free water

i hate writing bios. 

Riverdance was my first dance love. living in Copper Cliff late one night my mom pulled me downstairs to the living room to watch a vhs of a Riverdance performing live. i can remember feeling mesmerized and feeling an overwhelming desire to move. shortly after, my family moved to Manitoulin Island and i started dancing with Maja Mielonen who taught ballet twice a week. Maja offered space in her classes for creative movement and expression in what she called “Free Dance”. she also offered opportunities for students to create and share their own choreography. paired with dancing a whole lot in my bedroom, improvisation and creation became my home in dance. 

knowing that i did not know wtf i was going to do after highschool, i considered dance as a thing i could do. so during my last year of highschool i commuted to Sudbury once a week to take a lyrical class at Diane Boulais Dance Studio de Danse. after thoroughly hating highschool experience, i wasn’t overly motivated to pursue post-secondary and was still curious about this dance thing. feeling self conscious about my lack of technical proficiency, I moved to Sudbury after graduating highschool and danced all over. i enrolled for a fifth year at Sudbury Secondary School and took all of the dance classes offered. i danced at Sudbury School of Dance, Dance Evolution, and Arts North. most impactful, i danced with earthdancers, a youth non-for-profit company for two years. dancing was great, working for minimum wage was not, and so i applied to post-secondary and moved to Toronto to pursue a Bachelors of Fine Art in Dance at York University. 

during university i continued to go back to Northern Ontario whenever possible. although i was excited to be in Toronto, i desperately needed and appreciated the time away from the city. i noticed in my visits to both Sudbury and Manitoulin Island, that i often felt sparks of creativity. with a desire to remain part of the Northern Ontario art community, i start to more consciously consider my relationship with Northern Ontario, the communities i had been a part of, and the rural landscape. i received a grant through the university to make a work and remounted Lauren Pero’s work WILD in a wooded area in Sudbury. i joined Lîla Ensemble and co-ordinated a residency with Rue Studio that served as the basis for a performance the following spring titled Celestial Play. 

the thing i wished i had learned in university (beyond how to write a grant and do my own taxes) is why i want to be an artist and what i would like to create work about. apparently that’s what a masters is for? whatever. after spending some time out in the world and getting to know what it is like for me to be a dance artist everyday, i was able to clarify my interests and goals. now i know…