immersive installations, she translates these endangered songs into contemporary art forms, preserving their subversive feminist voices while reflecting on loss, resilience and solidarity. She is particularly interested in the power of ritual, song and performance as both a means of reclaiming agency and a living archive.

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    Lara Kramer

    Turtle Island/Canada

    Lara Kramer is a performer, choreographer, and multidisciplinary artist of mixed Oji-cree and settler heritage, raised in London, Ontario. She lives and works in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/ Montreal. Her choreographic work, research and field work over the last fifteen years has been grounded in intergenerational relations, intergenerational knowledge, and the impacts of the Indian Residential Schools of Canada. She is the first generation in her family to not attend the Residential schools. Kramer’s relationship to experiential practice and the creative process of performance, sonic development and visual design is anchored in the embodiment of experiences such as dreams, memories, knowledge, and reclamation. Her creations in the form of dance, performance and installation have been presented across Canada and Australia, New Zealand, Martinique, Norway, the US and the UK.

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    Renae Shadler & Collaborators, with Roland Walter

    Germany/Australia

    Renae Shadler is an Australian choreographer, performer and researcher based in Berlin who experiences her life and work as a web of interrelations. Since 2015, she has been developing her Worlding choreographic practice, which seeks to dissolve the perceived border between internal and external processes, between bodies and worlds.

    Her work spans diverse contexts: from dance on stage and major festivals, to museums and outdoor public engagement projects. Alongside performances, she has created lectures, the Worlding podcast series, and the ongoing knowledge lab Moving across Thresholds, which hosts online/live gatherings and festival events.

    As founder of Renae Shadler & Collaborators, she has presented and developed work at venues such as Dancehouse (Australia), Palais de Tokyo (France), Tanzhaus Zürich (Switzerland), Radialsystem and HELLERAU (Germany), among others.

    She is a recipient of the George Fairfax Memorial Award and the Marten Bequest Theater Fellowship. SKIN — her duet with Roland Walter, a performer with spastic paralysis — was selected for Perform Europe 2024/25, Tanzplattform Deutschland 2022, and Aerowaves 2021.

    Roland Walter was born in Magdeburg, Germany, in 1963 with a lack of oxygen, which caused his spastic paralysis. Walter lives with full-time assistance in Berlin. In 2010 Roland started working as an artist. As a performer he experiments with his body and works with artists worldwide, showing the audience a change of perspective. Roland also holds lectures and workshops in schools. So far Roland has worked and researched in Berlin at Theaterhaus Mitte and in the Sophiensaele, among others. With his paralysed body he fascinates the audience.

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    Creepy Boys / So.Glad Arts  

    S.E. Grummett and Sam Kruger proudly make joyful, deliciously funny, big-hearted, queer comedy and theatre for the intrigued. Real-life lovers, the pair perform under the duo name CREEPY BOYS, recently nominated for an Edinburgh Comedy Award. 

    As CREEPY BOYS and with their own solo works, they have toured extensively around the world including across Canada (Buddies in Bad Times, Summerworks Festival), US (Twin Cities Horror Festival), UK (Soho Theatre, Latitude Festival, Edinburgh Fringe), Europe (Prague Quadrennial, LiteraturHaus Copenhagen) and Australia (Midsumma Festival, Adelaide Fringe, Fringe World). Their work has also been featured on the BBC Radio 4 and CBC Radio. 

    S.E. Grummett (they/them) is a queer, transgender theatre artist from Treaty 6 Territory. Over the past 5 years, Grumms has created a body of original queer work and toured it around the world, including Canada, US, UK, Europe and Australia. Their solo-show, “Something in the Water”, which won Best Theatre at the Adelaide Fringe, has toured around the world to queer audiences young and old. Recently they created, “The Adventures of Young Turtle”, a puppet musical for queer and trans youth created with indie music icon, Rae Spoon, which won 2 Sterling Awards in Edmonton for Outstanding TYA Production. Grumms is the recipient of the inaugural 2SLGBTQIA+ Multidisciplinary Artist Award presented by the Sask Foundation for the Arts and the 2022 RBC Outstanding Award in recognition for their contribution to the queer and trans community across Saskatchewan. Outside of self-creation, Grumms also works as a director, puppeteer & video artist. 

