Alain Lortie – Lighting Designer

Alain Lortie has pursued his chosen career with passion for over thirty years. First associated with multidisciplinary artists Michel Lemieux, Marie Chouinard, and Édouard Lock, he went on to collaborate with Québécois and European singers Jean-Pierre Ferland, Diane Dufresne, Robert Charlebois, Daniel Bélanger, Peter Gabriel, Francis Cabrel, and Eros Ramazzotti. Named Lighting Designer of the Year several times at the ADISQ Awards, he also received the Masque for Best Lighting for Les âmes mortes (1996) and the Dora Mavor Moore Prize in Toronto for Œdipus Rex (1997). From 2001 to 2005, Alain was artistic director of the Celebration of Light at the Montreal High Lights Festival. He designed the lighting for several musicals in Asia, as well as two permanent circus productions for Shanghai Circus World: Era (2005) and Kaleido (2010). Among Alain’s major achievements are Starmania (1993), NotreDame de Paris (1998), Arturo Brachetti (1999), Cavalia (2003), and Odysseo (2011). His work with the Cirque de Soleil includes Soleil de minuit (2004), Delirium (2006), Zarkana (2011), and Toruk, the first flight! (2015), which was inspired by the James Cameron film, Avatar. In addition, Alain collaborated with Franco Dragone in the Han Show in Wuhan, China, in 2014.

Antoine Berthiaume – Original Music and Arrangements

Antoine Berthiaume, a Montrealer, is a composer and guitarist active in the fields of improvisation, contemporary music, dance, and theatre. His work has been enriched by collaborations with artists such as Gilles Poulin-Denis, Mélanie Demers, Annie Gagnon, Thierry Huard, Aurélie Pedron, Audrey Bergeron, Louis-Élyan Martin, Jessica Serli, Alan Lake, and Louise Lecavalier, as well as with Cavalia and Cirque du Soleil. Antoine’s music features on dozens of albums on the Ambiances Magnétiques, Audiogram, Vos Records (Japan), Incus Records (U.K.), Saint-Cécile, Sony, and Starkland (U.S.A.) labels. A contributor to Classical Guitar Magazine, Antoine just completed his PhD in digital music at l’Université de Montréal under Robert Normandeau.

Colin Stetson – Music

Colin Stetson was born and raised in Ann Harbor, Michigan; spent a decade in San Francisco and Brooklyn honing his formidable talents as a horn player, eventually settling in Montreal in 2007. Over the years he has worked extensively live and in studio with a wide range of bands and musicians including Tom Waits, Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, TV On The Radio, Feist, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Bill Laswell, Evan Parker,The Chemical Brothers, Animal Collective, Hamid Drake, LCD Soundsystem, The National, Angelique Kidjo, Fink, and David Gilmore. Meanwhile he has developed an utterly unique voice as a soloist, principally on saxophones and clarinets, his intense technical prowess matched by his exhilarating and emotionally gripping skills as a songwriter. Stetson’s astounding physical engagement with his instruments (chiefly bass and alto saxophones) produces emotionally rich and polyphonic compositions that transcend expectations of what solo horn playing can sound like. Stemming from that approach and aesthetic, he has been contributing regularly to the world of film, TV, and game scoring over the past decade with such titles as Hereditary, The First, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Color Out of Space.

Sunns and Jerusalem In My Heart – Music

At the beginning of November 2012, Suuns (Ben Shemie, Liam O’Neil, Max Henry and Joseph Yarmush) and long-time friend, Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, of Jerusalem in My Heart, rented a studio in Montreal for seven days. The idea was to collaborate on rough sketches of song ideas and to complete as much recording as possible without discrimination. The session was successful, yielding many vibe-laden songs featuring heavy analog synths, Arabic influences and electronic sensibilities. 

After the session, the recordings laid dormant. Both bands were releasing albums, and touring was to ensue shortly. Some editing time was squeezed in between tour dates but a full year passed before an audience heard the songs. The collaborative band did a live show at Pop Montreal 2013, then another the following March after which the project began to move forward. The band over dubbed and reworked the songs in the summer of 2014 and finally, while on tour in October, finished the vocal overdubs and mixing. Moumneh did the tracking and most of the mixing while Max Henry of Suuns handled some mixing as well. The album “Suuns and Jerusalem in My Heart” was released on April 13, 2015.

The live show is very much a performance with less emphasis on replaying the recordings note for note, but more about recreating the excitement of the initial recording sessions. The band toured select markets in North America, in support of the release, including a performance in their hometown of Montreal, at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. They also toured extensively in Europe, performing at Le Guess Who? Festival in the Netherlands, at Sonic City in Belgium, at ATP Festival in the UK, including headline shows in Istanbul and Beirut.

