Education and Training:
Dance and Classical Ballet: School of Alberta Ballet and Boston Ballet
BFA Theatre: Concordia University
MA Directing: Central School of Speech and Drama

Research:
I am currently conducting research as a PhD student at the Central School of Speech and Drama. My thesis is called ‘Fuck the Stage: Queer Strategies for (re)Directing a Dance Theatre Practice and draws on discourses around sex, sexuality, gender, queer studies and dance.

I currently teach academic research and movement at the Central School of Speech and Drama as part of the BA Drama, Applied Theatre and Education.

Papers I have authoured include: Dancing through the Ethics of Sexual Shame (co-authoured with Murray Healy) at Queens University, Belfast and Up to my Elbows in Fun: Fisting and Other Frontiers of Queer Performance at CSSD.

I work with bodies: both bodies that have been trained in dance and bodies that haven’t.  I work with the movement of that particular body (be it my own or someone else’s): what it can do, what it can’t do, it’s habits, its histories and it’s way of inhabiting space. Through movement I seek to consider how these bodies are shaped by their social world, but also, and perhaps more importantly, how they shape that world.  And then, how they can change it.  I seek to uncover and reveal those invisible traces of power and hidden networks of socialization that plaster the surfaces of our bodies, and begin to imagine possibilities beyond these restricted options.  I question with rigour and tenacity assumptions and social limits: the said as much as the unsaid. I play with sexuality, gender, pleasure, intimacy, desire, and touch. Our bodies become sites of resistance, bodies of political potential.

The style of my work changes with each project, as it is contingent on my collaborators and their movement.  Sometimes my work is technical and ‘formal’, while other projects are based on less structured forms of movement.  I am very influenced by my training in ballet and this often finds its way into the movement, in one way or another.  I also draw on my experience in contemporary styles, capoeira and yoga.  My work doesn’t fit comfortably into one category of performance, often straddling live art, dance and contemporary theatre.  Whatever the style or category, my work is highly visual and always playful: playfully political.

Eduction and Training Text

I used to be a ballet dancer, but now I do performance art.

Most of the time I can be found doing something inappropriate. I work in performance: dance, live art, physical theatre and film; I perform, dance, choreograph, design, and write depending on the project. I started training at the age of 20 in classical ballet at the school of Alberta ballet in Canada, then at Boston Ballet and had a brief career as a classical dancer in Nutcracker, before ‘retiring’ to pursue broader performance interests. I now work independently and as the artistic director of PanicLab. I am currently doing a practice based PhD researching sexuality in dance/performance at the Central School of Speech and Drama, where I also teach academic research and movement. I moved to London three years ago from my home in Canada. It suits me because I likes being watched.