Edgy Challenge Artists’ Biographies

Dayna McLeod is a writer, video and performance artist who likes to poke and prod feminism, homophobia, and sexually oriented stereotypes with irony, sex toys, and funny business. She has traveled extensively with her performance work, and her videos have played from London Ontario to London England- across Europe, North America, South America, Asia and a few times on TV. She conceived and coordinates 52pickupvideos.com; a video site whose participants make one video a week for an entire year. www.daynarama.com

Nathalie Claude has worked as an actress, dancer, choreographer, director and writer for more than 20 years. Her creations as an active member of the Momentum collective include: Les Filles de Séléné (1999-2001), a physical theatre for 8 women presented in a convent; La Fête des Morts (2002-2004), a theatrical event taking place in a cemetery featuring 11 actors created in collaboration with Céline Bonnier (in nomination for Best Director and Best Play at the Gala des Masques), and Limbes/Limbo (2004), a co-creation with Lin Snelling inspired by Nancy Houston’s tribute to Samuel Beckett. Recently, Nathalie’s most recent piece featuring three automatons and one actress in the flesh:The Salon Automaton (2008-2010) has been presented in Montreal, and is now touring in Quebec and in Toronto. Furthermore, she has created five solo performances that have had a great success in Montreal, Toronto, New York, Florence (Italy), Berlin (Germany) and Lublijana (Slovenia). Nathalie is an artistic coach at the Cirque du Soleil, and also an extremely popular MC for all kinds of events and festivals. In the fall of 2009, she was invited by the Montreal’s Fine Arts Museum to co-direct the scenography of the largest retrospective of the English painter John William Waterhouse. www.nathalieclaude.com

Performer, director, and teacher, Leslie Baker’s interest spans theatrical performance, performance installations and interventions. She employs gesture, sound, text, and image in a non-hierarchical approach, exploring various means of performance communication. During her career she has had the opportunity to collaborate with Robert Wilson, Richard Foreman, Dumbtype, Leeny Sack, Peter Bottazzi, Bettina Hoffman, and Tedi Tafel, amongst others. Leslie’s work has been shown Internationally. She has taught at the National Theatre School of Canada, University of Costa Rica and Concordia University.

Sophie Castonguay creates devices using the voice of the artist as an outside voice for the piece. Using narrative modes she attempts to create interference in the reception of the work and forces the spectator to question their position. Her work has been shown in Europe (Paris, Cologne, Basel), in Quebec (L’œil de Poisson, Axe Néo-7, La Centrale, Dare-Dare, Dazibao) and in Toronto (Fado). She holds a master’s degree in creation from UQÀM’s École des arts visuels et médiatiques (2007). www.sophiecastonguay.ca

T.L. Cowan’s writing and performance has been described as bitterly funny, cerebral and shrill. Over the past ten years T.L. has performed in Canada and internationally and her intermedia performance collage, The Twisted She Project, launched in September 2009 at Edmonton’s Visualeyez Festival. Recently, T.L. has been exploring alter-ego-based performance and collaborative creation. In January 2010, she staged the first in a series of queer, tent-based performances at Calgary’s High Performance Rodeo. http://popstart.ca/en/members/tl-cowan

Jackie Gallant is a musician and performer who composes, improvises and creates for dance, video and film. She began her musical career as a drummer for several Montreal rock groups. Since then she’s played drums and percussion for everyone from La La La Human Steps to Lesbians on Ecstasy. As a solo artist, she creates sound pieces and performs sample based improvised work using electronic drums and other instrumentation. She’s currently creating sound and music for an evening commissioned by dancer Sarah Williams with work from creators Marie Brassard, Martin Belanger and Peter Chu.

Since 1985 Suzanne Miller’s dance productions and performance installations have toured throughout Canada, the United States, the Czech Republic, Germany, the Netherlands, Mexico, Venezuela and the Middle East (2010). She has participated at international festivals and residencies as a dance artist and has received numerous awards and commissions for her productions. Since 1998, Suzanne Miller & Allan Paivio Productions has worked toward a hybrid, poly-cultural repertoire of new dance and music unique to Canada. The distinctive character of the company derives from an ongoing series of cultural and artistic exchanges that feed their creative process. Using the body as a starting place, Suzanne Miller’s work concentrates of the immediacy of action and the symbolic residue of representation. Her extended interest in music, visual art, performance and technology has influenced her choreography and collaborations with artists. www.millerpaivio.com

Cookie Lajar & The Flying Monkey (Helen Simard & Jennifer Casimir’s stage characters) have travelled from the Bad Guys Empire to battle against the forces of boredom, apathy, and the hyper-sexualization of female performers, as they dip, flip, spin and tumble their way into your hearts. Featuring an original mix of dance, music, burlesque, and old and new circus arts to create a perfect blend of gender politics and zany vaudeville style entertainment, Cookie and Monkey are sure to wow audiences of all shapes and sizes.

Jennifer Casimir (aka the Flying Monkey) found dance in 1999. As a breakdancer, she has performed and battled across Canada, the US and Europe. Her work has been presented at Edgy Women (2004) and the Meow Mix. Jen has danced for Solid State (Montreal), Cirque du Soleil (Formula 1 Corporate), Flamenco ConFusion (Spain), Jim Linehan (NYC) and Full Circle (NYC). Recently introduced to circus arts, Jen mixes hand balancing, main-a-main, aerial tissue, and physical theatre into her repertoire.

Helen Simard (aka Cookie Lajar) is a multi-disciplinary artist with a BFA in contemporary dance whose influences include clowning, burlesque, and object manipulation. She has danced for Cirque du Soleil, Wants and Needs, MMHOP, and Tusket Dance, and has presented her work at Tangente and Studio 303 (Montreal), Squiggfest (Toronto), the Dance and Song Festival (Kingston), and the Gender Bent Cabaret (Winnipeg). Helen is Co-Artistic Director of Solid State Breakdance, with whom she has performed in Canada and Europe.