    Sam Kruger (he/him) is a performer, sound designer, and recent immigrant to Canada. His solo works “Fool Muun Komming! [BeBgWunderful/YEsyes/ 4sure.Hi5/TruLuv;SpankSpank:SOfun_Grate_Times”, “Bat Brains or (let’s explore mental illness with vampires)”, and duo comedy Creepy Boys, have toured throughout Canada, the US, the UK, Europe, and Australia since 2018 to acclaim and various awards. Kruger’s emphasis is in the creation of original theatre that draws on Lecoq-style physical theatre, Gaulier-esqe clown, performance art, and surrealism. Often exploring themes of isolation, loneliness, and the performativity of everyday life, Kruger’s work is funny, physical, stupid, sincere, wiggly and proudly weird. He holds a BA from the University of Minnesota, and is a graduate of the Ecole Philippe Gaulier, in Étampes, France.

    Artist Links:

    Events

  • PuSh

    Tanya Tagaq

    Canada

    Experimental vocalist and artist Tanya Tagaq won the Polaris Prize for best Canadian album in 2014, for Animism. Those who thought she had then made her definitive artistic statement are in for a surprise. Also in for a shock are those who thought international success, playing to major festivals and packed houses all over the world, would lead to a mellower sound, or a more laid back approach. Tagaq follows up Animism with Retribution, an even more musically aggressive, more aggressively political, more challenging, more spine tingling, more powerful masterpiece. There are those who find comfort in the bland sweetness of middle of the road love songs designed to soothe. But then there are music fans that find comfort in honesty, blazing human talent and free, intelligent expression of passion. This album is not dinner party ambience music. This album is a cohesive, whole statement. Why sugarcoat it? This album is about rape. Rape of women, rape of the land, rape of children, despoiling of traditional lands without consent. Hence the cover version of Nirvana’s song “Rape Me.” It’s at least a hundred times more chilling than the original. Retribution is Tanya Tagaq’s portrait of a violent world in crisis, hovering on the brink of destruction. It’s a complex, exhilarating, howling protest that links lack of respect for women’s rights to lack of respect for the planet, to lack of respect for Indigenous rights. It’s an album about celebrating the great strength of women, it’s about rejecting the toxic, militaristic masculinity that’s taken over the world since the rise of Western industrial capitalism, and is rapidly destroying human life support systems through climate change and pollution. In a startling lyric from the title track, she observes, “Money has spent us.” The Inuit people live on the cutting edge of the climate emergency. As sea ice dwindles at astonishing rates, they are witnessing the death of the entire Arctic ecosystem, as the colonialist machine rolls on, mining newly uncovered areas for diamonds. And the Inuit know the truth about the contemporary natures of the crimes at the center of Canada’s identity. Tagaq herself is a survivor of Canada’s infamous genocidal Residential School System, something most Canadians would rather imagine as a dealt-with thing of the distant past.

    Tagaq is the leader of this project, and she uses the power of her voice, the power of her commitment to her performance, the power of her informed, uncompromising artistic standards, to draw other, similarly committed and talented people to her mission. Jesse Zubot collaborates as producer and lead violinist, creating a stunning array of sound, employing mastery over his instrument and an arsenal of digital and analogue effects. Jean Martin’s drumming builds dynamics and rolls devastatingly across the sonic landscape like a tank division of Tagaq Army, an army which also includes Tuvan throat singer Raddick Tulush, rapper Shad, traditional Inuk singer Ruben Komangapik, and Tagaq’s own young daughter, Inuuja, who is brought in on the first song, like a symbolic character in a novel, to represent both the hope of the future and also to elicit shame for the betrayals we are visiting on the generations to come. We defy you to listen to this album without weeping, without shuddering, without feeling its intense power and immediacy. This is dramatic, relevant, stunning music.

    “Retribution will be swift.”

