credits

• project instigator Andrea Nann
• creative contributors Sarah Chase, Annie Katsura Rollins, Cindy Mochizuki
• creative producer Kelsi James
• visual poem producers Jennifer Baichwal & Nicholas de Pencier
• visual poems cinematographer and editor Ran Zhang
• film artists Yasuhiro Okada, Sophia Mai Wolfe, Daniel Loan

biographies

Andrea Nann is a contemporary dance artist, founding artistic director of Dreamwalker Dance Company, and creator of Conscious Bodies Methodology, an embodied community practice. Andrea dances to reach across distance, to experience others in celebration of possibility, diversity, connection and belonging; believing that dance can shift attitudes and ways of being, tuning us into what makes each of us distinct, to what we share, and ultimately how we can live together in wonderment and peace. In 2016 Ontario Contact recognized Andrea as Artist of the Year and in 2019 she received a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Performance by an Individual in Dance.

Annie Katsura Rollins is a Chinese/Japanese/English/Irish theatre maker, arts researcher and community artist. She incorporates ethnographic research and apprenticeship into her work, with particular interest in traditional puppet forms in Asia and their intersection with ritual practice and community building. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 2011 and named valedictorian in 2019 for her PhD on the possibilities of preserving intangible performative culture at Concordia University. Annie co-curates at Concrete Cabaret, an experimental performing object collective, and is a community arts manager at MABELLE Arts.

Sarah Chase is a performer and choreographer whose distinctive signature has garnered her an international reputation. Her work has been presented across Canada and Europe at such venues as the National Arts Centre (Ottawa), Festival TransAmerique (Montreal), DanceHouse (Vancouver), the Holland Dance Festival, Klapstuk Festival (Belgium), Salzburg Szene Festival (Austria), Kaaitheater (Belgium), Tanz Quartier (Vienna), Fondation Cartier (Paris) and Theater der Welt (Germany). Sarah is the recipient of the 2004 Jacqueline Lemieux Award for Excellence from the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Prize of the Festival at the 2006 Munich Dance Biennale. She is an associate dance artist of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.

Cindy Mochizuki creates multi-media installation, audio fiction, performance, animation, drawings and community-engaged projects. She has exhibited, performed and screened her work in Canada, US, Australia, and Japan. Recent exhibitions include the Nanaimo Art Gallery, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Vancouver Art Gallery, Frye Art Museum, and Yonago City Museum. She received the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award in New Media and Film (2015) and the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation for the Visual Arts VIVA Award (2020). Cindy is grateful to be part of this process working with the amazing team who have come together to create Firehorse and Shadow.

Kelsi James (she/they) is a white queer and asexual theatre creator, producer and performer, currently working on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh. Kelsi has a degree in Musical Theatre (Sheridan) and a certificate in ASL & Deaf Studies (VCC). Kelsi is honoured to have had their work performed nationally and internationally, in over 30 ‘Canadian’ cities, and most recently internationally in Manila, Philippines as part of the Asian Consultation on Gender. Kelsi is passionate about new work and its capacity for tender, human-to-human social change. Kelsi has been honoured to work with Dreamwalker since 2021.

Jennifer Baichwal & Nick de Pencier have been directing and producing documentaries for over 25 years. Their feature documentaries have played all over the world and won multiple awards nationally and internationally including: Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles; The Holier It Gets: Manufactured Landscapes; Act of God; Payback, an adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s Massey Lectures; and Watermark, made with Edward Burtynsky. Their most recent collaboration with Edward Burtynsky is The Anthropocene Project includes a major touring exhibition, a feature documentary film, an art book published by Steidl, and an educational program in partnership with the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.

Yasuhiro Okada. Born in Hokkaido, Japan. In 2011 He earned a Master's degree in Digital Content Management from DHU graduate school in Tokyo and was an awardee of Nikon photo contest for portrait work. He worked as photo/videographer for Sobi-rokuon co., Sony Music, Columbia Records and Sony PCL in Tokyo. He is now based in Vancouver and produces videos, photos and web content of dance and other digital educational contents. He has worked with more than 29 dance organizations and individual artists in Canada including, Co.ERASGA, Company 605, The Dance Centre, Kokoro Dance (VIDF), Kinesis Dance, National Arts Centre and Raven Spirit.

Sophia Mai Wolfe (she/her) is a queer Japanese-Canadian dance artist whose practice is ever changing. Sophia has danced and toured internationally with companies and independent choreographers such as Company 605, Co-Erasga, Chick Snipper, Cindy Mochizuki, Kelly McInnes, Antonio Somera, Zahra Shahab, The Only Animal and New World Theatre. She holds an MA in Screendance from the London Contemporary Dance School with Distinction (2022), and is the founder and Artistic Director of F-O-R-M (Festival Of Recorded Movement), (www.f-o-r-m.ca). She is a video archivist and has curated screenings for New Blue Dance Festival (Toronto), Vancouver Art Gallery, DOTE (Vancouver) and Body+Camera (Chicago).

Daniel Loan started documenting live music in 2011, and went on to join teams of several award winning documentaries including Hayashi Studio, and Yintah. "I've been blessed with the opportunity to work alongside dance artists such as Kokoro, Company 605, Novella, CAMP, Josh Beamish/MOVETHECOMPANY as part of Vancouver International Dance Festival's live-stream presentations which began in 2020. It's led to exciting collaborations—most recently helping to realize Dreamwalker Dance's Crazy Kind of Hope."