CEDAR WOMAN: PROGRAM

Cedar Woman was researched, created and presented through The Dance Centre DanceLab, Artist-in-Residence, Technical Residency and Presentation programming.

Creator/ Producer/ Performer – Tasha Faye Evans
Producer/ Production Manager – Kayleigh Sandomirsky

Lighting Designer – Jeff Harrison
Sound Designer – Mishelle Cuttler
Costume Designer – elika mojtabaei

Performer – Sophie Dow
Performer – Marisa Gold
Performer – Emily Solstice Tate
Performer – Kelly McInnis
Performer – Salomé Nieto

Renae Moriseau – Theatrics and Lyrical Direction
Alvin Tolentino – Choreographic Support

Ocean Hyland – Mask Maker
Atheana Baker – Blanket and Blessing Box
Xwalacktun OBC- Cedar Woman Box
Charlene Aleck – Cultural Support
Margaret  Grenier – Mask Dance Mentorship

Nicola Campbell – Talk Back Facilitator

Tasha Faye Evans is a Coast Salish dance and theatre artist, writer, educator, and consultant. Her body of work is an intersection of  artistic practice,  culture, and education woven into dance and theatre performances,  city-wide cultural reclamation projects, and innovative curriculum.  Her current projects include Cedar Woman,  a dance honouring a  legacy of Coast Salish women spanning all the way back to a tree,  and In the Presence of Ancestors, a life -long exhibition of five Coast Salish House posts being carved and raised in Port Moody.  With decades of creation and production, Tasha  has participated in performances and festivals nationally and internationally.

https://tashafayeevans.com/
Kayleigh Sandomirsky is a Vancouver-based production manager, Equity stage manager, producer, curator and performer, who works across both theatre and dance. She is also the Operations Coordinator for The Chop Theatre, has toured both large scale and independent performances across Canada and internationally, and is currently developing her skills in design and Tour Management.

Recent Stage/ Production Management credits: Ionesco Cabaret (SM – Theatre Conspiracy, Pi Theatre, Rumble Theatre); BOLT (SM – Jeanette Kotowich), Wolf Cull (SM – Cheyenne Scott), Everything Has Disappeared (SM – Mammalian Diving Reflex/ Unit Theatre), Women of the Fur Trade and Vascular Necrosis (PM – Touchstone Theatre), and Matriarchs Uprising Festival (SM – O.Dela Arts).

Jeff Harrison is a four-time Jessie Award winning lighting designer for his work on Carousel Theatre’s Pharaoh Serket & the Lost Stone of Fire, Patrick Street Theatre’s Floyd Collins, Pi Theatre’s Blasted and Arts Club’s Hand to God.  He is a member of the Associated Designers of Canada. Jeff previously served as Technical Director & Lighting Director for Kidd Pivot’s Revisor and Assembly Hall.

Recent lighting credits:  Rose by Thompson Highway – NAC Indigenous Theatre, Macbeth & Merry Wives of Windsor – Bard on the Beach, End of Greatness – Theatre Replacement, House of Folk – Firehall Arts Centre.

Mishelle Cuttler is a composer, musician, and sound designer whose work is centered around the integration of music, sound, and storytelling. She is the co-curator, with Lisa C. Ravensbergen, for Canada’s Professional Exhibition at the 2027 Prague Quadrennial. Some favourite recent projects include: The Tao of the World, Hedda Gabler (Stratford Festival), Much Ado About Nothing (Bard on the Beach), The Seventh Fire (Neworld Theatre), and Someone Like You (Arts Club). Mishelle has an MFA in Musical Theatre Composition from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and a BFA from UBC’s Department of Theatre. Coming up this season: Here Here, songs we sing for home (Little Chamber Music).

elika mojtabaei الیکا مجتبایی is an Iranian-born writer, costume designer, and dramaturg based on the stolen lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ Nations, “Vancouver,” whose interdisciplinary practice spans performance, film, installation art, and text.

Through colour, texture, surrealist gestures, and the poetry of the unsaid, her work investigates the ways in which language and apparel have been weaponized to marginalize, control, and erase.

