interrarium 2010
William Yang – Facilitator
Born William Young in North Queensland in 1943, he changed his name to William Yang in 1983. He worked as a playwright from 1969 to 1974, and since then as a freelance photographer. His first solo exhibition in 1977, Sydneyphiles, caused a sensation because of its frank depiction of the Sydney gay and party scene. In the mid–eighties, William Yang began to explore his Chinese heritage which had hitherto been lost to him by his complete assimilation into the Australian way of life. His photographic themes expanded to include landscapes and the Chinese in Australia.
William Yang integrated his skills as a writer and a visual artist in 1989. He began to perform monologues with slide projection in the theatre. These slide shows were a form of performance theatre and have become his favourite way of showing his work. The third one, Sadness, wove together two themes: the discovery of his Chinese heritage, and the rituals of dying and death in Sydney. The piece has toured successfully nationally and internationally as has all his subsequent pieces. William has done seven full length monologues in all, including Shadows, Blood links, and Objects For Meditation.
In addition to his famed monologues, William Yang has presented over twenty individual exhibitions across Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. He is represented by Stills Gallery, Sydney.http://www.williamyang.com/
Lynda Gaudreau – Facilitator
Photo: Michael Slobodian
Active as a choreographer since 1991, Lynda Gaudreau founded the Compagnie De Brune and launched an international career in 1992. Her very personal approach, which involves gestual, human, and corporal figures, is inspired by architecture, music, and the visual arts. Today the choreographer’s research and creation takes place on a much larger scale, embracing movement, sound, text, and video as choreographic materials. Central to her concerns and to her work are risk, questioning, and innovation in the practice of dance. In collaboration with artists from dance and other disciplines, she pursues her deep exploration of choreographic creation by inviting artists to take part in her works or by developing projects with and for her peers.
The choreographer and her Compagnie De Brune have collaborated with some of the most prestigious artistic organizations in Quebec, Canada, and Europe. Lynda Gaudreau also frequently receives invitations from around the world to give workshops and lectures. She has taught in Canada, Brazil, Austria, Germany, France, Spain, Croatia, and Israel, as well as at the famous P.A.R.T.S. school (Performing Arts Research and Training Studios) in Brussels, Belgium. http://www.lyndagaudreau.com/
2010 participants
Alison Denham
Born and raised on the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia, Alison Denham moved to Vancouver to pursue professional dance training at Arts Umbrella and later the Ballet B.C. Mentor Program. Since completion of these programs she has worked with the following choreographers: Judith Marcuse, Paras Terezakis, Judith Garay, Wen Wei Wang, David Earle, D.A. Hoskins, Michael Trent, Robert Glumbeck, Andrea Nann, and Alvin Erasga Tolentino. 2001-2005 Ali was a company member with Toronto based Dancemakers. While with the Company, she performed works by artisitc director Serge Bennathan, guest choreographers Marie-Josee Chartier, Julia Aplin, Shannon Cooney and participated in choreographic labs with Kate Alton, Lesandra Dodson, Peter Chin, Claudia Moore, and Susanna Hood. Alison has been exploring choreography for the last few years and has presented pieces in Vancouver and Toronto. In August 2004, she was a participant in the Ballet Jorgen of Canada Choreographic Workshop facilitated by Linda Rabin. Her BravoFact film entitled ‘Aerobia’ aired on Bravo in March 2005. Alison is currently working with Wen Wei Dance.
David Drury (Montreal)
Born in Montreal, David studied electroacoustic composition at Concordia University (2001), and later earned a Masters.
