Tanya Lukin Linklater: The sky held me (rainfall on hands hair lips)

Ceinwen Gobert was raised in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, and later graduated with distinction from the collaborative BA program at the University of Calgary and the School of Alberta Ballet. She is a Toronto based multidisciplinary artist and has had the pleasure of interpreting works for a number of choreographers and companies, including Kaha:wi Dance Theatre, Van Grimde Corps Secrets, W&M Physical Theatre, Paul-Andre Fortier, Darryl Tracy, Brian Solomon, Signal Theatre, and Tanya Lukin Linklater. Ceinwen worked with Kaha:wi Dance Theatre from 2004-2016, was a company member with Van Grimde Corps Secrets from 2005-2009, and has been dancing for Tanya Lukin-Linklater since 2013. In addition to her work as a dancer, Ceinwen is a visual artist (@ceigart) and co-owner of Summit Massage Studio.

Emily Law is an artist, choreographer, producer, lifelong student, and mother.

Her choreographic work has been showcased on companies and in festivals such as Toronto Dance Theatre, The Next Stage Theatre Festival, Toronto Fringe Festival, CanAsian Dance Festival, The Reel Asian Film Festival, Guelph Dance, Jeux de la Francophonie, Winterlude, Dusk Dances & Fall For Dance North.

She has had the pleasure of working with Tanya since 2011, along with companies, collectives and artists such as Returning River, Kaha:wi Dance Theatre & The Dietrich Group among many other wonderful artists. She is co-artistic director of Mix Mix Dance and Parks N’ Wreck. She has been nominated for two Dora Mavor Moore Awards, a Gemini, & the 2017 Premier’s award. Emily is currently completing a MA at York University.

Wolastoq and Quebecois dancer, choreographer and curator Ivanie Aubin-Malo invests herself in projects that reflect on ecology and human ethics regarding our environment. She has also danced Fancy Shawl, a powwow style, since 2015, connecting with the spirit of transformation and celebrating women’s audacity. Her artistic research as a creator aims to shed light on the beauty of the Wolastoqey language and its relation to the land and the body. Ivanie additionally contributes to connecting Indigenous movement-based artists in order to break isolation, cultivate inspiration, facilitate knowledge sharing, and encourage certain experimental collaborations. With this intention, she has helped spark recurring events in and around Montreal/Tio’tia:ke/Mooniyang: MAQAHATINE (Tangente and l’Agora de la danse, 2020-2022, Tangente 2023-2025); OHAKWARONT (CCOV, 2022-) and Nikak Tagocniok (Théâtre Gilles-Vigneault, 2023-). As a dancer, she regularly collaborates with Tanya Lukin Linklater and has worked with k.g Guttman, Andreane Leclerc, Corpuscule Danse, Lara Kramer and Alexandre Morin, amongst others. Alongside Natasha Kanapé-Fontaine, she is currently co-creating a performance on wolastoqiyik and Innuat giants and oral stories. Recently based in L’Islet (QC), Ivanie plans to open a Wolastoqey Cultural Center where culture can be celebrated and revitalized in the area while connecting with others.

Photo by Magdalena Marszalek.

lisa nevada (b. New México, Chicana, Nuevoméxicana) advocates for our earth mother through her dancemaking, performance, and teaching. Living most of her life in New México, lisa eventually landed in Brooklyn in 2019 where she thrives as a dance and teaching artist. In Lenapehoking (NYC) and beyond, she facilitates movement experiences and performs dances that engage all peoples in the observation of ecosystems and our human interactions to ignite kinship with mama earth, centered on gratitude. She choreographs for experimental theatre & musicals and is continuously mining her personal creations and offerings. Her embodied research and performance delve into the sonic realms of lullaby and wailing in response to humanity’s active destruction of psyche and home. The soils, plants & trees, waters, animals, and insect beings propel lisa’s work while dance remains the sustaining conduit through which she lives and communicates.

Tanya Lukin Linklater’s performances, works for camera, installations, and writings cite Indigenous dance and visual art lineages, our structures of sustenance, and weather as an organizing force. She undertakes embodied inquiry and rehearsal in relation to scores and ancestral belongings in museums and elsewhere alongside dance artists, composers, and poets. Through collaboration, her work reckons with histories that affect Indigenous peoples’ lived experiences, (home)lands, and ideas. She continues to write in relation to what she has come to call felt structures. Her forthcoming and recent exhibitions include the 14th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea; Aichi Triennale, Japan; Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver; Chicago Architecture Biennial; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville; Heard Museum, Phoenix; Jan Kaps, Cologne; La Biennale de Montréal; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Oakville Galleries, Ontario; New Museum Triennial, New York; Remai Modern, Saskatoon; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Toronto Biennial of Art; and Winnipeg Art Gallery. Tanya Lukin Linklater is represented by Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver. She is the recipient of the Wexner Center for the Arts Artist Residency Award and The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. Slow Scrape, her first collection of poetry, was published by The Centre for Expanded Poetics and Anteism, Montréal (2020) with a second edition published by Talonbooks, Vancouver (2022). Her Sugpiaq homelands, Afognak and Port Lions, are in southwestern Alaska, and she lives and works in Nbisiing Anishinaabeg aki in Ontario. Participated in the “Contingencies of Care” Residency, 2021.

Victoria May (Red River Métis-Michif) was born in Ottawa. She began her dance training at the School of Dance, and her early career started at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. She has performed with ballet and contemporary dance companies including Göteborgs Danse Kompagni and Danish Dance Theatre in Europe, and with various groups in Canada for over 30 years. Victoria is a citizen of the Manitoba Métis Federation, her grandmother was born and raised on the Road Allowance on Treaty 6 Territory, in a place known as the Fox Farm (now called Nordale) outside Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.

Victoria has received The Duke and Duchess of York Award (CA), the Arnold Spohr Award (CA), The Young Performers Bursary Award (CA), Augustinus Fund (DK), Danish Actors Blankbandsmidler (DK), and the Toyota Fund (DK), as well as support from both the Canada Council and Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec.

She is currently a Ph.D. student in the INDI program at Concordia University in Montreal (Tio’tia:ke). She dances for A’nó:wara Dance Theatre (Barbara Diabo), Louise Bédard Danse, and more recently Tanya Lukin Linklater. She is currently collaborating internationally with Fijian director Nina Nawalowalo and her company, ‘The Conch,’ based in New Zealand. She is a founding member of Maqahatine, an Indigenous dance collective based in Tio’tia:ke. Victoria’s recent work, ‘Kiwaapamitinaawaaaw,’ is a poem and a love letter to her ancestors about embodying the Michif language and the dances that guided her home.