Isabelle Kirouac

Description
Meta/fauna presents two shape-shifting creatures evolving in their ephemeral habitat. It portrays ever-changing landscapes, large animals hybridizing with fossilized plants, bleached corals, metallic structures, bones, and the ghosts of those who have disappeared. Meta/fauna invites the audience to witness cycles of evolution, transformation and extinction through movement, design and sound.

Supported through The Dance Centre’s DanceLab interdisciplinary research program.

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Concept, Co-artistic Direction, Performer: Isabelle Kirouac

Co-artistic Director, Choreographer: Delia Brett

Performer: Levana Prud'homme

Musical Composition, Performer: Christopher Kelly

Musical Composition: Stefan Smulovitz

Costume & Object Design: Tamara Unroe

Lighting Design: Jamie Sweeney

Consultant: Michael Hathaway

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Isabelle Kirouac
Isabelle Kirouac is a transdisciplinary choreographer, movement artist, mother and educator, born in Quebec, on the lands of the Abenaki people. She lives in Vancouver, on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations. Isabelle uses movement as a tool to investigate the poetics of the senses, and to process questions raised in her everyday life. Informed by her training in improvisation, somatics and contemporary circus, her artistic practice has recently focused on expanding the possibilities of stilts in contemporary dance work, as well as deepening her relationship to the land and other species through movement practice, performance, installations, and community engaged projects. She co facilitates the Art & Fungi Project in collaboration with mycologist/artist Willoughby Arevalo.

Isabelle presented her work across Canada, the USA, Mexico, Colombia and Europe. She performed in the work of Emmalena Fredriksson, Arash Khakpour, Foolish Operations, Emmanuel Jouthe/Danse Carpe Diem (Montreal), Theatre Junction (Calgary), Lea Kieffer (Berlin), La Pocha Nostra (USA/Mexico), Body Research (USA), The Carpetbag Brigade Physical Theatre (USA), Nemcatacoa Teatro (Colombia), and others. She holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University.

Levana Prud'homme
Levana Prud'homme is an interdisciplinary performer specialized in dance, acrobatic stilts, drag and music, currently living on unceded Coast Salish territory in so-called “Vancouver, BC”. After graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, double major in Contemporary Dance and Women’s Studies from Concordia University in Montréal, Québec, Levana created, collaborated, and performed in various dance projects for several years before moving back to BC. Since 2015, they worked with the physical theatre and acrobatic stilt company The Carpetbag Brigade (USA). Levana has also taken part in numerous performance projects worldwide, including collaborating with other dance artists at E|MERGE, Earthdance (USA), and dancing and choreographing as part of Biblioteca do Corpo in Austria and Brazil. Levana is dedicated to the continual study and sharing of holistic and radical movements, both physically and socially. For over ten years now, they have been pursuing courses in the Axis Syllabus International Research Community, deepening their knowledge of biomechanical efficiency while strengthening the kinesthetic relationship with their body, with others, and with the environment. They are a Certified Practitioner of the Rolf Method of Structural Integration.

Delia Brett
Delia’s is an established performing artist on the unceded Coast Salish territories, AKA Vancouver, BC. Delia began her arts career began 35 yrs ago as a teenage film and TV actor and transitioned to dance and live performance only 3 years later. Throughout her extensive career she’s had the privilege of working for many dance and theatre companies, as well as enjoyed opportunities to tour around the globe, as a performer, teacher and choreographer. Some of the places Delia traveled with her work include, Malaysia, France, Germany, Austria, the US and Finland. Delia’s most significant contribution live performance, was the quarter of a century she dedicated to dancing with EDAM Dance, and the 25 interdisciplinary dance productions she created with her own company, MACHiNENOiSY (2005-2021). For 5 years now, Isabelle has graciously included Delia as a dramaturge, director and co choreographer in her creation process. Mega Fauna ’21 was their third co-choreographic collaboration.

Christopher J. Kelly
Christopher J. Kelly is a composer, sound designer, multi-instrumentalist, and improviser. Kelly’s work ranges from melodic and playful to noisy and abstract. He is active in Vancouver’s creative music, dance & theatre communities, and frequently appears in the Vancouver Jazz & Folk festivals. He has worked with Vancouver New Music, the Now Orchestra & the Hard Rubber Orchestra as well as many other outstanding local and international arts organizations. He is a current member of Gord Grdina’s avant Arabic ensemble Haram & John Korsud”s psychedelic lounge big band Absolute Unit.

Tamara Unroe
Tamara Unroe is a maker, a puppeteer, and a committed dumpster diver. She studied visual art at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design (Vancouver), and NSCAD (Halifax), puppetry with Sandglass theatre in Vermont, and luthiery at Timeless Instruments in Tugaske, Saskatchewan. She has worked with artists and communities in Canada, Taiwan, Europe, and Thailand. She sees puppetry as collaboration between the body, the world of objects, and the world of symbols; an opportunity for the waking and the dreaming to collide and have a conversation. Tamara builds large-scale puppets and sculptural installations, often incorporating found objects and sound. Recent projects include a collaboration with the Reach Gallery in Abbotsford to build a giant illuminated heron puppet, the Siren’s Shipwreck (an interactive soundscape/sculptural installation at the Richmond Maritime Festival), a collaboration with Fada Dance (Regina, SK) incorporating shadow puppetry, dance and human scale nests woven out of pine needles, scrap binder rope and found objects, a puppetry piece for the Calgary International Festival of Animated Objects (a collaboration with Long Grass studio), and building a giant sea monster for the Vancouver International Children’s Festival. Currently she is developing a summer puppetry practicum at the REACH gallery for students at the UFV, as well as embarking on a collaboration with fellow clown artist Melissa Aston (thanks to the Canada Council!) to explore dream states through puppetry and clown.

Jamie Sweeney
Jamie Sweeney is an emerging Vancouver Lighting Designer, production manager, and collaborative interdisciplinary creator. She holds a BFA in both Performance and Production and Design from Simon Fraser University. Relevant credits include: Migration (Fight With A Stick, LD, 2022), Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (White Rock Players, LD, 2022), Palimpsest (Pacific Theatre, Collaborator, 2021).

Stefan Smulovitz
Stefan Smulovitz is a true innovator known for his creative use of technology and mastery of sound manipulation. His craft has been honed creating nearly 100 live film scores, innumerable dance and theatre scores, and hundreds of live performances with some of the top improvising musicians in the world. Stefan’s roots as an improvisor allow him to skillfully use viola, electronics, and his game-changing software Kenaxis, to create vast sonic worlds. Always open to exploring new ideas he has collaborated with film, dance, theatre, poets, writers, visual artists, theoretical particle physicists, buffoon, circus, and now most excitingly crows! He lives in Roberts Creek, BC where he is working on his most ambitious project yet.

Michael Hathaway
Michael Hathaway is Professor of Anthropology at Simon Fraser University, where he also directs the David Lam Centre for Asian Studies. Recently selected as a Guggenheim Fellow, Michael has been actively learning from many peers, both human and non-human, as he works to open up new ways of understanding and relating to the wild world around us full of many organisms. He speaks regularly on more-than-human worlds and collaborates with scientists and artists in rethinking human relations with others that goes beyond colonial ways of thinking and being. Michael has worked in Southwest China for many years, exploring the fascinating cultural and biological diversity there, from the high Himalayan peaks to the tropical rainforests where he lived in villages among China’s last herds of wild elephants. The author of the prize-winning book, Environmental Winds: Making the Global in Southwest China (California), he has just released his new book, What a Mushroom Lives For: Matsutake and the Worlds They Make (Princeton).