SHED Team

Pam Tzeng (曾小桐) is a second-generation Taiwanese-Canadian choreographer, interdisciplinary performance maker, movement educator and arts worker based in Moh’kíns’tsis Treaty 7 Territory. Pam takes pleasure in extremes to craft honest, visceral and animated performances about the politics of the body with objects and costumes. Her practice and aesthetic imagination is coloured by her training in contemporary dance, mask, clown, puppetry. Led by her embodied curiosities, she graciously traverses charged thematic territories to reveal and empower unseen truths.

Her solo and ensemble works have been presented across Canada and through the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Past works include: “A Meditation on the End” Jo-Lee, “SHE and he…” By Jo-Lee, That ch*nk in y/our armour commissioned by CanAsian Dance KickStart Festival 2018 (Tkaronto) and Cheers & Tears: A Journey Into Whiteness commissioned by Good Women Dance Collective (Amiskwacîwâskahikan).

Cindy Ansah is a dance artist, actress, writer and filmmaker playing, creating and collaborating in Mohkínstsis (Calgary). Her recent choreography and film works have been presented in the IGNITE! Festival for Emerging Artists, Fluid Fest, Dancers’ Studio West’s Quick + Dirty Festival, DanceWorks Moving Online Film Showcase and the MOVING BODY Festival. As a recent graduate of the University of Calgary with a BFA in Dance, Cindy is currently devoting her creative capacities to engaging in multidisciplinary collaboration and fostering collaborative relationships among Black artists in her newly adopted roles as Co-founder and Artistic Director of NAPPY Dance Collective.

Cory Beaver is a performer, and a dancer from the Îyarhe Nakoda First Nation. Cory was self-taught growing up and later started training after high school. Since then, he has had a tremendous journey with opportunities to train in L.A, New York, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, and Banff, Alberta as part of a program called the Indigenous dance residency in 2015. His repertoire includes hip hop, a bit of jazz and a curiosity of ballet and contemporary. Cory has an array of experiences performing on stage and on television locally, and nationally with indigenous artists such as “The halluci nation” among others.

Kara is a dance artist and mother to Wilder John Wolf. She is a second-generation settler of Filipinx and German descent. Kara runs a small space called the Beat Nook within the arts collective Bonnybrook Junction, works as a creative arts facilitator for Antyx Community Arts and is currently a part of the Bringing Power to Truth project as an artist collectively building an Anti-Racist Mohkinstsis. Her work as a choreographer is currently exploring her cultural ancestry, boy bands, motherhood, honouring age; and she has played with text, spoken word, sound design and film to bring her ideas to fruition.

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FOONYAP is a classically-trained violinist showcasing a sound that swings between fragility and explosive dynamism. Drawing comparisons to Björk and Tanya Tagaq, her work navigates her sheltered Chinese-Catholic heritage and the intense music training of her childhood. Marrying brittle melodies with classical deconstructionism, she explores the multiple identities that children of settler families face.

FOONYAP has toured extensively throughout the UK, Europe and Canada, garnering acclaim from publications such The Fader, The Line Of Best Fit, and the Toronto Star. Her current projects explore the history of Calgary's Chinatown and its role in the cultural ecosystem.

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Alèn Martel is a dancer, scholar, university educator, and performing arts centre professional working in Moh-kíns-tsis, Treaty 7 Territory (Calgary, AB). His research includes methodologies in creative process, pedagogy in dance history, including its decolonization, and dance and technology. He has his Bachelor of Arts in Dance from the University of Calgary in Canada and his Master of Arts in Ethnochoreology from the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick in Ireland. As a dancer, he focuses on play and improvisation.

Mpoe Mogale (they/them) reigns from Lebowakgomo, South Africa and splits their time between amiskwaciywâskahikan and moh’kínst’sis, in the colonial state of Canada. They hold a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Political Science, and a wealth of expertise in community-based research, facilitation, and arts administration.

Mpoe’s primary artmaking form is dance, with a curiosity in the place of Blackness in spaces that deny it, as explored through several projects including "What (Black) Life Requires" (produced by Mile Zero Dance and Azimuth Theatre). Mpoe’s current artistic imaginations have centered the brilliant, mundane, and joyous aspects that foreground the lives of Black folks.

Nico, Nicky, Nic.. have your pick.

Designer/fabricator/ visual art installer and performance art accomplice. Always wanted to be an artist yet unable to get over his pragmatic side, he found himself at the crossroad of helping creators and their creative ideas come to be. Sometimes called a colourful character, here you can blame him for temporary stealing all colours away for this performance. Karma Chameleon!

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Jonathan Kim, better known as Jono, is a Jessie nominated lighting designer based in Vancouver, BC. He is a graduate of SFU's School for the Contemporary Arts - Theatre Production and Design program. Jonathan is a member of ADC (Associated Designers of Canada) and Chimerik 似不像, an interdisciplinary collective. His most recent works include: Chapter 21 (Raven Spirit Dance); Ying Yun (Wen Wei Dance); Offering (Co.ERASGA); Orangutan (The Biting School); Undressed (Alberta Theatre Projects); Kim's Convenience (Arts Club Theatre Company).

Music for Portrait of Cory Beaver

Classically-trained flutist, improvisor and sound creator Jiajia Li is being praised as "one of the city's finest and most adventurous flautists”. Since finishing school in Germany and moving to Calgary in 2014, Jiajia has forged her identity through musical experimentation across a wide range of genres and traditions. A keen and passionate collaborator, the Beijing-born flutist has contributed to numerous projects in music, dance and arts communities.