James Gnam (Vancouver)
Born in Calgary, Alberta and raised in Victoria, BC, James Gnam received his training at the National Ballet School of Canada in Toronto. Prior to his joining Ballet British Columbia in 2004, James danced with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montreal and JoeINK . James has had the opportunity to perform feature roles in works created by Jiri Kylian, Twyla Tharp, Mark Morris and Lar Lubavitch; as well as creating roles with choreographers such as Crystal Pite, John Alleyne, Peter Bingham, Wen Wei Wang and Amber Funk Barton. As a choreographer James’ has created work for the plastic orchid factory, Ballet BC’s Mentor Program, the Dance All Stars program at the 2006 Chutzpah! Festival, Dances for a Small Stage as well as The Arts Umbrella’s Dance Company. As a teacher, James has worked as a repetiteur for Ballet BC, its Mentor program and Summer Dance Intensives. He a faculty member at The Anna Wyman School of Dance and has been frequently been invited to teach professional contemporary classes for CADA/BC. www.plasticorchidfactory.com
Neah Kalcounis (Calgary)
Neah Kalcounis is a cutting edge dance maker. Underlining her rigor and intelligence, Calgary’s Avenue Magazine chose her as one of the Top Ten Calgarians to Watch in the millennium. Over eight years, she’s pursued dance from her base in Calgary, Alberta.Where Canada Magazine chose her as one of Calgary’s top “Nine Artists Rising”, Neah knows she’s intense…Her own physical language is gestural and gnarled, with a hint of something ancient as the Earth… Kalcounis is passionate about dance, not in an airy-fairy way, but driven by a much larger impulse…-Melanie Jones, March 2005. Neah entered the ‘90s with Advanced Royal Academy of Dancing and ISTD ballet certification. She went on to university studies in philosophy (Regina, SK); spent two years at Grant MacEwan Community College (Edmonton, AB), graduating in Dance Performance on the Dean’s Honour Roll (modern technique, composition and teaching studies). She then ventured forth to Ottawa’s Le Groupe Dance Lab , Canada’s premiere choreographic laboratory, for her professional debut and immersion in Eastern Canadian dance. In 1998, she returned to Calgary to found Footprints, to study philosophy, and to mount professional choreography with a corps of modern dancers.
Tova Kardonne (Toronto)
My first arts training was in dance. I studied ballet as a child, and continued to pursue dance training until health problems made further development extremely slow and interrupted. I also began my study of music at an early age, but because my formative experience of music was concurrent with that of dance, the creation in one discipline always inevitably stems from, or spills into, the creation of the other. In the last ten years, I have attempted to reconnect with my dance background by participating in the Toronto Contact Improvisation Jam, as well as studying post-modern scores with dancer Dawne Carleton. This study of improvisation in movement has fortunately fed into my studies of vocal and instrumental improvisation at Humber College, thus strengthening and expanding my improvisation practice, and allowing me to create movement pieces in collaboration with musicians such as Christine Duncan, and performers such as Tammy Maceod and Lisa Pijuan-Nomura.
Currently, I am enjoying the opportunity to create music for dance, as part of the 60X60 2009 International Mix, and would like to put myself in more situations in which the creative impetus of dancers shapes my creation of sound art. Tova Kardonne is a Toronto vocalist, composer and choreographer and violist who was featured at Nuit Blanche last year. She regularly performs in groups The Thing Is and The Element Choir. Tova Kardonne’s formative choral experiences and her Conservatory training in viola and piano fed into a passion for classical, African, Eastern European and Klezmer music. She earned her Vocal Jazz Diploma from Humber College, where she received instruction of Shannon Gunn, Pat LaBarbera, John Macleod and Don Palmer among others. She composes/choreographs a cappella performance art, sings her Balkan-Jazz fusion compositions with 8-piece band The Thing Is, and performs with the Composers Collective Big Band. Tova holds an Hon. B.A. from the University of Toronto with majors in French Linguistics and Philosophy and a minor in Mathematics. www.myspace.com/thethingismusic
Jody Hegel (Montreal)
Bio coming soon
Andrew Milne (Winnipeg)
Andrew Milne is a Fusion Performance Artist living and working in Winnipeg Manitoba. Disciplines currently being fused: RealTimeMediaPerformanceSculptureImage
Fusion: the perception of rapid, intermittent flashes of light as a continuous beam. origin: a pouring out, melting.
Statement: Exploration is a process of attempting to travel in uncharted directions with unrehearsed objectives. Current work attempts to navigate the terrain that is mind | body | technology.
Artistic Interdisciplinary Approach - I approach interdisciplinary work by maintaining an ongoing practice and an engagement with a supporting community within each discipline that I am involved with. Through this engagement I am able to work from a place of process creating a fusion of disciplines rather than anaesthetic collage of practices.