Teho Teardro and Blixa Bargeld – Music

Teho Teardo lives in Rome and is a musician, composer and sound designer. He created the soundtracks for several movies by Oscar winning directors Paolo Sorrentino and Gabriele Salvatores. He won various prizes for his music, such as the Ennio Morricone and David Di Donatello Prizes.

Blixa Bargeld was born in 1959 in West Berlin. He is an autodidact and works as a singer, writer, composer and director. He was the guitarist with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds for more than 10 years and is Head and Founder of Einstürzende Neubauten since 1980. Blixa Bargeld and Einstürzende Neubauten will release a new album in May 2020 with a concert tour of Europe and North America.

Three years after their debut album Still Smiling, Teho Teardo and Blixa Bargeld returned with a completely new work.

Often the nature of a collaboration is framed within a single episode limited in time, but this is not the case here. As a result of a special artistic and personal bond, Teho and Blixa reinvent their relationship to explore new territories.

Nerissimo is the title of this album. Its cover artwork was inspired by a painting from Hans Holbein the Younger titled The Ambassadors (1533). Embedded in the painting are enigmatic references to philosophy, religion, mortality, and illusion, which connect to some of the themes in the album.

The word “nerissimo” is the Italian superlative for black (“the blackest”) and there is something very black about the music on this record. However that doesn’t mean, that it is “dark”—a genre commonly referred to in music. The colour black contains all colours and the music contains a multitude of possibilities. The title song Nerissimo opens the album in its English version and closes it with the Italian version, bracketing the album like bookends.

France Bruyère – Rehearsal Director and Assistant Choreographer

Classically trained, France Bruyère quickly widened her field of interest to include contemporary and jazz dance. After her professional debut at age seventeen with Groupe Nouvelle Aire in Montreal, she danced for numerous choreographers and with several dance companies which, besides Nouvelle Aire, included Groupe Axis, the Louise Latreille dance troupe, Pointépiénu, and the Danny Grossman Dance Company in Toronto. After working as rehearsal director for La La La Human Steps for ten years, she taught at UQAM until 2017 and works for Louise Lecavalier as artistic assistant and rehearsal director.

Justine A. Chambers

Justine A. Chambers is a dance artist living on the traditional and ancestral Coast Salish territories of the Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her practice considers choreography as an empathic practice rooted in collaborative creation, and the body as a site of a cumulative embodied archive. She is Max Tyler-Hite’s mother. https://justineachambers.com/

Luis Garcia

“Mexican Traditional dance has led me to a greater appreciation for the value of the arts, especially dance, which has provided me with the ability to facilitate connection, respect and dialogue with others.”

Luis Garcia was born in the state of Oaxaca in Mexico. Luis learned dance at an early age with multiple community dance groups and completed his training as a Mexican Traditional dancer with the Ballet Folklorico at the University of Chapingo in Mexico. Luis holds a B.A. in Rural Sociology from Chapingo University and a B.A. in International Studies from Simon Fraser University.

In 2010, Luis was invited to co-found Nahualli Folklore Society. He has been a choreographer, artistic director and dancer at Nahualli Folklore Society for 12 years. 

Sonia Medel

Sonia Medel has been challenging inequities and promoting decolonial and intersectional feminist engagement with arts, culture, and education across the Americas for over a decade. She is completing a Doctor of Philosophy in Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia; her dissertation includes an exploration of the experiences of Latina women dancers in Vancouver, as part of a broader analysis of the impact of Latina artists on the local arts and culture scene. Simultaneously, she is developing a range of curatorial, artistic, publishing, and research projects. A proud Spanglish speaker, Quechua learner, and visibly racialized Indigenous-Afro descendant daughter of a Chilean exile father and Peruvian immigrant mother, Medel is grateful to the Coast Salish Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples and their lands on which she was born and carries out her artistic and scholarly practices.

Salome Nieto

Salome Nieto’s work is created on the traditional, ancestral and unceded land of the Coast Salish peoples–Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations. Described as enchanting, ethereal, and evocative by her audiences, Nieto is an accomplished dance artist renowned for her emotionally charged performances. Her transformative works explore ritual, ceremony and feminism themes with an aesthetic highly influenced by Butoh and Mexico’s surrealism. In 2017 Nieto was awarded the Vancouver International Dance Festival Choreographic Award for her contributions to contemporary with her solo work. As an interpreter, she has worked predominantly with Canada’s leading post-butoh company, Kokoro Dance, Donna Redlick Dance and Raven Spirit Dance. In addition to artistic practice, Nieto holds the Fine and Performing Arts Programmer for Dance position at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts in Burnaby and is currently pursuing an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at SFU.

www.salomenieto.com

Davi Rodrigues

Originally from Brazil, Lamondance Artistic Director Davi Rodrigues distinguished himself both as a dancer for many years and as a visionary young choreographer for nearly a decade.