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Music for Portraits of Cindy Ansah, Mpoe Mogale and Kara Bullock

NUM is a multidisciplinary duo formed by Maryam Sirvan and Milad Bagheri in 2010, in northern Iran. NUM’s concentration is on electroacoustic music and audiovisual performances where they can manipulate and transform natural materials (sound and image) with the help of digital processing. The duo moved to Calgary, Alberta, in late 2021.

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Maryam Sirvan is an Iranian sound artist and electronic music composer born in 1986, based in Calgary, Canada. She graduated Guilan University in Iran in the faculty of Law. She works as a composer, performer, sound artist, producer, sound engineer, vocalist, guitarist, flautist and visual artist in the duo ‘NUM’ since 2010 as well as releasing solo projects in the field of electro-acoustic, experimental and noise music. Her solo works has been released on record labels such as Past Inside the Present (USA), The Committee for Sonic Research (UK), and Flag Day Recordings (USA).

Milad Bagheri is an Iranian music technologist, sound artist, and audio engineer born in 1984. He graduated University of Guilan with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering (Electronics). He also graduated Tbilisi State Conservatoire in Music Technology (BA). He is currently studying Sonic Arts (Master of Music) at the University of Calgary. He is a composer, performer, producer, sound artist, coder, visual artist, and sound engineer in the duo NUM (since 2010). He has performed at several international festivals with his duo as well as released albums on record labels such as Dinzu Artefacts (USA), Syrphe Records (Germany), and Flag Day Recordings (USA). He also worked as recording/mixing/mastering engineer in different projects.

Krzysztof Sujata is a Calgary based musician, sound designer and mastering engineer, releasing music under the moniker Valiska. His works largely involve the use of loops and repetition, creating variety and change in seemingly static elements, and weaving those elements into dynamic structures. Bringing together ambient and electronic music with elements of classical and modern composition, it is highly melodic music hinting at stories that never quite materialize.

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Alison is a graduate from the Mount Royal University Diploma in Technical Theatre and the University of Alberta MFA and BFA in Theatre Design. She is an artist and educator, who believes in the performance space as a form of interactive sculpture.

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Music for Portrait of Alèn Martel

Multi-instrumentalist, composer, music director, and educator Darren Young is an exciting artist with a diverse palette. His music spans a wide array of genres, including classical, post rock, prog, shoegaze, electronic, noise, and jazz. A classically trained guitarist and double bassist, Darren’s music has received international press coverage from Prog Magazine, Metal Hammer, Classic Rock Magazine, and the CBC. Recent compositions by Darren include commissions from Cloudsway Dance Theatre, Project InTandem, and Swallow-A-Bicycle Theatre.

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Jordan (they/she/he) is a second generation PilipinX artist, critic and community worker imagining justice and abundance for equity-deserving peoples within the spaces of all our relations: personal, communal and societal. As an artist, Jordan’s work gnaws at the intersection of queer identity, race, colonialism, food, ritual and the deep dark places that represent our possibilities for pleasure and liberation. The subject position of this work explores queer and racialized identities as liminal spaces: both and neither; between, across and through; both inside and outside; and both literal and imagined. Jordan is also proud to serve as General Director of Chromatic Theatre.

Bianca Guimarães de Manuel is in-between Brazil and Canada, an arts administrator, scenographer and costume designer interested in how creation happens between people, things, and the organizing needed to bring work to life.

She follows her curiosity, allowing the art form to take different mediums to better embody her affections. Bianca centers care in her work. Designing processes, materials, or frames aligning with her values/ethics of anti-oppressive and anti-racist ways of relating and working with one another.

Linnea Swan is a multidisciplinary artist whose work lives at the intersection of dance, theatre and film. As a performer and creator, she has been an active contributor to the Canadian arts ecology for over 25 years, living and working in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto and now Calgary. Her extensive body of work has been acknowledged with the Dora for Outstanding Performance in Dance, as well as the K.M. Hunter Artist Award in Dance. Linnea is Co-director of ReLoCate, and was Associate Artist with Dancers’ Studio West (2018-2021).

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Kris Vanessa Teo Xin-En (张欣恩) is a Chinese-Singaporean settler in Mohkinstsis, on Treaty 7 territory. She practices as a playwright, performer, director, arts administrator and producer. Kris currently works with Swallow-a-Bicycle Theatre in multiple capacities.

Much of Kris’ artistic explorations land at the intersections of food, identity and in-betweenness. She deeply values working in kind, care-centered, anti-racist and anti-oppressive ways, and is committed to prioritizing these values as she creates art and lifts up her communities.

Kris is the playwright and performer behind 我的名是张欣恩 (Gimme chance leh), that was developed and produced by Chromatic Theatre. You can tune in HERE.

Andie Lloyd (she/he/they) is a queer interdisciplinary Jessie Award Nominated artist who works and lives on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.They work primarily in dance and theatre as lighting designer and projection designer, but also as a writer, creator and community advocate. Some of Andie's favourite projects have included: Clean/Espejos (Neworld Theatre), Selfie (FOLDA), Town Choir (Theatre Replacement), & Big Queer Filipino Karaoke Night! (Playwrights Workshop Montreal). fences foil, works on her 3d printer, and reads and re-reads all the books she can.

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