I am the Artistic Director of Neighbourhood Dance Works; Newfoundland and Labrador’s premier presenter of dance. As a curator, arts advocate, artist and educator I bring a deep interest and curiosity of dance to my role and use my energy to question, consider and guide how we rise up and collectively fulfil the mission of this awesome organization. 

 

I stumbled upon NDW 15 years ago, when NDW was already a rock-solid fixture in the regional and national cultural landscape. I was and continue to be grateful to a fiercely devoted hub of artistic leaders whose resilience and steadiness feed me and this organization in countless ways. Over time, I have witnessed the immediate impact our remote, yet thriving dance community, has on Canada’s dance scene. I marvel at how dance, in all its forms, knits itself across the country, to tell the national story. I know there are pieces of the story missing, they must and will be revealed - as a dance presenter, we play a role making this happen. This work is extremely exciting, satisfying and necessary!

 

My vision is to continually examine how dance programming is realized in this province and how those actions can reverberate to extend the life and impact of an artist’s work, here and elsewhere. I love to think strategically and build collaborative partnerships and programs that bring about meaningful opportunities for artists and audiences. Whether through the Annual Festival of New Dance, seasonal mainstage presentations, artistic exchanges, dance touring, research, training, or discourse, I am motivated to cultivate a responsive environment where artistic programming is seeded, nurtured and realized. 

 

As a young dancer I was enthralled when dancing with bagpipes and I loved the swish of a kilt. Later, I threw myself into mosh pits at punk rock concerts and thrashed around; I gravitated to the chaos of those spaces. Later yet, I trained in dance at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre, York University, Studio 303, and numerous independent programs across the country and parts of the USA.  I have an undergraduate degree and Master Degree in dance studies. I also have a certificate from George Brown College as an Intervenor for Persons who are Deaf-Blind, this led me to pursue work in the disability field for 10+ years. Some of my most meaningful experiences as a dancer have been performing, in situ, in unexpected places, with unexpected collaborators - in a tree planting camp in the Porcupine Mountains of Saskatchewan, by a river in Northern Ontario, in the forest of Plainfield, Massachusetts - alone in a tree, in Jeddore, NS. I love the immediacy, intimate, powerful, weighted, and surprising qualities of ALL bodies dancing.