Davi studied Physical Education at the Universidade Católica de Brasília (UCB), and was a dancer for six years with the Aplauso Cia de Dança. Davi also studied classical ballet with the Ballet Theatre Guaira’s principal dancer, Heloisa Almeida. He has choreographed eight full-length dance shows for Cia Criatividança, where he worked as both director and dancer for 15 years.

Davi moved to Vancouver in 2008 to work as a dancer and guest choreographer for Lamondance Company and has since risen to the position of Artistic Director and Resident Choreographer. Furthering his commitment to community impact, Davi created the Lamondance and Friends Gala, now in its eleventh edition.

As a passionate mentor, Davi enthusiastically contributes to dance communities by supporting, educating and challenging artists to take risks. He continues to pursue artistic excellence, creation, production and performance, with an ongoing commitment to share his breadth of experience with performers, choreographers, and arts educators in the community at large.

Choreographer Hofesh Shechter OBE is recognised as one of the most exciting artists making stage work today, renowned for composing atmospheric musical scores to compliment the unique physicality of his movement. He is Artistic Director of the UK-based Hofesh Shechter Company, formed in 2008. The company are resident at Brighton Dome and Shechter is an Associate Artist of Sadler’s Wells.

Hofesh Shechter’s repertoire for the company includes Uprising (2006), In your rooms (2007), The Art of Not Looking Back (2009), Political Mother (2010), Political Mother: The Choreographer’s Cut (2011), Sun (2013), barbarians (2015), Grand Finale (2017), SHOW (2018) and POLITICAL MOTHER UNPLUGGED (2020). Grand Finale was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production.

Shechter has also staged and choreographed works on leading international dance companies including the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Batsheva Ensemble, Candoco Dance Company, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theater 1, Paris Opera Ballet, Royal Ballet and Royal Ballet Flanders.

He has choreographed for theatre, television and opera, notably at the Metropolitan Opera (New York) for Nico Mulhy’s Two Boys, the Royal Court on Motortown and The Arsonists, the National Theatre on Saint Joan and for the Channel 4 series Skins. As part of #HOFEST, a 4 week festival celebrating Shechter’s work across 4 iconic London venues, he codirected Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice with John Fulljames at the Royal Opera House. In 2016 he received a Tony Award nomination for his choreography for the Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof.

In 2018 Hofesh Shechter was awarded an honorary OBE for Services to Dance and the company’s first dance film, Hofesh Shechter’s Clowns, was broadcast by the BBC in September to great acclaim. Shechter’s follow up short dance film POLITICAL MOTHER: The Final Cut premiered in the UK in July 2021.

In 2020, Hofesh Shechter Company was named the winner of the Fedora – VAN CLEEF & ARPELS Prize for Ballet for LIGHT: Bach Dances, in collaboration with Royal Danish Opera and co-directed by Hofesh Shechter and John Fulljames.

Hofesh Shechter’s new creation Double Murder premiered on 14 September 2021 at Sadler’s Wells Theatre London.

Robinson Cassarino

From: France
Training: Studio Harmonic and Ballet Junior de Genève
For Hofesh Shechter Company: SHOW, East Wall, Shechter Underground, Grand Finale
First worked with Hofesh Shechter Company in 2018

Frédéric Despierre – Rehearsal Director

From: France
Training: Conservatoire de Paris
For Hofesh Shechter Company: Uprising, In your rooms, Political Mother, Political Mother: The Choreographer’s Cut, lukewarm and loving it, Sun, barbarians, Orphée et Eurydice (Royal Opera House production), Grand Finale, Hofesh Shechter’s Clowns
First worked with Hofesh Shechter Company in 2011
Other work: After three years studying classical ballet Frédéric joined the contemporary section. He was taught by and worked with André Lafonta, Christine Gérard, Yutaka Takei and Cristiana Morganti (Pina Bausch). In 2011 he performed Yuval Pick’s The Him with the Junior Ballet and worked on Angelin Preljocaj’s Noces.

Rachel Fallon

From: USA
Training: LINES Ballet Training Program and Manhattan Youth Ballet
For Hofesh Shechter Company: Political Mother, Political Mother: The Choreographer’s Cut, Orphée et Eurydice (Royal Opera House production), Grand Finale, Hofesh Shechter’s Clowns
First worked with Hofesh Shechter Company in 2017
Other work: Tanz Luzerner Theater, Idan Sharabi and Dancers, and Marina Mascarell.

Emma Farnell-Watson

From: United Kingdom
Training: London Contemporary Dance School
For Hofesh Shechter Company: SHOW, East Wall, Shechter Underground, Grand Finale
First worked with Hofesh Shechter Company in 2018
Other work: Jasmin Vardimon Company and Shahar Binyamini.