    Events

  • PuSh

    Kaneza Schaal

    Kaneza Schaal (New York, NY) works in theater, opera and film. Her work has shown in divergent contexts from NYC galleries, to courtyards in Vietnam, to East African amphitheaters, to European opera houses, to USA public housing, to rural auditoriums in the UAE. By creating art that speaks many formal, cultural, historical, aesthetic, and experiential languages she seeks expansive audiences. Schaal received a 2025 Doris Duke Artist Award, 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, Herb Alpert Award in Theatre, United States Artists Fellowship, SOROS Art Migration and Public Space Fellowship, Ford

    Foundation Art For Justice Bearing Witness Award, and she directed the 2023 Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Omar. Schaal is an Arts-in-Education advocate, most recently she taught a course on theater and social practice at Harvard University and served as the Denzel Washington Endowed Chair in Theatre at Fordham University. In her commitment to artist centered institutions, Schaal co-founded Gahinga Institute for Contemporary Art in Kigali Rwanda; served on the board of PS122/PSNY; Leadership Council for Creatives Rebuilt New York artists employment and guaranteed income initiative; Artistic Leadership Committee for New Victory Theater; and she is currently a co-Director of Under The Radar Festival, NYC.

    Events

  • PuSh

    Wet Mess

    UK

    Wet Mess is a wet mess, horny for your confusion. Let it all out and guess again at the insecure balding white man/pussy prince/alien baby. Have a lollygag, think about your fantasy flesh suits, call me sweet prince, and remember Roger in a robe. Choose to make some silly campy decisions, with all the hairy thems and dykey men. All I really wanna do is strip for the stripper and drive her home with the dogs.

    Events

  • PuSh

    BlackOUT Collective

    Canada

    BlackOUT is a Vancouver-based Collective that centers Blackness within the Vancouver Kiki Ballroom scene. Our mission is to make Ballroom accessible to Black folks in Vancouver by creating entry points, fostering belonging  and celebrating  community. Since our inception in 2024, we’ve hosted several open sessions and produced “The Cookout Mini Kiki Ball”, Vancouver’s first Ball featuring an all Black production team and judging panel.

    Artist Links

    Events

  • PuSh

    Luanda Casella / Pablo Casella / ntgent

    Belgium/Brazil

    Luanda Casella is a writer, performing artist, and theatre director from São Paulo, based in Ghent, Belgium. A resident artist at NTGent, her work is internationally acclaimed and known for its ingenious storytelling and incisive deconstruction of language. She is currently a teacher at the drama department at the KASK Conservatory, Ghent, and a PhD candidate examining “deceptive discourse” in communication processes and “unreliable narrators” in classic and contemporary works of fiction. Casella has also been a guest lecturer at leading institutions, including DAS Graduate School (Amsterdam), KABK (The Hague), P.A.R.T.S, School for Contemporary Dance (Brussels), Toneelacademie Maastricht Institute of Performative Arts, Universität der Künste Berlin, Cité Universitaire de Paris, and Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA.

    Pablo Casella is a composer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. His ear for harmonies is unique in contemporary music. With his skills and virtuosity, he knows how to paint landscapes with sound, emotions with melody and power with rhythm. In the theatre world, he is active as a composer of soundtracks, producer and live musician; he has collaborated on Antigone in the Amazon (Milo Rau/NTGent/MST), Ferox Tempus, KillJoy Quiz and Elektra Unbound (Luanda Casella & NTGent), and BAM!, Saperlipopette and LOS (Ultima Thule). Casella is currently touring internationally with Antigone in the Amazon and has already performed the show in ten different countries and at renowned performing arts festivals such as Wiener Festwochen and Festival D’Avignon. Casella has has played at prestigious festivals such as Dour, Les Ardentes, Dranouter, Gent Jazz and Jazz Middelheim. With his own band, Little Dots, he has released two albums on V2 Records (2014 and 2018), for which he was responsible for the compositions, arrangements and co-production. Little Dots was artist in residence at the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels. The band toured as the opening act for Gabriel Rios and Hooverphonic in venues such as AB (Brussels), De Roma (Antwerp) and Paradiso (Amsterdam), and at festivals such as Gent Jazz and Eurosonic.

    Artist Links

    Events

  • PuSh

    Action at a Distance / Vanessa Goodman

    Canada

    Action at a Distance is based on the West Coast on the ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō, Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh), and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations. The company is led by Artistic Director Vanessa Goodman and Artistic Producer Hilary Maxwell. Their work carries meaning beyond aesthetics, using choreography as a means to explore liminality within humanity. This exploration questions the boundaries of the human experience, emphasizing the interconnectedness of bodies, technology, and the natural world.

