Begin the Industry Series with our Territorial Welcome by Quelemia Sparrow, a sincere acknowledgment of the local Indigenous customs and traditions. As we gather on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations, we do so with mindfulness and respect for Coast Salish history and ancestral lands. This Welcome not only sets the tone for the Industry Series but also embodies the collaborative spirit and shared learning that will define the days ahead.
Raven Mother
Raven Mother is the Dancers of Damelahamid’s newly choreographed dance work in honour of late Elder Margaret Harris (1931 – 2020). Raven Mother is the Dancers of Damelahamid’s most ambitious production and will be the culmination of generations of artistic and cultural work. Raven Mother is a tangible remembrance of a woman’s spirit, marking the shift between generations that has sparked a new role for our daughters as the force to hold their grandmother’s vision.
Dancers of Damelahamid is an Indigenous dance company founded upon over five decades of extensive work of song and dance revitalization. For countless generations Indigenous dance played an integral part in defining art and culture. In response to the lifting of the Potlatch Ban (1884 – 1951), was the resurfacing of dance and the awakening of an art form that was outlawed for almost 70 years. The Dancers of Damelahamid emerged in the 1960s out of an urgency to ensure that these artistic practices were not lost.
The Dancers of Damelahamid has since established itself as a leading professional Indigenous dance company. The company’s artistic approaches have contributed to its abilities to bridge creative practices and to work with innovative mediums, while maintaining commitment to the integrity of their artistic legacy. It is through continual and diligent practice that this dance form endures as non-static and relevant to current innovation, influence, and insights.
The Dancers of Damelahamid has produced several theatre-based productions and choreographed dance works, with their most recent production, Mînowin, premiering at the National Arts Center in Ottawa, ON. The company has produced the annual Coastal Dance Festival since 2008, presenting Indigenous dance from the Northwest Coast as well as hosting guest national and international Indigenous artists.
11:15AM—1:00PM // Curatorial Thinking Across Borders: Spotlights on Visiting Delegates
The Roundhouse
A spotlight series featuring national and international presenters offering concise insights into the curatorial frameworks shaping their work and how these have evolved over time. Each presenter reflects on the relationship between their programming choices and the histories, geopolitical realities, and cultural ecosystems of their region, while sharing the artistic ideas and emergent practices currently capturing their attention. Together, these curatorial snapshots offer a comparative lens on global cultural production. An invitation to learn from one another’s contexts and be inspired by the diverse approaches shaping the future of the field.
Facilitator: Gabrielle Martin
1:00—2:00PM // Catered Lunch
The Roundhouse
Enjoy a catered lunch between sessions — menu and details will be shared in advance.
Join fellow delegates for a lively Musical Tables session — a blend of structured and spontaneous conversation designed to spark genuine connections. Move, mingle, and make new connections while sharing ideas, inspirations, and possibilities across artistic practices and geographies.
Facilitator: Brian Postalian
3:30—5:30PM // Artist Walks
Various; Departing from The Roundhouse
Artist Walks invite visiting delegates to slow down, go for a walk, and get to know local spaces through the lens of a local artist. Within the frame of this informal guided “tour”, participants get to know each other while exploring a corner of the city that has informed one artist’s sense of locality. An opportunity to expand inter/national community and stretch your legs! Dress warm. Umbrellas will be available if needed.
Meet the Artists & their Walks
Adele Noronha
Adele’s heart sits on two West Coasts at opposite ends of the world. Their decade-plus theatre career spans work on and off stages in Vancouver and across Canada. A first-gen immigrant perpetually unsettled yet deeply called to choose belonging.
Adele’s Walk
Gotta go? Wanna stay? Places to pee or be (for free!) between the Roundhouse and English Bay. A navigation of rest, restrooms and access.
Alexandra Caprara
Alexandra Caprara is a queer interdisciplinary artist whose practice is grounded in performance making and design. Merging theatre and dance, her work explores interactivity between design technology and bodies on stage, with a focus on queer perspectives, and community based practices. She has worked internationally as a director, performer, and designer for lighting and video projection, and has presented her work across Canada. alexandracaprara.com
Alexandra’s Walk
This walk focuses on reflecting on the transient experience of being an artist, finding and creating community wherever you go- backed by the beautiful ocean landscape and our own queer neighbourhood. Together we will walk through the iconic Davie Village, and spend the second half of our time along the shore of English Bay and Sunset beach, taking in the views of the ocean, mountains, and various landmark art installations. Our walk will end at the Aquatic Center Terminal, where delegates may choose to take the 2 minute ferry to Granville Island- a truly charming Vancouver experience!
Alyssa Favero
Lyzah is a transient being and practicing vessel for light, working as an experimental dance artist and emerging web designer. They choreograph, facilitate, perform, and produce on MTS territories while collaborating with Montréal artists and organizations including Circuit-Est and We All Fall Down. Their process centers care, presence, and transparency across all facets of their artistic practice.
Lyzah’s Walk
Sharing my love of the city—from my street dance hub, where activism gathers, to sunset beach, (optional boba stop) and ending with a ferry ride to Granville Island (Performance Works Location). Happy to be making space for the group to connect while occasionally sharing my own stories.
Ariel Martz-Oberlander
Ariel is a theatre artist, writer and facilitator living on Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and Shíshálh territory. She specializes in developing and experimenting with culturally specific disability and Mad arts creation methodologies. Recent work includes The Narrow Bridge, a multimedia adaptation of The Dybbuk, presented at Chutzpah! Festival. Ariel is a recipient of the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award for emerging community artist.