She is currently developing Draw Me a Home, a new design-led play based on children’s experiences of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988).

elika is co-artistic director of The Biting School and co-founder of the No Small Feat Collective.

www.elikamoj.com

Prairie-born & nurtured Sophie Dow is an interdisciplinary storyteller & creator of live performance. Informed by a lifelong allegiance to dance, music, bodywork, circus, theatre, community collaboration, cross-continent land-based relations and her Red River Michif & French/Ukrainian/German roots, Sophie’s work investigates layers of the heart, masks & home. Sophie presently fulfills roles as: artistic associate of O.Dela Arts/Matriarchs Uprising, The Chimera Project & V’ni Dansi/Louis Riel Métis Dancers, fire spinner with Ember Arts Fire Society, a licensed practitioner of Traditional Thai Massage, a trained facilitator & student of BreathWave, a freelance dancer/choreographer/musician/producer/clown and a puddle jumping trickster.

Marisa Gold is an intuitive multidisciplinary artist born and raised in Vancouver, BC, with a passion for soulful creative expression. She holds a Bachelors of Fine Arts in dance from Simon Fraser University, is a graduate from The Ailey School Independent Study program (NYC).

Marisa has professional experience as a spoken word poet, film/tv actor/dancer, musical theatre performer, voiceover artist, vocalist and choreographer. As a collaborator, Marisa joyfully brings her multifaceted experience to each creative process she takes part in.

Most recently, Marisa has had the opportunity to collaborate with Mascall Dance, Odd Meridian Arts, Raven Spirit Dance, Action At A Distance, Inverso Dance, The Biting School, and Belle Spirale Dance Projects.

Marisa’s artistic influences are strongly rooted in the heart space of her ancestors. Her work is embedded in self reflection, a deep love for humanity and reverence for our planet Earth.

Emily Solstice Tait’s practice is rooted in contemporary dance but happily crosses into theatre, stage management and screendance. She is of mixed settler and Ojibway ancestry (urban member of Berens River First Nation). Her choreography has been performed at The Manitoba Museum, The Forks National Historic Site, and along the shores of Lake Winnipeg. Select performances include The War Being Waged (Prairie Theatre Exchange), The Secret to Good Tea (Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, The Grand, NAC), Actualize (Winnipeg Contemporary Dancers) Confluence (Raven Spirit Dance), and The___ Place video with CBC Arts.

Kelly McInnes (she/they), a settler of Irish, Scottish & British ancestry, is gratefully based on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Kelly works as a choreographer, performer, facilitator, creative consultant and craniosacral therapy practitioner. Kelly creates as a way to understand her relatedness and responsibility to all life on Earth. She is interested in performance as a container for collective witnessing, processing, resourcing, healing. Often multi-disciplinary, collaborative and site specific, Kelly’s work has been presented in festivals in Canada, Germany, Spain and Mexico such as Dance In Vancouver, Vines Art Festival, Vancouver International Dance Festival, Feminist Art Conference, SKAMpede Festival, Lake Studios Berlin, Espacio Expectante, Centro Cultural Plaza Fátime and Danzad Danzad Malditos. As a performance collaborator, Kelly has had the pleasure to work with many choreographers and companies over the years, most recently with Tasha Faye Evans, Eddy van Wyk, soma anima arts/Rachel Helton and Miscellanous Productions. Kelly delights in sharing dance through community classes & collaborative creative processes with youth, adults & seniors. Her most recent project Late Stage Remedy, a collective dance meditation taking place in public parks, invites participants to slow down and bring their presence and love to the lands upon which they dance. kellymcinnes.com

Salomé Nieto is a Vancouver-based dance artist, choreographer, and educator whose practice is rooted in Butoh, interdisciplinary performance, and embodied research. Originally from Mexico, her work explores memory, transformation, spirituality, identity, and the body. Her choreographic practice emerged in 2011 from a curiosity to investigate the intersections of her Mexican roots, Butoh, and her experience as a contemporary dancer. Nieto has performed extensively with Kokoro Dance and collaborated with artists and organizations in Canada and internationally. She holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Simon Fraser University and was the recipient of the 2017 Vancouver International Dance Festival Choreographic Award.

 
Author Nicola Campbell is Interior Salish and Métis from the Nicola Valley, British Columbia. She is the author of five children’s books including, Shi-shi-etko and Shin-chi’s Canoe (2009 TD Canadian Children’s literature award) and most recently, Stand Like a Cedar (2021). Her stories weave cultural and land-based teachings while also remembering sacred responsibilities and interconnectedness to the land. Her memoir titled Spíləx̣m: A Weaving of Recovery, Resilience and Resurgence, published by Highwater Press, is a deeply-moving storybasket of memories rooted within our traditional homelands here in BC. With an almost tactile representation of being on the land and water, Spíləx̣m explores resilience, reconnection, and narrative memory.

