Moving Parts
Performer Bios
Sylvie Bouchard is originally from Montréal, where she began her dance training. She moved to Toronto to study at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre and subsequently joined the Company in 1985. Sylvie also performed with Fujiwara Dance Inventions, Pounds per Square Inch, Kaeja D’dance, Winnipeg Contemporary Dancers and Dancemakers, and has worked with many choreographers including Susie Burpee, Tedd Robinson, Marie-Josée Chartier, Peggy Baker, Sashar Zarif, Roger Sinha and Louis-Martin Charest. Throughout her artistic career, Bouchard has continued to forge original concepts in both the creation and the presentation of dance. In 1993, she created Dusk Dances, a festival that presents dance in Public Parks (www.duskdances.ca). In 1997 she formed the Company CORPUS with artistic partner David Danzon. Between 1997 and 2008, she co-created eight works with Danzon that toured internationally in Street Theatre Festivals, on stage and in schools through Prologue to the Performing Arts. In 2008, Sylvie Bouchard forms BoucharDanse, a company that serves as an umbrella for her artistic endeavors, both as a choreographer and a performer (www.bouchardanse.com). Bouchard also co-created and performed in the popular series Four Square at Tree House TV, and is the recipient of the 2009 KM Hunter Artists Award in Dance.
Lauren Gillis is a performer, creator and director hailing from the theatre world. Her major interests include ambiguity, unrecognizable dancing, an uncomfortable sense of tragi-comic teetering, and the spacetime two degrees away from explicitly erotic. Lauren is the Co-Artistic Director of Lester Trips (Theatre), a company formed in 2011 that devises theatre with a bouffonesque approach to character, deliberately maddening dramaturgy, and a visceral foundation stemming from Denise Fujiwara’s butoh-based embodiment practice as well as Fides Krucker’s integrated approach to extended range voice. Lauren is also an Artistic Associate at the Toronto theatre company the red light district, where she has been performing, directing, and playing relentless dramaturgical whack-a-mole with contemporary takes on classic texts since 2008. Recent works include the marquise of O— (HATCH/SummerWorks 2015) co-directed and adapted with ted witzel, and Intangible Trappings (2016) co-created and performed with Alaine Hutton featuring movement dramaturgy by Denise Fujiwara. Lauren’s next work, Mr. Truth, will premiere in April 2018 at The Theatre Centre as part of the RISER PROJECT, a collaborative producing model presented by Why Not Theatre. Mr. Truth examines the deep revulsion and insidious curiosity that hatch and wreak havoc in the presence of erotic repression.
Alaine Hutton is a performer and deviser. Alaine received training at the University of Toronto’s drama program, école Jacques Lecoq, Fides Krucker's ‘emotionally integrated voice’ studio, and with Denise Fujiwara in butoh-based embodiment. Alaine is the Co-Artistic director of Lester Trips (Theatre).Through playful theatrical creations that teeter on the edge of the grotesque, Lester Trips investigates contemporary ethical conundrums that surround our collective relationship to desire, repression and consumption from a critical, feminine perspective. Our upcoming show Mr. Truth, is about that pernicious little churning, feeling that continues in our guts despite our best efforts to make erotic desires acceptable and if not politically correct, then at least ethically manageable.
It will be presented as part of Why Not Theatre's RISER PROJECT in April 2018, and you can catch a short excerpt of it on December 1st as part of Theatre Passe Muraille’s CRAPSHOOT."
Claudia Moore, performer, curator and artistic director of MOonhORsE Dance Theatre (MDT), has been a force on the Canadian dance scene since the late 1970s. One of Canada’s most revered contemporary dancers, Claudia founded MDT in 1996 as a home for her performance projects and continues to pursue her passion as an interpreter in commissioned works by acclaimed creators including Susie Burpee, Lina Cruz, James Kudelka and Tedd Robinson. Moore recently performed a solo evening, Escape Artist, to celebrate her 60th birthday. Claudia curates Older & Reckless (O&R), a performance series renowned for its celebration of mature dance artists and their tenacious life-long pursuit of physical expression. O&R, established by Moore in 1999, was featured at the 2016 Canada Dance Festival. Claudia is co-director with Karen Kaeja of Cloud 9- featuring seasoned dancers in masterful works. Moore has taught movement to both amateurs and professionals for over 30 years and mentors emerging artists in the field of dance. Past awards include the Jacqueline Lemieux Award for her contributions to the artform and a Dora for Outstanding New Choreography. Claudia was a guest speaker at IDEACITY 2017 and was honoured to be chosen as a finalist for the 2017 Premier's Artist Award. moonhorsedance.com
Lucy Rupert is a freelance dance artist and theatre performer and the artistic director of Blue Ceiling dance, an umbrella for work she creates, commissions, performs and tours. Lucy is known for her raw and articulate individualism and vulnerability in performance. Her choreography has toured throughout Ontario and to New York, Montreal and Stuttgart, Germany. Lucy has performed in works by Marie Josee Chartier, Nova Bhattacharya, Peter Quanz, Jenn Goodwin, Angela Blumberg, Allison Cummings, William Yong, Sashar Zarif, Anandam Dance, Puppetmongers Theatre, Volcano Theatre and Circus Orange, among others. She has worked with Theatre Rusticle since 2001 and with Fujiwara Dance Inventions since 2010. Lucy has a Joint B.A. in Dance and Music from the University of Waterloo, an M.A. in History from the University of Toronto, is a Chalmers Fellowship recipient and a two-time nominee for the K.M. Hunter Award in Dance. She writes about dance and science on her blog: blueceilingdancer.blogspot.com. She is an avid citydweller, conservationist and astrophysics enthusiast.
