Streaming via Youtube
Approx. Running Time: 21 mins
BIOGRAPHIES
Excerpts of a Work-in-Progress
Rachel Meyer
Vancouver
World Premiere
Rachel Meyer – Choreographer (in collaboration with the Artists)
Rachel Meyer (born in Illinois, USA; lives/works: Vancouver, Canada) trained with St. Louis Ballet, the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, and the Northwest Dance Project. She received her BFA at the University of Utah and was awarded a Princess Grace Award in 2010. Rachel has been a member of the Utah Regional Ballet, Dominic Walsh Dance Theatre, the Michael Clark Company, and Ballet BC. Rachel has self-presented two full length works, Quartet (March 2017) and Transverse Orientation (July 2018). She was commissioned by Wen Wei Wang (Artistic Director, Ballet Edmonton) to create a new work for the company. my shadows premiered in Edmonton in March 2019. In July of 2019, Transverse Orientation was remounted as part of the Dancing on the Edge Festival in Vancouver.
Brandon Lee Alley – Performer
A North Carolina native, Brandon Lee Alley began his dance training at the Eastern Randolph High School when he was 14 years old, under the direction of Britt Allen. He attended the Greensboro Ballet’s year-long program on a full scholarship and graduated from the University of North Carolina School of Arts specializing in contemporary dance in 2012. Brandon has attended summer intensives with Ballet Austin, Hubbard Street Dance and LINES Ballet. He has had the privilege of performing works by prestigious choreographers such as Crystal Pite, Sharon Eyal, Johan Inger, Jorma Elo, Victor Quijada, Cayetano Soto and Stijn Celis among others. Brandon began his professional career with Hubbard Street 2, has been a member of BODYTRAFFIC and is currently working with company 605 and Inverso productions in Vancouver. Brandon is also the co-founder and artistic director of Dance//Novella- a physical, performance research project that strives to cultivate opportunities for emerging artists through multiple mediums. In 2013, He choreographed his first work, a duet performed by members of HS2 followed by two new, recent works for the Arts Umbrella Dance Company. Brandon has honed his skills as a teacher and movement guide while working as an instructor at Hubbard Street summer intensives as well as many classes and workshops internationally. In his free time, he continues to dive into cross-disciplinary work that includes Visual art, poetry and music. Brandon has self-published a book of poetry titled “The words I have found, gently stitched in her skin.” and is an avid painter.
Stéphanie Cyr – Performer
Stéphanie Cyr is an independent dance artist working on unceded Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Səl ̓ ílwətaɬ
(Tsleil- Waututh), and xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) territories. She is a graduate of the Arts Umbrella Graduate Program, directed by Artemis Gordon, and participated in the Performance Research Project, led by Lesley Telford. She has had the pleasure of researching, working and performing with imPerfect Dancers Company (Italy), Andrea Peña & Artists (Montréal), Lesley Telford | Inverso, TWObigsteps collective, David Harvey, Serge Bennathan, Rachel Meyer, Christoph Von Riedemann, Julianne Chapple, Action at a Distance and Wen Wei Dance, among others.
Josh Martin – Performer
Originally from Alberta, Josh Martin received his diverse training as a dance artist across North America and Europe. He now lives and works in Vancouver, on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish Peoples. In his ongoing career as an interpreter and collaborator, he has worked with many dance companies and independent choreographers such as Justine A. Chambers, Helen Walkley, Dana Gingras (Animals of Distinction), Wen Wei Wang (Wen Wei Dance), Tiffany Tregarthen and David Raymond (Out Innerspace Dance Theatre), Amber Funk Barton (the response.), Serge Bennathan (Les Productions Figlio), Vanessa Goodman (Action at a Distance), Karen Jamieson, and as a past company member of Le Groupe Dance Lab in Ottawa under the direction of Peter Boneham. For over 10 years, Josh has been an Artistic Co-Director of Company 605, a Vancouver-based arts organization creating and producing new works through a collaborative process, regularly touring its expanding repertoire throughout Canada and Internationally.
Heather Myers – Dramaturg and Rehearsal Director
Born in Calgary, Heather began dancing at 4 and received her formal classical training at the National Ballet School and The Royal Winnipeg School. She danced with Alberta Ballet, Boston Ballet, Netherlands Dance Theatre, and has performed as an independent artist in Europe and Canada – most recently in 2018 with Inverso at EDAM’s fall series. As a dance creator, Heather received the Banff Centre’s 2009 Clifford E. Lee Award for Choreography and has made commissioned works for Boston Ballet, Korzo Theatre in the Netherlands, Dances for a Small Stage in Vancouver, The Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s Q Dance, Arts Umbrella Dance Company, Atlanta Ballet, Simon Fraser University, Ballet Kelowna, and as artist-in-residence with HCMA Architecture. She has investigated the craft of making work through Netherland’s Dance Theatre’s choreographic workshops, as the organizer of a public, multi-disciplinary imrpov series in Holland, as an emerging choreographer at Springboard Dans Montreal, and through improv based collaboration presentations at Vancouver’s Sawdust Collector. Teaching opportunities at Arts Umbrella, Modus Operandi, Ballet BC, Singapore School of the Arts, Ballet BC, Amsterdam Theatre School, Vancouver Training Society, Richmond Academy of Dance, and Taipei National University of the Arts have allowed Heather to share ideas, and further develop a lineage. As an outside eye/researcher/rehearsal director/dramaturg/assistant, she has worked with choreographers Medhi Walerski, Lesley Telford, Rachel Meyer, and Siobhan Sloane-Seale.