Nicola graduated in June 2023 with a Doctor of Philosophy from UBC Okanagan. Her doctoral research draws upon Indigenous storytellers and scholarship with a focus on contemporary and traditional Indigenous literary and storytelling practices. She is currently faculty at the University of the Fraser Valley.

Staff  
Executive Director Mirna Zagar; Associate Programming Director Raquel Alvaro; Associate Producer Linda Blankstein; Membership Coordinator Kaia Shukin; Marketing Coordinator Jullianna Oke; Digital Marketing Coordinator Lindsay Curtis; Outreach Coordinator Yurie Kaneko; Development Manager Catherine Butler; Comptroller Elyn Dobbs; Dance Central Editor Shanny Rann

Board of Directors 
Rosario Ancer, Elaine Carol, Yvonne Chartrand, Mique’l Dangeli, Linda Gordon (Vice-Chair), Selim Hasan (Chair), Anndraya Luui, Jordan Thomson, Sujit Vaidya, Wen Wei Wang, Mark Weston (Treasurer)

The Dance Centre is an IATSE 118 Union house. 

Alvin Tolentino
Ira Jordinson
Sierra Megas
Anna Brew
Agnes Hui
Elia Kirby
Lloyd Cunningham
Plastic Orchid Factory
The Morrow
Banff Centre for the Arts

Hands raised to Margaret Grenier, Charlene Aleck and Alejandro Ronceria for their creative support and mentorship. To my mom Barbara Karmazyn and my ensemble of women for being in my circle. To the Dance Centre for believing in this work right from the beginning.

Acknowledging Edgardo Moreno for his sound design that supported the beginning of my process, Rebbeca Baker Grenier for our many discussions about Cedar Woman’s regalia, and Jolene Houle for her initial costume design.

Dedicated to our ancients forests, Lee Maracle, and the legacy of Cedar Women in these Coast Salish Lands and Waters.

The Dance Centre is grateful for the generous support of The Choreographer’s Circle, Anndraya Luui, the BC Arts Renaissance Fund, and all of the following:

THE CORPORATE LEADER’S CIRCLE 

The Holiday Inn and Suites Vancouver Downtown – Angela van den Byllaardt, Sales Manager

THE CHOREOGRAPHER’S CIRCLE 

Impresario: Linda Blankstein, Deux Mille Foundation, M.A. Faris Foundation, London Drugs Foundation, Tony Giacinti (in memory of Lola MacLaughlin), Anndraya Luui, Ocean Park Foundation
Choreographer: Ken Alexander, Santa Aloi, David Cousins, Judith Garay, Ken Gracie and Philip Waddell, Jackson McKiee, Yosef Wosk Family Foundation, Max Wyman and Susan Mertens

Artistic Director: Gary Bell, Andrea Benzel, Beau Howes, Burley Howes Family Foundation, Marnie Carter, James Felter, Selim Hasan, Jason Wrobleski
Principal Dancer: Rosario Ancer, Amanda Collinge, Linda Gordon, Linda Johnston, McGrane – Pearson Endowment Fund, Jean Orr, Dubravko Pajalic, Raymond James Canada Foundation, Janet and Ron Stern, R&J Stern Family Foundation
Dance Artist: Noel Best and Barbara Shuman, Richard Cavell and Peter Dickinson, Kirk Chantraine, Yvonne Chartrand, Robert & Nicola Follows, Mike and Kathy Gallagher, Kemo Schedlosky and Mark Gatha, Jai Govinda, Alvin Tolentino, Annelie and Dan Vistica, Wen Wei Wang, Mirna Zagar

THE ARTIST’S CIRCLE

Ingrid & Evan Alderson, Linda Brandt, Catherine Butler, Carol Carr, Beth Carter & Bob Baker, Count and Countess Enrico and Aline Dobrzensky, Jason Dubois and Clayton Baraniuk, Lorna Froidevaux, Kimberly Graves, Erik Graff, Samantha Luo, Laurel March, Dr. Mary Robertson, Anthony Roper, Ian Strang, Michael Watt

The operations of The Dance Centre are supported by the Government of Canada, Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of British Columbia, the BC Arts Council, and the City of Vancouver.

Media sponsors:
Stir | The Georgia Straight

The Dance Centre | Level 6, 677 Davie Street, Vancouver BC V6B 2G6

T 604 606 6400 info@thedancecentre.ca thedancecentre.ca

The VDC Dance Centre Society is a registered charity no. BN 11925 8754 RR0001