PRE-2006
From 2003-6, my works largely focused on small-scale live/performance art collaborations and solo pieces. Highlights included Each Starry Night (2006), performed at Mile Zero Dance, Edmonton, Canada, the Royal Welsh College of Music and Dance’s Continuums; Camden Peoples’ Theatre, London; and Gaywise, London; R+D on Intimacies live version supported by the Choreographic Lab; R+D on His Hearing Aid; and the durational work Acoustic/Electric at Diapason Gallery, New York City, 2004, performed in an electronically innervated piezo-wig and silk wig, developed with Scottish/English costume/textile artist Ali Maclaurin and performed inside the Gallery’s 12-channel immersive sound system.
From 2000-2002, I studied for my MA in experimental music composition (specialising in vocally-focused music-theatre with a strong live/performance art aesthetic slant) at Wesleyan University thanks to scholarship support. I produced a large portfolio of vocal work and stage work of various kinds there, a highlight of which was Until and then Joy, performed by two dancers, four vocalists (three of whom wielded melting ice batons), a koto player, trumpet, saxophone, etc. I was introduced to psycho- and neuropsycho-linguistics by the incredible Prof. Catherine Best at Wesleyan, who collaborated with me on later works in the 2010s. I also worked with Neely Bruce, Alvin Lucier, and Anthony Braxton while at Wesleyan.
During the 1990s, I was a member of Geraldine Morita’s (now AD of Mile Zero Dance, Edmonton, Canada) loose collective Tunnel Works in Montréal, Québec, Canada, with whom I worked on a variety of shows in sometimes traditional, but mostly non-traditional, spaces, usually as a vocal stage character, but sometimes on ‘cello too. Tunnel Works was a choreographically-led live performance company whose aesthetics plundered and celebrated everything from post-modern and post-post-modern dance to Montréal’s neo-punk sounds to the work of artist and musician Jonathan Asencio (Kite Project, Starbean, Doughboys, etc.) With Tunnel Works, I performed in Montréal, Toronto, and Moncton, and appeared in media works. Our most traditionally ‘theatrical’ work was the POMO dance/Irish dance/trapeze/pop-rock/welded + foam costumed extravaganza Twinkle at the Stornoway Gallery. Tunnel Works received support from the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec and the Canada Council for the Arts. I completed my interdisciplinary undergrad study at Athabasca University and a professional diploma in body psychotherapy at this time, too, both part-time, and both of which strongly influenced my understanding of the stage, somatics, and the emotional experience of embodiment. Previous to my time in Montréal, I studied experimental music, ecology, and creative writing at Bennington College with strong financial support from the College, and before that was the Prince of Wales scholarship holder to the United World College of the Atlantic, where I completed the International Baccalaureate diploma, courtesy the province of Alberta, Canada. I grew up in the powdery winter snows, sharp golden autumns and fleeting intense summers of Alberta.