Artist Statement
As a dance artist I aim to cultivate the potential for engagement; engagement of the body, of the imagination, and of self with others. Through such engagement, the enrichment of my community and a mindful contribution to the larger cultural ecology act as key drivers in my art practice and dance making.
I see the stage, in its many shapes, sizes, and contexts as a mirror for human experience. I feel the poetry of our existence can be reflected in both the virtuosic imagination and the subtly of the mundane.
At the root of my art making is inquiry, collaboration and interdisciplinary processes. I revel in the unexpected collisions and adaptations that occur in collaboration. This ‘in the moment’ modulation provokes my creative self and fuels a rich relational dialogue that I value and strive to exist within.
I am inspired by human potential. Themes central to my ideology and artistic endeavors include sense of place, identity, and the poetic junction between vulnerability, resiliency and courage. I strive to capture the reverie of the space between by highlighting both the ferocity and fragility of human interaction. My movement generation is driven by my curiosity in the highly kinetic, momentum-based movement patterning, paired with the legibility of the internal landscape from the sensing body. My practices draw from contact improvisation, somatic-based techniques, and using the expressive lens of Laban’s Body, Effort, Shape, Space.
I am deeply interested in the body’s relationship to technology and the continuum between the flesh self and the virtual self. Through which, I have been committed to the investigation of how technology is encroaching on and affecting our sense of self. In recent years, my conceptual and physical research has included the duplication of self, the phenomena of becoming beside, and the extended body – one that moves beyond the container of the skin.
Originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia, my career has been based in multiple locales in eastern and western Canada (Halifax-Vancouver) and north and south of the border. Through my role as co-artistic director with Mocean Dance, a contemporary dance company based in Halifax, my scale of attention, both as an artist and an art manager, oscillates between nuanced detail to large-scale adaptability and vision. This supple existence has led me to keep an open dialogue informed by a rich national and international artistic exchange. This interchange ultimately enriches my personal artistic voice and permeates the communities that I work in.