Alumni stories

Helen Simard is a choreographer, rehearsal director, dance dramaturge and co-artistic director of WAFD. Originally from Kingston, Ontario, she has lived and worked in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal for more than two decades. Her background in b-girling and contemporary dance informs her raw, highly physical movement language, yet it is her obsession with deconstructing time and space that make her choreographic approach unique.

Lara Kramer is an experimental performer, choreographer, and multidisciplinary artist of mixed Oji-cree and settler heritage. Her work explores embodiment and reclamation, featured regularly at the Festival TransAmérique and internationally in Australia, New Zealand, Martinique, Vienna, Norway, the US, and the UK.

Ilona Dougherty is the Co-creator and Managing Director of the Youth & Innovation Project at the University of Waterloo. She is an award-winning social innovator and a regular voice in the Canadian media advising business, civil society and government on how they can tap into the value and unique abilities of young people. 

Hubert Thériault is a white-settler-québécois performer and queer creature born in a city at the confluence of the Kitche Zibi and the Te-nagàdino-zìbi on traditionnal Anishinaabe territory. Hubert’s work adresses reenactements, reperformances, living archives, time-travelling and the grottesque in settlers’ figures such as the New-France colonist, the lumberjack, etc.

JENN GOODWIN is a Tkaronto/Toronto based dance artist, curator, and artistic producer. Her work and collaborations straddle dance and visual art and often explore the play, power, and politics of the body in motion, the feminization of space, the choreographic of the everyday and the inherent archives held within the body. She is the Curator of Public Programs at The Toronto Biennial of Art. Prior to that she worked at the City of Toronto as an Artistic Producer with Toronto’s Nuit Blanche.

Allison Elizabeth Burns (dance artist: choreographer, performer, educator, and producer) is making connections and collaborative opportunities between artists, audiences and communities, to empower experiential and visceral interactions with dance.

Mathi LP is a dance artist based in Tiohtià:ke, Mooniang, Montreal. They explore diverse postures of engagements in tangible and imagined spaces through somatic, dance and performance practices. As a facilitator and performer, they employ attention to sensation as an activist tool, proposing transformative movements through artistic experiences.

Montréal-based Mexican infradisciplinary artist-scholar, Mayra Morales, explores the nexus of dance, philosophy, art, and pedagogy. With a forthcoming PhD titled “A Philosophy of Movement: Compositionality and Compossesssions” she draws from a decade-long collaboration at SenseLab, intertwining academic exploration with extensive experience as university teacher and collective event’s organizer.

Alyson finely tunes your body awareness with a mix of her Somatic Mobility Drills, Somatic Release Exercises, and Self-Myofascial Release (SMFR) techniques for improved performance, posture, and pain relief. A vinyasa wizardess, look forward to creative, strong, and surprisingly sweaty sequences and Embodied Somatics.

Vanessa Kneale is a clown, physical actress and dancer. After appearing on America’s Got Talent and other television shows in Europe, Vanessa went on to tour Canada with Le Théâtre de l’Aubergine, La compagnie de cirque le Gros Orteil and ComédiHa! She has collaborated with Warner Brothers, NOOVO, Just For Laughs, Le Monastère… as a performer, creator and MC.

Born in Sherbrooke,Québec, Chérie Coquette has found her home in the Yukon. She is now leading figure in Whitehorse's burlesque scene. She had performed nationally and internationally including the Queen City Burlesque Expo (Nelson CAN), the Oslo Burlesque Festival (Norway), the Spectacular Cabaret Festival (Lisbon, Portugal), the Sasktoon Burlesque Festival and more.