Folding/Unfolding, a workshop by Shion Skye Carter, is an expansion of their choreographic practice embodying calligraphy, handmade paper, and the sediments of memory that reside within our bodies.
A collective study on the idiosyncrasies of calligraphy including ink, rice paper, and brushstrokes will be followed by improvised explorations and movement sequences embodying these materials and forms, oscillating between tension and release, fluidity and rupture; allowing the stories, identities, and dances that we carry with us to spill and unfurl.
*Participants are encouraged to bring a water bottle, clothes they can comfortably move in, socks (optional), and a notebook and pen if they like. This workshop will take place at DJD Studio 1.
Featured Artists
Shion Skye Carter · Choreographer | Performer
Shion Skye Carter (they/she) is a dance artist originally from Gifu, Japan, based in Vancouver, BC on the unceded, traditional lands of the Coast Salish peoples. Through a movement language of sensitive intensity, hybridizing choreography with heritage forms like calligraphy, and interweaving materiality into performance, Shion’s artistic practice peels apart layers of identity and reflects on the complex human experience. Recent presentations of their work include VIDF (BC), Tangente (QC), Live Art Dance (NS), Art Gallery of Ontario (ON), b12 free radicals (Berlin), and L’AiR Arts Atelier 11 (Paris), and they perform with dance companies Action at a Distance/Vanessa Goodman, Furious Grace Dance Theatre/Anya Saugstad, Odd Meridian Arts/Ziyian Kwan, and Wen Wei Dance. Shion's choreography has been recognized through the Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award (2021), the Chrystal Dance Prize (2023), and most recently, their solo Cobalt was shortlisted for the Bloom International Dance Prize at Sadler’s Wells, London, UK (2027 edition).