Mickaël Frappat

From: France
Training: Epsedanse Montpellier, under the direction of Anne-Marie Porras
For Hofesh Shechter Company: Political Mother, Political Mother: The Choreographer’s Cut, Orphée et Eurydice (Royal Opera House production), Grand Finale, Hofesh Shechter’s Clowns
First worked with Hofesh Shechter Company in 2017
Other work: Centre Chorégraphique National de Nantes, directed by Claude Brumachon, and has been a member of Florence Bernad, Hélène Cathala and Laurence Wagner companies.

Natalia Gabrielczyk

From: Poland
Training: Anton Bruckner University
For Hofesh Shechter Company: SHOW, East Wall, Shechter Underground, Grand Finale
First worked with Hofesh Shechter Company in 2018

Charles Heinrich

From: France
Training: Ballet Junior de Genève
For Hofesh Shechter Company: Political Mother UNPLUGGED, POLITICAL MOTHER: The Final Cut, En corps, Double Murder
First worked with Hofesh Shechter Company in 2020

Yeji Kim – Rehearsal Assistant

From: Republic of Korea
Training: Korea National University of Arts and London Contemporary Dance School
For Hofesh Shechter Company: In your rooms, The Art of Not Looking Back, Political Mother, Political Mother: The Choreographer’s Cut, Last of His Act (as dancer/choreographer), Sun, barbarians, Orphée et Eurydice (Royal Opera House production), Grand Finale, Hofesh Shechter’s Clowns
First worked with Hofesh Shechter Company in 2009
Other work: Yeji performed with K-Arts Dance Company in New York in 2008 and in San Francisco in 2009. She also performed in the Critic’s Choice of Korean Young Artists in 2009 and received the Golden Prize in the 38th Dong-A Dance Competition in Korea.

Juliette Valerio

From: France
Training: Ballet Junior de Genève
For Hofesh Shechter Company: SHOW, East Wall, Shechter Underground, Grand Finale
First worked with Hofesh Shechter Company in 2018
Other work: Nightshifter (Temper Theatre), Long Past (Rosalba Torres) and Bodhi project company (2016/2017).

Zunnur Zhafirah

From: Singapore
Training: School of the Arts, Singapore and London Contemporary Dance School
For Hofesh Shechter Company: SHOW, East Wall, Shechter Underground, Grand Finale
First worked with Hofesh Shechter Company in 2018
Other work: Sri Warisan, T.H.E.(Second) Dance Company, Bhumi Collective and P7:1SMA.

Colette Hansford – Executive Producer

As Executive Producer and co-founder of Hofesh Shechter Company, Colette has led on the business and strategic development of the company for the last 10 years, growing the brand worldwide and producing and delivering UK and international touring work, alongside numerous large-scale creative projects.  These include Olivier Award nominated production Grand Finale, Political Mother: The Choreographer’s Cut at Brixton Academy, Orphée et Eurydice at the Royal Opera House and Hofesh Shechter’s Clowns, commissioned by the BBC for Performance Live.  Prior to this, Colette worked in programming, artist development and venue management, initially with ATG Theatres before moving into dance, as Administrative Director – Theatre and Artistic development at The Place.

Colette is a Trustee of Stopgap Dance Company.

Bruno Guillore – Associate Artistic Director

From: Egypt
Training: Conservatoire de Paris, under the direction of Quentin Rouillier.
For Hofesh Shechter Company: Bruno was a founding member of the Company and has been involved in all of Hofesh’s creations, since the early works of Uprising and In Your Rooms to his most recent piece Grand Finale. He has performed in Uprising, In your rooms, Political Mother, Political Mother: The Choreographer’s Cut, Survivor, Sun, barbarians.
Other Work: Beatriz Consuelo (Ballet Junior de Genève), Richard Wherlock (Luzern Ballet and Komische Oper Berlin), Iracity Cardoso and Paulo Ribeiro (Ballet Gulbenkian, Lisbon). He danced in works by Richard Wherlock, Guilherme Botelho, Ed Wubbe, Örjan Andersson, Rui Horta, Itzik Galili, Ohad Naharin, Mats Ek, Stijn Celis, Mauro Bigonzetti, Didy Veldman, Marie Chouinard, Clara Andermatt, Rui Lopes Graça, Regina van Berkel and Paulo Ribeiro. Bruno featured in the film Passengers by Richard Wherlock.

Barb Clausen

Barb Clausen worked in the Vancouver dance community from 1980 until she retired in 2015. She was one of the founders and the first Executive Director of Vancouver’s Dance Centre and has managed dance companies, mentored dancers and administrators, and programmed dance in a variety of venues. She founded Vancouver’s New Works and ran that organization for 17 years until May 2010.

Barb and Jim Smith created DanceHouse, Vancouver’s only large-scale contemporary dance series. DanceHouse is currently celebrating its 15th season.

Barb now lives in Victoria where she is a volunteer counsellor with Citizens Counselling and swims in the Salish Sea several mornings a week.