Team

Angelique (Assistant Professor, Department of Dance, Concordia University) is a multidisciplinary artist and a graduate of McGill University and The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. Her more than 30­ year career as a dance artist includes performances with dance companies and independent projects throughout Europe. Notably for this project, these include Alain Platel/Les Ballets C. de la B., Jan Lauwers/Needcompany, and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, artists of international repute based in Belgium. Willkie’s dramaturgical work has included projects in dance, music and circus ­theatre with artists in Europe and Montreal. She continues to be active in Montreal’s professional dance community as pedagogue, dramaturg and performer.

As artist ­researcher, her scholarly research/work focuses on “new dramaturgies” in dance and circus; interdisciplinarity in the creative process as methodological practice and artistic product; dance and the visual arts including dance in museum and gallery spaces; the somatic agency of the body; and issues surrounding diversity in artistic practice. Dramaturgical Ecologies extends Willkie’s current research on the dramaturgies of interdisciplinary creation, the agency of bodies and diversity in creative practices toward the creation of an implementable set of tools that can be used to investigate the corporeal dramaturgy of the performer.

Vanessa Montesi holds a European PhD Summa cum Laude in Comparative Studies from the University of Lisbon, Portugal, where she wrote a thesis entitled "Moving Across Page, Stage, Canvas: Theatrical Dance as a Form of Intermedial Translation". She was an FCT scholarship holder and a founding memeber of the research cluster P'ARTE, with which she continues to collaborate. She has a background in dance and language teaching and holds a B.A in Foreign Languages and Culture from the University of Bologna (Italy), an M.A. in Translation Studies from the University of Sheffield (UK), and a second M.A. in Global Marketing, Communication and Made in Italy. She is interested in dance, poetry, and translation.

Matthew is a PhD Student at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies for Society and Culture, where he is pursuing a research-creation PhD in the fields of process philosophy, performance studies and studio arts. As a trans-disciplinary artist, he has exhibited, lectured, and held residencies in Canada and abroad.

Los Angeles native, Dana Dugan is a Montreal based artist-scholar, mother, performer, teacher, and dramaturg. She was a founding member of the Chicago Contemporary Circus Festival (Chicago, 2014-15) and CirqueOFF (Montreal, 2017). Currently, she is a member of Le PARC (Performance Arts Research Cluster) at the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology (Montreal); works as research assistant for the Dramaturgical Ecologies Research Collective (Montreal); and serves on the editorial board for TURBA: The Journal of Global Practices in Live Arts Curation (Montreal). Dana completed her Master’s Degree at Concordia University (Montreal, 2018) under fellowship as a practice-based researcher investigating her circus body as a site for cultivating critical dialogues through the concept and practice of (dis)obedience. She continues her embodied research on (dis)obedience as a doctoral student in the Humanities Interdisciplinary Program at Concordia University (Montreal), using the body as a dialogical interface with Performance Studies and Black Studies toward an ontological disruptive and transformative politic.

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www.danadugan.com

Haley recently completed her MA degree in the department of Anthropology at Concordia University where her ethnographic research explored improvisation and used movement as an analytic of practice. Her BA in anthropology comes from the University of California Berkeley where her studies emphasized psychological and medical anthropology. Her work is influenced by years spent working as a farmer and shepherd which have influenced her thinking through both movement and ecology. 

Cadu Mello is a brazilian therapist-researcher-artist interested in practices of care and what else care can be from the perspective of performance practices and studies. He is currently studying at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies for Society and Culture (Concordia University, Montreal, QC) and pursuing a research-creation PhD around the practices and concepts developed by activist-philosopher Félix Guattari and brazilian artist Lygia Clark. He has a background in Psychology and body-oriented psychotherapy and, since 2010, studies the production of subjectivity addressing themes such as the parainstitutional, politics, mental health, performance. Currently works as research assistant for the Dramaturgical Ecologies Research Collective and Senselab (Montreal).

Artist-researcher and choreologist, Melina’s current research is centred on dramaturgy in its expanded field, as well as teaching movement research for dancers, actors and musicians. Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP, Brazil), Melina has also been a visiting scholar at Concordia University (CA) and Utrecht University (NL). With a PhD in Dance (Roehampton University, UK) and a Specialist Diploma in Choreological Studies (Trinity Laban, UK), she is also founder of the Maya-Lila Dance company (since 2005) with whom she regularly performs and works as dramaturge. She is author of the book "Laban Plural" (published in Brazil) and many articles about the dramaturgy of the performer.

Mélanie is a Canadian choreographer based in Montreal where she founded her dance company, MAYDAY, in 2007. Demers has choreographed twenty works that have been presented in over thirty cities across Europe, America, Africa and Asia. Firmly in the conviction that art only has meaning in its political impact and capacity to stimulate debate, Demers is interested in exploring the potential for dance as a mode of sociopolitical engagement. In 2015, Demers was awarded the prestigious "Prix du CALQ pour la meilleure œuvre chorégraphique" for her piece, WOULD.

Pia  is a German­-Dutch choreographer based in ‘s­Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands and is founder and artistic director of the dance company Panama Pictures. Meuthen’s work, shown across Europe and Asia, has been recognized both nationally and internationally, and is interested in the crossover between circus and dance, using literary and cinematographic approaches to explore the layered reality of social structures. In October 2018, Pia Meuthen received the Prins Bernhard Cultuurprijs Noord-Brabant for her unique and impressive oeuvre.

Mariana Marcassa has a PhD in Clinical Psychology. She developed postdoctoral research in Arts at Universidade Federal Fluminense and at Concordia University working with PPGCA, SenseLab, Acts of Listening Lab, and the performing arts cluster LePARC. She is the author of the double book BANZO SOUNDS and BANZO LANDSCAPE, an English-Portuguese publication by Grosse Fugue Edition, published in December 2019.

Since 2017, she lives and works in Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyaang / Montreal where she has been developing a new theoretical and practical approach to sound and voice explorations, and the creation of experimental listening techniques. She works with individuals and groups, in private or as a performer. It has been through voice and sound–as performance, as aesthetic proposition and clinical intervention– that Mariana has been asking how an engagement with sound as vibration and voice-without-language might facilitate new modes of experience, and new techniques for living.

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Therapy site: 

https://marianamarcassa.com

Artwork site: 

https://cargocollective.com/marianamarcassa

christian is an artist, designer, researcher, and urbanist based in Montreal/Tio'tia:ke.

They study cities and people, and focus on urban play, gentrification, and place-making practices—through the use of research-creation methods and multiple media.

As a PhD student at Concordia University, they collaborate at the Performative Urbanism Lab (PULSE), the Technoculture, Art, and Games (TAG), and HEXAGRAM.

www.christianscott.ca