Ariel’s Walk
Taking place from the Roundhouse to ʔəy̓əlxən (English Bay), this walk explores the idea of human intervention in ecosystem balance, and the concept of “wild” as both a colonial notion of an untouched nature, free from human connection, and a land-based notion of a healthy ecosystem. We will interact with the logs placed for seating at English Bay, a project designed by my grandmother in 1963 to divert waste debris from the forestry industry.
Caroline & Sammy Chien-MacCaull
Sammy and Caroline Chien-MacCaull are Co-Artistic Directors of Chimerik 似不像, an award-winning dance-technology company represented by Aaron Fernandes Entertainment. With 500+ collaborations since 2011, their projects center underrepresented identities across dance, media art, and experimental performance. They look forward to this dialogue, sharing insights from their project Inner Sublimity, which premiered at PuSh 2025.
Caroline & Sammy’s Walk
Join us for a meditative walk from the Roundhouse—home of our biannual Unity Consciousness Arts Festival—along False Creek into Chinatown, where we’ll share personal connections to local sites, food, and underrepresented venues, including Chimerik Chinatown Art Space for Taiwanese specialty coffee and tea. Drawing from the ritualistic methods of Inner Sublimity, the walk cultivates awareness of body, breath, vibration, and relational consciousness—how attention shapes our connection to each other and to place.
Emmalena Fredriksson
Emmalena Fredriksson is a contemporary dance artist with a practice in the expanded fields of choreography, often collaborating with artists of other disciplines, creating choreographic experiences and dance for social events, film, galleries and performance. www.emmalenafredriksson.com
Emmalena’s Walk
Connecting internal and external landscapes as we meet the body of the city on this slow walk from The Roundhouse Community Centre to Granville Island. Through guided experiential conversations, this walk is a collective meditation, a social choreography and an opportunity to relate to each other and the city through our senses.
George Rahi
George Rahi is an interdisciplinary artist whose work includes installations, experimental instrument making, solo + ensemble performance, and works for radio, theatre & public spaces.
George’s Walk
This walk visits some of Vancouver’s iconic public space “amenities”, including the seawall and public library, while inviting reflection on the notion of art as a public good.
Howard Dai
Howard Dai is a Taiwanese actor and theatre maker whose work has been seen across Canada. His performances and creations have existed in theatre, films, public spaces, Zoom screens, Google Sheets, automated phone calls, interactive websites, and virtual reality. His most recent work-in-development Dream Machine is an interactive game show where the audience gambles on their dreams in an arcade. www.howarddai.com
Howard’s Walk
Join Howard in a wander filled with little tasks and games that will invite you to interact with the city in a brand new way, while exploring various “mundane” indoor spaces within downtown Vancouver! Get ready to play!
Marco Esccer
Marco Esccer is a queer Mexican dance artist and Dance Movement Therapist whose work bridges technical and therapeutic approaches to movement. Trained at Mexico City’s National Ballet and Contemporary School, he also holds certifications in Contemporary Art Production, Dance Movement Therapy, and Somatic Experiencing. Co-Director of TEMPO Dance & Visual Art, Roundhouse Artist in Residence, and Community Engagement Manager at New Works, Marco views art as a bridge for compassion, understanding, and shared humanity.
Marco’s Walk
What makes hope sustainable? An immigrant artist asks himself as he walks the streets of Vancouver. In this embodied conversation in motion—a tertulia through the city—Marco Esccer reflects on how migration has reshaped his artistic practice, blending the professional world with community work. Together, you’ll explore how we create artistic voice and belonging even through the abyss of uncertainty. (A “tertulia” is a social gathering, common in Latin American culture, where people meet to share art, ideas, and reflection.)
Richard Wolfe
Richard is a longtime PuSh associate who has both created shows for the festival and co-presented others. Together with Tim Carlson, he conceived and programmed the PuSh Cabaret—a precursor to Club PuSh—for three seasons. He also produced Gob Squad’s Super Night Shot (Vancouver edition) and PuSh’s 10th Anniversary Gala. Richard currently serves as the Artistic and Producing Director of Pi Theatre (pitheatre.com).
Richard’s Walk
Just one subway stop from the Roundhouse Community Centre is the beginning of our walk, through what I believe is Vancouver’s most vibrant, but also most under-the-radar, indie arts and culture district. We’ll make a few stops along the way and wrap things up with a drink and a conversation about other arts districts you might know and what makes them great.
Artist Walks are only available to Industry Delegates.
On a sand-covered stage, four Zimbabwean dancers move through poles, elastics, and projected images, their bodies speaking what history has silenced. With live vocals that summon the disappeared, Kamwe Kamwe (One by One) transforms dance into testimony—a reckoning on racism, memory, and resilience. Both protest and prayer, it’s a choreography of solidarity rising from the dust.
Content note / advisories: Potential exposure to airborne dust due to sand; Archival images of racial and colonial violence
WAIL is a choreographic poem for our fractured moment. Moving through a shifting landscape of sound, light, and breath, six performers embody the tension between fragility and resilience. Drawing from the natural world’s patterns and distortions, the work becomes a living ecosystem—a multi-sensory meditation on coexistence, where motion and vibration merge in a collective wail of grief and joy.
Content note / advisories: May include strobing lights and haze
The Post at 750 at the Festival Lounge Bar(See Map)
Raise a glass to the start of Industry Week! Join fellow delegates, artists, and guests for an informal evening of connection and celebration following the day’s performances.
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