Heather Anderson
About the Artist
Heather Anderson is a dancer, writer, and emerging dramaturg hailing from the grasslands of Treaty 7 territory (Calgary, Alberta). Her practice lives between embodiment, poetics, and the everyday. Guided by a critical somatic lens, she explores the (mis)translation of language and movement as a way to nurture deeper, wider, and more complex relationalities.
After completing her BFA in Contemporary Dance at Concordia University. There, her dramaturgical research will examine how value systems are embodied and enacted through performance-making, searching for possibilities toward worlds otherwise. Her artistic path is deeply shaped by her generous mentors Dr. Angélique Willkie and Lília Mestre. Recent collaborative projects with Mestre include Meeting through Materialities, Bodies, and Words (2023–2024) and Keep in Touch! (premiering at La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines in fall 2026). Now finding a home in Tiohtià/Montreal, her life and practice are sustained by her friends, family, partner, and cat, June.
About the Project
Cucumbers, the Melancholy of a Turtle, and a Girl Otaku’s Romance
Peng Hsu, Presented by Tangente
October 8th-11th, 2026
“So it’s true,” the village chief thought, “Cucumbers are falling from the sky.”
By now, cucumbers had already knocked down several middle-school students, five of them from the advanced math-and-science class. There was also an elementary school student who, while tilting his head to look at birds, had a cucumber plunge straight into his mouth. He had not spoken since. On the notebook he now used to communicate with others, the child wrote: “One opens his mouth, thus, disaster.” The local officials were heartbroken. Cucumbers, after all, force people to mature too early.
But the cucumber attacks were not the most urgent problem. The most urgent problem was that my uncle was still crying in the bathroom. I was in pain. I was in pain because I couldn’t shit freely in my own home. I was in pain because I had to hold it in.
This theatrical duo is set in Taiwan and features an endangered turtle from Ottawa.