Mariko Tamaki is a Toronto writer and performer. She has collaborated with a variety of performance activist troupes including Pretty Porky and Pissed Off, The Corporate Wet Nurse Association and TOA (Theatre of Assholes). Mariko is a writer of fiction and non-fiction. Her comic book, Skim, co-created with Jillian Tamaki, was nominated for a Governor General Award in 2009 and won the Doug Wright for Best Graphic Novel. www.marikotamaki.com

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Edgy Party Artists’ Biographies

Born in Montreal in 1970 where she still lives, Caroline Boileau is pursuing a reflection on the body and health through a practice combining performance, drawing, video and installation. Driven by a fine attention to human context, her reflection is strongly inspired and imbued by the medical and pharmaceutical worlds in which, in parallel to her work as an artist, she has been evolving for many years.

Geneviève C-Ferron is a young choreographer from Montreal who, rich from her studies in visual arts and dance, develops her dancework on the experience of intimacy and authenticity of the body in representation. The last one of a long line of committed feminists, she bases her aesthetic thesis on a constant revisitation of the perceptions of the female body in dance, the cyclic movements of its identity and its inclusive artistic conscience.

Soufia Bensaïd est une artiste interdisciplinaire. Son travail questionne l’influence que chacun a sur le parcours de l’autre. On l’a vu dans les rues de Montréal, de Paris, à Fleur d’asphalte, au Studio 303, au Bain St-Michel et à Tangente. Avec corps médiums, collectif qu’elle a mis sur pied, elle interroge avec des artistes du mouvement le rôle de passeur dans des espaces in situ. Elle peint, elle joue. Elle voudrait bien continuer à découvrir.

Catherine Lalonde est issue du monde de la création théâtrale, Catherine Lalonde se tourne rapidement vers l’exploration de la performance et de l’intervention multidisciplinaires. Passionnée par tout ce qui entoure la culture, elle allie travail artistique, engagement coopératif et création d’événements urbains. En 2000, elle fonde le Péristyle Nomade, compagnie artistique consacrée à l’art interdisciplinaire. www.peristylenomade.org

Jacqueline Van de Geer studied in Amsterdam and trained with Oleg Kisselev and Marc Zamith in Montreal. She acts, directs and creates.

Johnny Forever is a freshly styled queen still recovering from a sordid romance with Warsaw. Not too long ago, the former king stripped off their last faux side burns and crossed the ocean to settle in the bosom of grotesque burlesque performer and favourite collaborator, Douche la Douche. The two of them regularly engage in desperately closeted house wife drag, smearing one another lovingly with all kinds of hot mess in performances that put the ab(solutely fabulous) back into abject. johnnyforever.wordpress.com

Nikol Mikus graduated from Concordia University in Communications, Specialization in Film Production, 1996. Since 1997 Nikol has devoted her time to image-making, filming art videos and photographing performers and fashion models. She completed a Commercial Photography degree at Dawson College (Outstanding Final Portfolio), May 2009. Her photography focuses on the Editorial Portrait. Nikol has been collaborating as videographer/photographer with dancer/choreographer Alyson Wishnousky since 2007. Together they created work in Artist Residencies, for photo vernissages, video festivals and dance performances. Their latest video collaboration will be presented this April at FAT 2010, Toronto’s Alternative Fashion Festival. www.nikolmikus.com

Alyson Wishnousky graduated from Concordia University with a Major in Contemporary Dance, 1998. She pursued a career with Montréal choreographers Isabelle Choinère, Tammy Forsythe, and Mary Ann Lacey, in Canada, New York, Europe and South America. In 2007 Alyson focused on her own solo performances, and collaboratons with videographer/photographer Nikol Mikus. They have since co-created several videos and photo series incorporated into Alyson’s dance pieces, for photo vernissages, and video festivals. Their recent video collaboration, Three Little Fits, was selected for FAT 2010, Toronto’s Alternative Fashion Festival. www.rentedbodies.blog.com

Coral Short is a prolific international performance artist. She has performed and exhibited her work in Asia, North America, and Europe over the last 12 years. Melding nightlife with fine art, her art casts magic spells on her audiences enabling them to understand that many fantastical realities can and do happen at any given moment. Over the years she has transformed groups of performers into machines, animals and different genders. Her group work ranges from 6 people to over 500 people. Currently Coral has been producing work with a project in New York City called House of Trisha with Brooklyn’s finest art femmes shot by Ally Picard. In Montreal she makes noise/performances with Women with Kitchen Appliances which she founded in 1998. Short also adores collaborating with two of Montreal’s feminist performance artists Alexis O’hara and Lamathilde as well creating her large-scale work with her beloved family of queers. Coral has just returned from a tour of Europe where she was curating “Maplechasers” which was chockablock with fresh queer Canadian video work. www.coralshort.com

Lamathilde is a video-sound-performance artist. Her work investigates identity through sexuality and gender using low-grade video, super 8, manipulated film footage and stop-motion animation. Sound is at the core of her practice. Her work has been shown in many galleries and international festivals, including Pink Screens – Brussels, Festival des films gais et lesbiens – Paris, London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival , Mix Festival – New York, and as well as in Germany, Italy, Holland, Philippines, Canada, Slovenia, Australia, Lebanon. Born in France, Lamathilde lives and works in Montreal. She is part of the sound-performance collective WWKA, has hosted a radio show for 5 years and is an active member of the Montreal visual arts scene. She’s been part of Coral Short’s performances since 2008 and works with her on different collaborations, Sexnoys (Vancouver), Social (Montreal). www.lamathilde.com

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