    Their choreographic practice weaves together generative movement and sonic embodiment, creating immersive performative environments that aim to expand notions of identity, post-humanism and agency. Through their work, they seek to cultivate intimacy between the body and its surroundings, examining how these relationships redefine what it means to be an individual in a rapidly changing world. The company challenges conventional forms of performative hierarchy through collaborative approaches, inviting varied voices to reshape narratives around corporeality and existence.

    Goodman has received several awards and honours for the Company’s works, including The Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award (2013), The Yulanda M. Faris Scholarship (2017/18), The Chrystal Dance Prize (2019 and 2024), the Schultz Endowment from the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (2019), The Isadora Award (2025) and participation in the Space to Fail program (2019/20) through Hyde Productions (NZ), Critical Path (AU), and The Dance Centre (CA). Longstanding collaborations include Graveyards and Gardens with Caroline Shaw, BLOT with Simona Deaconsecu, and multiple works with Loscil (Scott Morgan), Brady Marks, and James Proudfoot. Their works have toured Canada, the United States, Europe, and South America. 

    Events

    • WAIL (Jan 26 & 27)
  • PuSh

    Joshua Ongcol

    Joshua Ongcol (he/they), also known as Joshee, is a 0.5 generation immigrant, queer, Filipinx dance artist, massage therapist, choreographer, teacher and community organizer based on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples of so-called Vancouver, BC. His work catalyzed from his interest in the ways tenderness manifests in the body and its receptivity to deep connection, wisdom and transformation. With this he centers movement as a medium for healing, resilience, and connection, often unraveling narratives of the Filipino(x) diaspora through the lenses of queerness, spirituality, cultural continuity, and collective memory.

    Joshua is also deeply committed to community-building. Since 2022, he has taught and facilitated the Q7 House Sessions, a free weekly gathering where dancers and DJs of all backgrounds come together to share in the culture of house music and dance. These sessions reflect his values of accessibility, reciprocity, and the joy of collective practice.

    Born in Dubai and raised in Canada, Joshua found dance out of necessity — a space where grief could transmute and stories could unravel. With roots in house, ballroom, and waacking, alongside contemporary dance training, his practice has become an intersection of street, club and contemporary dance practices, somatic exploration, and his ancestral traditions.

    Events

  • PuSh

    Marie Delprat

    Marie Delprat is a musician whose work merges sound, visual arts, and performance. She explores the interaction between digital and analog media. Collaborating with other artists from different backgrounds and cultures is central in her work.

    Recent Projects include Dull Star Doll (2025) Live set with her duo Marytronics (Marie Delprat + Masha Ten), and Ethereal Realms – all fiction is metaphor (2024): A performance exploring a persona she develops and interacts with on stage. 

    Marie became an associate artist at Dampfzentrale (Bern) in 2023 and has been part of the Friendly Take Over program organized by Gare du Nord (Basel) between 2022 until 2025.

    She is currently part of the SHAPE+, European platform for innovative music and AV art.

    She has been invited by several venues and festivals such as SONICA (Glasgow, UK), La Cité (Lausanne, CH), O.Festival (Rotterdam, NL), La Muse en Circuit (Paris, FR), Rêves électroniques – CESARE (Reims, FR), Night Air (Kortrijk, BE), Sonic Matter (Zürich, CH), Chiasso means Noise (Chiasso, CH), Kaserne (Basel, CH), Sonic Mountains – Dampfzentrale (Bern, CH).

    Events

  • PuSh

    Khalil Albatran

    Khalil Albatran is an electronic music composer, DJ, and dancer. In his music, he blends abstract sound with collective memory, using experimental dance as a parallel form of expression in search of a new space for freedom. He has produced several music albums and performance pieces that have been presented at the international and local festivals.

    Events

  • PuSh

    Lukas Avendaño

    Avendaño’s career has been described in many ways: artivism, militant disobedience, sexual dissidence, rurality, Indianness, ugliness, illiteracy, street theater, happening, sketch, monologue, lectern theater, witticisms, improvisations, obscenities, vulgarities, lewdness, bad taste, pornography, Art Nako, and/or forced disappearance. For him, these ways of being labeled only reveal a hegemonic narrative: patriarchal, heterosexual, Christian, which is constructed from what Avendaño calls “the thesis with a flaw of origin,” hence he inhabits his very existence as a story of the collateral damage of this “flaw of origin.”

    Events

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