Featured Artists
Clara Furey (Montreal) · Choreographer
After completing musical training at the Conservatoire de Paris, Clara Furey launched her career as a singer-songwriter.
She later trained as a dancer at the École de danse contemporaine de Montréal and worked with choreographers such as George Stamos, Damien Jalet, and Benoît Lachambre. An artist accustomed to collaborative work (Untied Tales with Peter Jasko, showcased at the Venice Biennale in 2016, Ciguë with Éric Arnal Burtschy), Furey created her first solo work as artistic director in 2017 with Cosmic Love, a collective piece with minimal gestures, exploring the voids and invisibilities in the interactions between body, song, and space.
As both a choreographer and a performer, Furey is interested in shifting codes within various forms of art by way of an interdisciplinary dialogue. In 2017, she performed When Even The 90 times alongside a sculpture by Marc Quinn as part of the Leonard Cohen exhibit at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. She is the choreographer of Rather a Ditch (2019), a solo piece written for Céline Bonnier centring on the permeability of bodies, as a response to Steve Reich’s album Different Trains.
Her works toured in numerous festivals including the Biennale of Venice, Les Rencontres Chorégraphiques in Paris, the Festival TransAmériques in Montreal, ImPulsTanz in Vienna, Performance Mix in New-York City and in different countries such as Lithuania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Spain, The Netherlands, Belgium, Azerbaïdjan and Bulgaria.
With Dog Rising, Furey concludes her exploration of tension and immobility, freeing previously contained energies in a performance focusing on persistence, groove and pleasure. She insists on the repetition of infinite loops through an extreme physical journey, a mesmerizing, haunting and penetrating spiral.
Susie Burpee (Toronto) · Creator/Performer
Traversing both dance and theatre, Susie Burpee is a choreographer, performer and teacher. Over the past 25 years, she has worked with a multitude of Canadian dance-theatre artists who continue to light up her life. Susie embodies questions of comedy, age, and wonder in her artistic work, and thus, she still believes in magic.In 2020, Susie completed a Master’s degree in Theatre, Drama, and Performance Studies (University of Toronto); working with post-secondary dance students is an ongoing passion. Susie is currently Artistic Producer of Theatre Direct's Balancing Act, a national initiative to support parents, caregivers, and care needs in the performing arts.
Katherine Semchuk (Toronto) · Creator/Performer
Katherine Semchuk is an eastern european dance artist currently based in Tkaronto. Originally from Amiskwaciwâskahikan/Edmonton, she is an alumni of Victoria School of the Arts and The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. She has collaborated with artists across the country including Good Women Dance Collective (GWDC), Kaeja d’Dance, Peggy Baker Dance Projects, Shay Kuebler/ Radical System Art, Mateo Galindo Torres, Meghann Michalsky, Naishi Wang and William Yong/Zata Omm.
Katherine is a sought-after teacher and is currently a faculty member and rehearsal director at Dance Arts Institute (formerly The School of TDT). She is currently working on a project called Inner Works: A Solo Study' which includes commissions from Tia Kushniruk, Sasha Ivanochko and Peggy Baker. Her past choreographic work has been presented by Expanse Festival, Fluid Fest, FODAR (Market Dances), Mile Zero Dance, and New Dance Horizons.
Meghann Michalsky · Deep END | Maybe we Land | Exile
Meghann Michalsky is a dancer, choreographer, filmmaker, and producer residing in Calgary. She is the Artistic Director of Project InTandem and YYC Contemporary Technique Training, two programs that offer opportunities to emerging artists in Canada. She was awarded the 2019 RBC Emerging Artist Award - she is the first Dancer/Choreographer to receive this award. She has rigorously pursued her training in Canada, Europe, and Israel. Her research starts with her trust in the body and investigating how bodily experiences are deeply embedded. She creates highly visceral works that combine intense musculature and athletic physicality. Her movement signature has been described as vigorous, raw, and primal.
Jeanette Kotowich (Vancouver/Ancestral and unceded Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ/, and Xʷməθkʷəy̓əm · Creator/Performer
Originally from Treaty 4 territory Saskatchewan, Jeanette creates work that reflects Nêhiyaw/Métis cosmology within the context of contemporary dance, Indigenous performance, and Indigenous futurism. Fusing interdisciplinary collaboration, de-colonial practices and embodied research methodologies; Jeanette’s work references protocol, ritual, relationship to the natural/spirit world and Ancestral knowledge. Their practice is intergenerational and vocational; it’s a living and lived experience. She resides as a guest on the Ancestral and unceded Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ/, and Xʷməθkʷəy̓əm territories, colonially known as Vancouver.