The disciplines that I am actively working within are:
- Dance Performance and Choreography
- Real-Time Video Performance and Physical Computing
- Alternative process Photography
- Alternative process Film
Across all of these disciplines runs a critique of information and encoded systems in their ability to relate to the body. Within Dance and Video, I seek to create work or reveal phenomena that through embodiment resist the processes of encoding and deconstruction and, in the next breath integrate the body and phenomena into cybernetic performance systems. I am currently developing an EEG (electroencephalography) system as a physical computing interface. The EEG sensors may also be applied to other parts of the body, as well as the head, to detect and amplify electrical activity occurring within the body directly under the skin.
www.youtube.com/user/obscurecamera
www.vimeo.com/andrewmilne/videos
Ming Hon
Ming Hon is an independent dance artist and choreographer. Born in Hong Kong and brought up in Winnipeg she is a graduate of the Senior Professional Program of the School of Contemporary Dancers. Ming is an active member of the Young Lungs Dance Exchange in Winnipeg, as well as a proud founding member of .maDAM. dance company based two thirds in Toronto. She has had the opportunity to perform and create works in the Toronto Fringe Festival, Toronto Distillery Jazz Festival, and Young Lungs Biannual Showcases. Ming has performed works under artists Giana Sherbo, Natasha Torres-Garner, Johanna Riley, Tedd Robinson, Andrew Milne, Branwyn Bundon, Stephanie Ballard, Gaile Petursson-Hiley, and Adesola Akinleye. Currently she is in a formal mentorship under visual artist Sarah Anne Johnson through MAWA (Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art), and is developing her individual solo work and creation. As well she is honored to be performing in Johnson’s new choreographed installation work ; ‘Dancing with the Doctor’ at Ace Art in Winnipeg this winter and is looking forward to developing a new full length work in a 6 week international residency with visual artist, Howie Shia at the Taipei Artists Village in Taiwan this summer. Ming’s main artistic intent is to connect her inherent natural movement vocabulary of moving off-kilter and unsettled with her interest of surreal conceptual narratives and caricatures.
Joelle Arnusch (Regina)
Joelle Arnusch is originally from Regina and was a member of the Youth Ballet Company of Saskatchewan. She continued her professional training with the School of the Toronto Dance Theatre. After graduating in 1996, she performed the works of a number of Canadian choreographers including Peter Randazzo, David Earle, Allison Cummings, Newton Moraes, and John Ottman. She moved to New York City in 1999 where she danced for 5 years with the Mary Anthony Dance Theatre, as well as performing independently with Beppie Blankert (from the Netherlands,), Ariane Anthony and Company, Shua Group, Racoco Productions, and J Mandlle Performances. Presently, Joelle divides her time between Regina, NYC, and Taipei, Taiwan. In Taipei, she is studying the Kung Fu Art of Bagua, as well as dancing with Chou Shu-yi (Taipei Artist Village, Lin HH Dance Company, and Kaoshiung City Ballet. In NYC, she continues her collaborations with Mary Anthony and Racoco Productions. In Regina, Joelle has had the pleasure of dancing for Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie, Robin Poitras, Robert Regala, and Floyd Favel Starr.
Robert Regala (Regina)
Robert Regala was born in the Philippines and raised in Toronto. He earned a B.A. Degree in Dance from San Jose State University, California. Subsequently, he performed with the Limon West Dance Project and was a principal dancer with the Limon Dance Company in NYC for 8 years. He has danced the works of Alan Danielson, Mark Haim, Doris Humphrey, Jiri Kylian, Jose Limon, Lar Lubovitch, Donald McKayle, Anthony Tudor, and Doug Varone. In 2005, he embarked on a career as an independent dance artist. He traveled to Taiwan to teach, perform, and study martial arts. In Taiwan, he has collaborated with Lin HH Dance Company and has been commissioned to set new works for the National Taiwan University of the Arts, and Taipei National University of the Arts. He was interim artistic director of Dance Forum Taipei Company, spring 2007. Most recently, he has been performing with Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie in their Kudelka Project. Currently in Regina, SK, Robert has worked with Floyd Favel Starr, New Dance Horizons and the Youth Ballet Company of Saskatchewan.