Lacey Smith completed a BFA (Hons.) in Performance Dance at Ryerson University, where she found her passion for choreography. Soon after graduation, she was selected by Dance Ontario for the Creative Partnership to create her first professional work, Unframed Portraits. In 2008, she created The Gaze for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montreal’s First National Choreographic Competition, which premiered at L’Agora de la Danse in Montreal. Lacey premiered her first full-length work I.Me.You.We. pictures of my heart in 2015. In addition to her own work, Lacey has had the pleasure of interpreting works by distinguished choreographers Denise Fujiwara, Robert Desrosiers, D.A. Hoskins, Andrea Nann, Gerry Trentham and Jody Oberfelder. Over the past seven years, Lacey has worked with Fujiwara Dance Inventions on the Dora nominated production Eunoia and is now thrilled to be a part of Songs That Move Us. She is also a Dora Mavor Moore recipient for her role in the ensemble of The Deitrich Group’s, This is a Costume Drama. In London, Ontario Lacey has been producing full-evening dance productions since 2007 and co-founded FLUX London Dance Festival (2014-2016), where she began her journey in dance 30 years ago. An associate teacher with the Society of Russian Ballet, she is passionate and committed to the development of the next generation of young dancers through her training programs and workshops.
Miko Sobreira grew up in small towns in Venezuela, Mexico and Spain. There he was exposed to and deeply influenced by Afro-Venezuelan, Latin-Caribbean and Spanish culture. By the age of seven his theatrical career began with Compañia de Teatro Ciudad Bolivar. In Venezuela Miko performed with Compañia del Estado Miranda, Teatro Nacional Juvenil, Rajatabla and Comedia del Arte troupe Tiempo Comun. Since immigrating to Toronto in 1994, Miko has had the opportunity to collaborate and perform with many Canadian choreographers such as Claudia Moore, Pam Johnson, Maxine Heppner, Holly Small, Alejandro Ronceria, Learie McNichols, David Duclos, Allen and Karen Kaeja, Corpus, Sound Image Theatre, Victor Quijada, Katherine Tardiff, Francine Gagne and many more. Miko worked with RUBBERBANDdancegroup as a dramaturge for seven years after collaborating and performing as a guest artist since 2001. For the past twelve years, Miko has worked with Fujiwara Dance Inventions on No Exit, Eunoia and currently on the creation of Moving Parts.
Fond highlights from Rebecca Hope Terry’s more than 28 year career include: beginning her dance career in Vancouver, with choreographers Jennifer Mascall, Lola MacLaughlin, and Cornelius Fischer Credo; traipsing the globe with Dancemakers, under the direction of Serge Bennathan; performing her one woman show “Weather” in Edinburgh at the Traverse Theatre; choreographing operas with director Tim Albery (Children’s Crusade, Dido and Aeneas); training under Tina Packer at Shakespeare and Co., “Vocalway” with Tom Schilling and her introduction to voice with Katherine Duncanson; being in the studio and performing the works of Denise Fujiwara (No Exit, Conference of the Birds, Eunoia); and countless memorable creations and experiences with her
beloved fellow artists. She has the fortunate advantage of experience in many disciplines; her professional performance experience as an actress, dancer, choreographer and singer helps her understand each process from the inside, fostering depth and freedom. Hope worked with groups who could be seen as marginalized, with girls in correctional institutes, given workshops in first nations high schools, created movement workshops for people who are blind as well as young adults living with developmental delays. Presently Hope enjoys exploring the wild woods of the Dundas Valley with her dog Jupiter. She strives to find balance and authenticity in her intersecting worlds of business, art, healing and spirituality. With 2017, Hope gratefully acknowledges her ever evolving, inspiring, 13 year journey under Denise Fujiwara’s mentorship.
Gerry Trentham's cannon of over thirty works, many presented by lbs/sq” performance, the company he founded over 20 years ago, includes five full evening works - Cathedral (1998 – top ten in Toronto’s Now Magazine and Toronto Star), Autobiography: Chapters one through five (2003) both presented in Toronto’s DanceWorks main stage series, the Dora nominated Four Mad Humours (2011), the quintet Art of Peace (part one): invitation created in residence over two and a half years in residence at Fort York in Toronto (premiere 2016) and the raw and breathtaking visual art/performance The Apology Project, a bi-national installation created for premiers at Silo City, NY (2015) and Harbourfront Centre Theatre, Toronto (2017). Trentham has performed the works of some of Canada's most celebrated choreographers. He was internationally acclaimed for his performance in Bennathan’s Chronicles of a Simple Life. The New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff called his performance “remarkably lyrical” and Clive Barnes of the New York Post wrote “…powerfully acted by the outstanding Gerry Trentham”. He has received numerous Toronto Dora nominations/awards most recently as a cast and voice director of Fujiwara's hit EUNOIA. Trentham was creation and directorial outside eye for Sara Porter’s new hit solo Sara does a Solo that recently toured North America. He co-directed, with Diane Roberts’ the Urban Ink production of Confession of the Other Women in Vancouver at Performance Works, in London UK for a first for a reading of his new play Dear Elephant written and performed with actor Olivia Olsen and in Brighton to coach Ozcabaret’s new trio that won best of the Australian Fringe in 2013. With an M.F.A. in Theatre and a Graduate Voice Diploma from York University, he has taught, choreographed, dialect and speech coached and directed internationally and has, over the past 22 years researched voice and movement synthesis as core faculty alongside master teachers Judith Koltai and David Smukler at Canada’s National Voice Intensive. This work has now extended into a collaboration with Denise Fujiwara and their new frontier of performance training Butoh/Voice.