Peter Smida – Filming and Editing
Peter Smida is an independent dancer, choreographer, actor and emerging filmmaker based in Vancouver, BC. He is currently the artist in residence with Ballet BC as well as a teacher for Modus Operandi (Tiffany Tregarthen & David Raymond) and the Arts Umbrella Dance Company (Artemis Gordon). Peter danced at Ballet BC as a company artist for 11 seasons where he created, collaborated, and performed works by internationally esteemed choreographers such as Crystal Pite, William Forsythe, Ohad Naharin, Johan Inger, Jorma Elo, Itzik Galili, Sharon Eyal and Medhi Walerski, among others. In addition to dancing with the company, Peter has choreographed works and produced films for several workshops and labs as part of the company’s outreach. He now serves as a rehearsal director and coach as the current Artist in Residence. Peter’s film “Let me leave so that you may continue” was recently featured on the Tanstheater Wuppertal (Pina Bausch Company) Create’s Platform as part of their Digital Stage Series. His passion and underlying mission is to explore new ways to create and tell stories with the physical body through the mediums of dance, theatre, and film.
James Maxwell – Composer
James Maxwell is a composer of concert music and music for contemporary dance, theatre, film, and media, and is Co-Artistic Director of Restless Productions. Recent works include The Razor Hiss of a Whisper, for Turning Point Ensemble and Couloir, Finding itself [it] deviates, for Standing Wave, and John, by choreographer Helen Walkley. Upcoming and in-progress works include a new score for choreographer Helen Walkley and early-stage development work on new project with Restless Productions.
Brimming
Josh Martin | Company 605
Vancouver
World Premiere
Brimming is a new solo work-in-development investigating the body as a container: a rigid frame holding in and concealing its stored inner contents. The piece imagines this hollow interior space, filled and emptied out, and inhabited by different states. A performer trapped inside of their own body, the dance is a meeting of both the seen and unseen – the invisible contents that slosh up against the sides, pushing against the outer surface from beneath, and occasionally leaking under its pressure. Brimming explores this shape we are in, how it holds us, and what might eventually spill out of one’s self when the walls begin to bend.
Josh Martin – Performer
Originally from Alberta, Josh Martin is dance maker/performer who now lives and works in Vancouver, on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish Peoples. In his ongoing career as an interpreter and collaborator, he has worked with many dance companies and independent choreographers such as: Justine A. Chambers, Dana Gingras (Animals of Distinction), Wen Wei Wang (Wen Wei Dance), Tiffany Tregarthen and David Raymond (Out Innerspace Dance Theatre), Amber Funk Barton, Serge Bennathan (Les Productions Figlio), Vanessa Goodman (Action at a Distance), Karen Jamieson, Helen Walkley, and as a past company member of Le Groupe Dance Lab in Ottawa under the direction of Peter Boneham. In his own choreographic practice, Josh’s independent work has been presented all across Canada as well as in the USA, Costa Rica, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Hungary, and throughout Germany. For over 10 years, Josh has been an Artistic Co-Director of Company 605, a Vancouver-based arts organization creating and producing new works through a collaborative process, regularly touring its expanding repertoire throughout Canada and internationally.
Company 605
Led by artistic co-directors Lisa Gelley and Josh Martin, Company 605 is an arts organization based in Vancouver, on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded Indigenous territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Producing various dance projects and performances through shared creative process, the artists place emphasis on rigorous choreographic propositions and movement invention, building physically demanding work that juxtaposes raw with precision, and highlights effort, risk and interconnection. 605 is an ongoing exchange between separate people, bodies and ideas, recognizing and celebrating the unique possibilities created in their attempt to co-exist. Valuing collaboration as an essential tool for new directions in dance, Company 605 continues to awaken a fresh and ever-evolving aesthetic, together building a highly athletic art form derived from the human experience.
With an expanding repertoire of diverse works, the company has performed from coast to coast in over 30 cities across Canada, as well as in the US, Central America, Europe, Asia and Australia, presented at many notable festivals and venues such as: American Dance Festival (Durham, NC), New York City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival, PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, The Cultch, Usine-C and L’Agora de la Danse (Montréal), La Rotonde (Québec City), DanceWorks (Toronto), Live Art Dance (Halifax), The Banff Centre, On The Boards’ NWNW and Bumbershoot Festival (Seattle), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), Festival PRISMA (Panama), Festival Parentesis (Costa Rica), Tempel Kulturzentrum and Regensburger TanzTage (Germany), BODY.RADICAL (Budapest), M1 Contact (Singapore) and Sydney Festival (Australia). 605’s co-directors have created commissioned works for several dance companies, including Ballet BC (Anthem, 2017). Their collaborations with filmmakers have allowed 605’s work to be shared globally, with short dance films shown at over 45 dance-on-screen festivals around the world.