Michèle Moss (B.Ed./M.A.) is a dancer, choreographer, community leader, and mentor. Most rewarding is her role as an educator. She is a tenured associate professor in the School of Creative and Performing Arts (SCPA), Division of Dance at University of Calgary. She co-founded DJD (Decidedly Jazz Danceworks) in 1984 and worked with the company as a dancer, associate artistic director, choreographer, school principal, and board member, for 15 years. She continues to find great pleasure in exploring the nature of jazz, the roots of jazz, the future of jazz, and sharing her research in the studio, in workshops at home and abroad.

She especially enjoys her research of the dances of the African diaspora and the relationship to the continent of Africa. Her research is mostly embodied/practice-based, choreographic commissions, concerts as wells as scholarly assignments, and self-produced concert work. Moss will close her Why Dance? research project with Why Dance? V in 2024. This research started in 2005 with a textual graduate thesis and an embodied aspect, in a concert. To finalize and disseminate the project will add some reflective writing and oral history interviews. She engages in textual projects and has since 1999. These include conference proceedings and numerous publications include co-authoring chapters on the history of jazz in Jazz Dance: Roots and Branches 2015, University Press of Florida.

Michèle is dedicated to social justice, activism, transformation, collaboration, creation, and the arts. She identifies as she/her and as a dancer first and foremost (even though the decrepitude is now real!). She has been the recipient of many artistic grants, research awards and funding for projects in the arts. Recently, in 2022, she was presented a Lifetime Achievement Award along with collaborators representing Calgary, Canada and the jazz form, its roots and history, providing information she remains dedicated to tomorrow-ing this form. She is dedicated to continuing her choreographic commissions, scholarly assignments - such as articles, conference papers, essays and remaining current and up to date. This requires reading broadly and attendance at many conferences to have the conversations.

Michèle has led numerous travel study courses through UCalgary to Senegal and Guinea, West Africa, Cuba, Trinidad, Uganda, and New York City. She continues to be invited as speaker, visiting guest artist and animator of numerous gatherings such as music symposiums, cultural festivals and informal work groups around education and research with a focus on dance, music and culture, social justice, ethnography, ethics in the field, and internationalization of education and pedagogy.

I-Ying Wu is an improvisation practitioner and researcher. She was awarded her MA from the National Taiwan University of the Arts in 2006 and a PhD in the performing arts from the University of Northampton, UK in 2014. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Improvisation Studies Centre based in the Faculty of Media, Art and Performance, University of Regina during 2016-2017. Her research on improvisation began from her Masters project that investigated the history of dance improvisation and the cultural meaning of Contact Improvisation within the sociocultural context of Taiwan. Her doctoral thesis, Being Formless: A Daoist Movement Practice, employs practice-as-research methodology to explore the ambiguity of the unknown as characterised in Daoism, how Daoist perspectives on qi-energy are manifest through in-between states of being and the transformation of the self. During her PhD, she developed, based on a Daoist perspective of qi, a somatic movement practice that relies on improvised movement as a pathway towards understanding the Dao (Way). Building on this, her postdoctoral project rethinks the concept of improvisation from a Daoist perspective in order to fill a gap between Western concepts and those from her own cultural perspective and embodied experience of qi. Through a series of heart/mind “detachment” in her creative process resonating with her embodied experience of Daoist meditative practices, she holds that improvisation is not a form of art but rather is something within our being, a subtle reaction to the self and surroundings, which needs to be rigorously trained to dwell within our heart/mind so that we may experience, realise, and understand.

Miyo Kisikanisik !!

My name is Rod Belanger and I am of Nehiyo and Nahkwe blood lines. I am from the Chacachas/Ochapowace Cree Nation located in Treaty 4 Territory.

( our historic indentity - kâ-têpwêwisîpîwiyiniwak - Calling River People )

My story starts during a very difficult time in history not just for my family but for many Indigenous families. I lived during an era that witnessed many apprehensions of Indian children from their families and as tragic as this sounds, my life was directly impacted.

The experience from this time resulted in an identity crisis that left me without any history of who I was and the people that I came from. I lived no culture, no ceremony and no traditional lifestyle. I wasn’t able to experience language and family which was so important in my development as young Indian person and as a human.

At a very young age I was fortunate to be introduced to the dance and song and this was instrumental, in that, it ignited my spirit. Though everything else seemed chaotic and hazy during this time, the dance was the catalyst to my connections to everything that was important. Though this connection to dance I was able to find family and make new family. I was able to reconnect to language and ceremony. It was also instrumental in creating a historic pathway and link to my family, relatives and descendants and the direct historical impacts they experienced as well.

Today, the lasting residue from this time has opened the doors of dance and the world. I have been able to experience and educate about history, culture and dance locally, nationally and internationally. I have been able reconnect to language and culture and be involved in a huge spectrum of indigenous activities all over turtle island. I now have knowledge that the ancestors were responsive and responsible for the activities taking place in my life today. Having this belief system, that is still in repair, has constructed my life far beyond anything that I could imagine. Many things to be thankful for and I always attribute the great part of my life to this connection to song and dance.

Nanaskomon pimatisiwin meewasin !!

Rawd Belanger

Based in Tkaronto (Toronto), Derek Souvannavong is an emerging artist of Lao heritage. He is a graduate of the BFA Honours Dance program at York University, where he has trained under notable faculty members and artists receiving the Spedding Memorial Scholarship for Excellence in Choreography as well as the Menaka Thakar award for World Dance. He was also a former company member of the York Dance Ensemble. Recently he has presented solo work, this identity: woven (2022), created through collaboration with Peggy Baker and the RBC Emerging Artist Program, as well as has performed work by Rumi Jeraj through DaCo Lab (2022) hosted by Angela Blumberg. Derek is a former company member of Free Flow Dance Theatre (2022) where he has worked with admirable artists Newton Moraes, Danny Grossman, Edward Kastrau and Terrill Maguire, as well as choreographed work presented through International Dance Week. He has trained with ProArteDanza (2021) under direction of Robert Glumbek, Roberto Campanella, and Sasha Ludavicious. Derek has performed and choreographed in productions of York Dances (2018-2022) as well as Bloom (2018.) Intrigued by traditional Lao dance forms, he wishes to continue exploring relations between Lao dance forms and the Western diaspora of contemporary dance.

Ayesha Mohsin is a Pakistani Canadian artist. She is the founder and artistic director of Lexeme Theatre and Media Company. Her research and work showcase multilingual and multicultural elements which depicts her immigrant background and knowledge. Ayesha is the recipient of Regina Artist Award; supported by The Harry Nick Kangles Endowment Fund. She is currently pursuing an Interdisciplinary MFA in Film and Theatre, she works at Mackenzie Art Gallery and Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina.