IICSI

2024 Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium: "Sheets of Sound: Jazz, Improvisation, and Liner Notes"
2024-09-11 09:00 - 17:00 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us from Wednesday, September 11–Saturday, September 14 for the 2024 Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
This year’s event, titled “Sheets of Sound: Jazz, Improvisation, and Liner Notes,” draws inspiration from jazz critic and historian Ira Gitler’s description of legendary jazz saxophonist John Coltrane’s 1958 recording Soultrane. Gitler famously coined the phrase, “sheets of sound” to describe Coltrane’s playing. The event also takes its cues from Daphne Brooks’ recent work, Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound, highlighting the overlooked contributions of Black women in the history of popular music. Dr. Brooks, one of the colloquium’s keynote speakers, will present a compelling new work on Friday from 2:30–3:45 PM, titled “Liner Notes for the Hurricane: Crate Digging for Porgy and Bess.” The other keynote speaker, Ashley Kahn, a prolific American music historian, will deliver a presentation on Thursday from 3:45–4:45 PM, titled “Liner Noting in the Time of Streaming.”

This colloquium will take place in person at ImprovLab (Room 108 MacKinnon Building) on the University of Guelph Campus. The event is free and open to everybody.

More About This Event:
Since 1996 the Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium, co-presented by the University of Guelph in partnership with the Guelph Jazz Festival, has brought together diverse communities of interest by providing a scholarly forum for dialogue among researchers, creative practitioners, arts presenters, and members of the general public.
The focus of this year’s colloquium is “Liner Notes”
In what ways have liner notes shaped the way the music is received? To what extent do liner notes contribute to the ways in which we negotiate and construct meaning about the music, how we understand history, how and why we listen? In what ways have digital dissemination and streaming services disrupted our notions of liner notes? And how has this shifted listener/audience understanding about their favourite artists?
The learn more about this year’s presenters and to see a full schedule, please follow this link to the colloquium web portal.

KidsAbility Play Who You Are Ensemble - Final Performance at the Guelph Jazz Festival
2024-09-14 15:00 - 16:30 (America/Toronto) | TD Market Square, Guelph, ON, Canada
Please join us on Saturday, September 14 at 3:00 PM (ET) for a public performance by the “KidsAbility Play Who You Are Ensemble” at the Guelph Jazz Festival.

This performance will take place in person at TD Market Square, Downtown Guelph. The event is free and open to everybody.

More About This Event:
Since 2007, KidsAbility and the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) have partnered to bring award-winning musicians to support youth with varying developmental and physical needs. Play Who You Are includes a FREE series of musical improvisation workshops which culminate in a FREE public performance at the Guelph Jazz Festival. The KidsAbility Play Who You Are Ensemble will be facilitated by Ben Finley.
This year, the workshops take place on August 12th (info session), 14th, 19th, 21st, and September 4th from 7-8 pm at ImprovLab, located on the University of Guelph Campus. The final culminating performance will take place at the Guelph Jazz Festival on Saturday, September 14th.
More About the Facilitator:
Ben Finley is an experienced collaborative and solo performer, composer, singer, improviser, and writer grounded in creative acoustic and electric bass playing. He leads and co-leads several ensembles and grew up on a music festival farm – Westben! He is a current Ph.D. candidate in the Critical Studies in Improvisation program at the University of Guelph.
The KidsAbility Play Who You Are Ensemble will also be joined onstage by the IICSI Improvisers-in-Residence, Jimmy Weinstein (drums, piano, guitar, composer) and Lilly Santon (vocalist, visual arts).
For more information, and to register to participate in Play Who You Are, contact Taylor Graham at improvce@uoguelph.ca.

Thinking Spaces: Jimmy Weinstein and Lilly Santon, "Building a Safe Creativity Environment"
2024-09-27 11:00 - 12:30 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us on Friday, September 27 at 11:00 AM (ET) for Thinking Spaces: “Building a Safe Creativity Environment” with Jimmy Weinstein and Lilly Santon, a featured event in the Ontario Culture Days calendar!

This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph, as well as online via IICSI’s new Twitch Stream. As always, our Thinking Spaces events are free!
To attend the talk in-person or online, RSVP via our Google Forms.

More about this talk:
Jimmy Weinstein and Lilly Santon founded Travelling School in 2002 in Padova, Italy with the mission to teach jazz and improvisation as applied to general education. Many different projects grew out of this initiative. Drawing on their life in music and in association with other musicians, they create workshops at jazz festivals, music schools and regular schools.Over the course of twenty-two years since the founding of Travelling School, Jimmy Weinstein and Lilly Santon have developed a highly effective methodology for introducing concepts taken from jazz improvisation. These concepts can be applied to general and special education situations and dynamics. Today, their introduction to these creative and educational concepts takes the shape of their workshop: Building a Safe Creativity Environment.

Some of the points that will be outlined in this workshop could be:
1. Inclusion with the self: Self inclusion exercises (most evident when one feels embarrassed).
2. High Energy Encouragement: Positive high energy received in the moment of improvisation as a teacher. Real ability to improvise a class, and how to develop this.
3. Inclusion of conflict and disruption: Using disruption as catalyst for the improvising teacher applied in real life class dynamics.
4. The Concert Game: The game of the 30 second concert presented as a game for kids.
5. Listening to jazz pieces and transposing the emotion into a solo or interactive performance/concert.
More about the Speakers:
Jimmy Weinstein / drums, piano, guitar, composer
Born in Chicago, Jimmy moved with his family to California and Spain. A Berklee College of Music alumnus ’89 and leader of a consortium of New York based ensembles, Jimmy has been on the move for over 25 years, touring the US, Europe and Japan. Major associations include recordings and tours with virtuoso improvisers, Ahmed Abdullah, Chris Cheek, Ben Monder, Satoko Fujii, Alex Harding, Jeff Parker, Oscar Noriega, Natsuki Tamura, Frank Carlberg, Elie Massias, Dan Fox, Sten Hostfalt, Masa Kamaguchi and Matt Renzi. As a sideman he has worked supporting Sheila Jordan, Noah Preminger, Rachel Gould, Greg Burk, Marcello Tonolo and Reggie Veal.
In collaboration with Abdullah, Harding and Kamaguchi he founded the adventurous and highly acclaimed melodic quartet NAM, whose album Song of Time was voted among the top 25 all time live performances by critic Kevin Whitehead. As a leader, his discography contains albums released by Fresh Sound, Clean Feed, Accurate, CIMP, El Gallo Rojo and Gunther Schuller’s GM Recordings. Among Weinstein’s current projects, is a quartet featuring the pianist extraordinaire Satoko Fujii, in addition to trumpeter Natsuki Tamura and vocalist Lilly Santon . As a teacher, Weinstein’s experience has brought forth TRAVELING SCHOOL PLAYJAZZ, an organization dedicated to conducting jazz workshops where he often performs with his students. Jimmy’s new quintet features Chris Cheek, Ben Monder, Tom Beckham and Dave Ambrosio, all musicians who he has worked with over the past 25 years, coming together to perform Jimmy’s new compositions on his latest album “Sobrinos”.
Traveling School Playjazz has been organizing the yearly jazz workshop at the acclaimed Mallorca Jazz Sa Pobla Festival since 2006. Over the years Jimmy has coordinated workshops with leading artists including Lee Konitz, Sheila Jordan, Chris Cheek, Dennis Irwin, Matt Garrison, Noah Preminger, Dan Fox, Toni Miranda, Pedro Cortejosa, Perico Sambeat, Marco Mezquida, Paolo Porta and Carlo Cattano.
Lilly / Liliana Santon / vocalist
Lilly Santon trained as an architect before venturing into the world of jazz and energy therapy. After spending her formative years in Brazil, she attended middle and high school in Padua, Italy and received her degree in architecture from the University of Venice.
Lilly lived in New York and Munich between 1980 and 2003 where she worked as an architect and studied jazz with the likes of Barry Harris, Sheila Jordan, Mark Murphy and Jay Clayton. During the 80’s in New York she performed with Don Cherry’s Collective Ensemble alongside Jim Pepper, Bob Moses, Dennis Charles and Clarence “C” Sharpe. While deepening her musical studies, she trained in bio-energetic therapy, which has been integrated into her teaching methods in private classes and workshops. In 2003, she moved to Italy and Spain, and co-founded the Cultural Association Traveling School. Lilly performs regularly with Satoko Fujii, Jimmy Weinstein Quintet, and different formations of the Traveling School Band.
Projects include Sten Hosfalt’s Microtonal Ensemble Dimensional States; vocal duet improvisations with renowned composer Constance Cooper; 2014 appereances in NYC recording sessions with Jimmy Weinstein Quintet, Noah Preminger. New collaborations 2016/2017 include Johnny Lapio’s Porta Palace featuring Satoko Fukjii, Giancarlo Schiaffini and Natsuki Tamura. Story Told By Sound a multi-media project with Elie Massias and Jimmy Weinstein.
To attend the talk in-person or online, RSVP via our Google Forms.

"Singing in the Circle," with the GCVI Chamber Choir, Carey West, and Joe Sorbara
2024-10-22 12:15 - 12:45 (America/Toronto) | “How to Draw a Tree” Wellness Circle, Johnson Green, Gordon Street, Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Please join us on Tuesday, October 22 at 12:15 PM(ET) for “Singing in the Circle,” with the GCVI Chamber Choir, Carey West, and Joe Sorbara. This concert will take place at the “How To Draw A Tree” Wellness Circle, at the SW corner of Johnson Green, University of Guelph Campus (across from the Reynolds Building near Gordon Street). The event is free and open to all students and community.

Don’t miss the GCVI Chamber Choir (directed by: Lane Osborne) improvising with vocalist Carey West and percussionist Joe Sorbara in a special collaboration with the IICSI!
Rain Date: Thursday, October 24.

“Singing in the Circle” is presented by HowToDrawATree.ca with support from the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, UG Grounbds, and the “Activating Art Microgrant” through the Guelph Arts Council.

SOAN and IICSI Present: "Deference Rituals and Creative Buzz: Theorizing the Creative Trajectories of Songs and Songwriters" with Taylor Price.
2024-10-23 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Toronto) | MCKN 621, 87 Trent Lane, Guelph, Ontario, N1G1Y4, Canada
Please join us on Wednesday, October 23 at 12:00 PM (ET) for the first event in the 2024–2025 SOAN Seminar Series: “Deference Rituals and Creative Buzz: Theorizing the Creative Trajectories of Songs and Songwriters” with Taylor Price.

This presentation will take place in person inside MCKN 621 at the University of Guelph (6th floor, next to the elevators). The event is free and open to everybody!

More About the Seminar
Taylor Price will dive into the dynamics of culture creation in songwriting teams, exploring how cognition, interaction, and relationships shape the creative process. Drawing from his ethnographic observations in music studios and interviews with music producers, he will discuss the social interactions that drive both the linear and nonlinear paths of creativity.
More About the Presenter
Taylor Price is a postdoctoral fellow in New York University’s Department of Sociology. He completed his PhD at the University of Toronto, where he wrote a dissertation exploring how cognition, interaction, and relationships facilitate culture creation in songwriting teams. His postdoctoral research draws on ethnographic observations in music studios and interviews with music producers to understand how social interactions facilitate the linear and nonlinear dimensions of the creative process. Beyond his research on creative situations, he has also written about cultural consecration, knowledge production, and qualitative social research methods.
For more information, contact Prof. Mervyn Horgan (mhorgan@uoguelph.ca).

"SAVE THE DATE!" A Creative Community Concert with Jimmy Weinstein and Lilly Santon
2024-10-24 19:00 - 21:30 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us on Thursday, October 24 at 7:00 PM (ET) for the culminating event of our Fall 2024 Improvisers-in-Residence Series: “SAVE THE DATE!” A Creative Community Concert with Jimmy Weinstein and Lilly Santon.

This community concert will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. The event is FREE and open to everybody.

More About the Event
After an inspiring series of six “Open Sessions” workshops, IICSI’s 2024 Improvisers-in-Residence are thrilled to invite you to a two-part evening of creativity and surprise:
“SAVE THE DATE! A Creative Community Concert with Jimmy Weinstein and Lilly Santon”
The night kicks off with an interactive, behind-the-scenes look at how multidisciplinary collaboration comes to life, as Jimmy and Lilly, along with an ensemble of creative community members from diverse artistic traditions, invite you to “peak behind the curtain” and witness their creative process.
In the second half, Jimmy and Lilly will take the stage for a more formal, concert-style performance with VERY special guests. (We can’t spill the beans yet, but you won’t want to miss it!)
More About the Performers
Jimmy Weinstein / drums, piano, guitar, composer
Born in Chicago, Jimmy moved with his family to California and Spain. A Berklee College of Music alumnus ’89 and leader of a consortium of New York based ensembles, Jimmy has been on the move for over 25 years, touring the US, Europe and Japan. Major associations include recordings and tours with virtuoso improvisers, Ahmed Abdullah, Chris Cheek, Ben Monder, Satoko Fujii, Alex Harding, Jeff Parker, Oscar Noriega, Natsuki Tamura, Frank Carlberg, Elie Massias, Dan Fox, Sten Hostfalt, Masa Kamaguchi and Matt Renzi. As a sideman he has worked supporting Sheila Jordan, Noah Preminger, Rachel Gould, Greg Burk, Marcello Tonolo and Reggie Veal.
In collaboration with Abdullah, Harding and Kamaguchi he founded the adventurous and highly acclaimed melodic quartet NAM, whose album Song of Time was voted among the top 25 all time live performances by critic Kevin Whitehead. As a leader, his discography contains albums released by Fresh Sound, Clean Feed, Accurate, CIMP, El Gallo Rojo and Gunther Schuller’s GM Recordings. Among Weinstein’s current projects, is a quartet featuring the pianist extraordinaire Satoko Fujii, in addition to trumpeter Natsuki Tamura and vocalist Lilly Santon . As a teacher, Weinstein’s experience has brought forth TRAVELING SCHOOL PLAYJAZZ, an organization dedicated to conducting jazz workshops where he often performs with his students. Jimmy’s new quintet features Chris Cheek, Ben Monder, Tom Beckham and Dave Ambrosio, all musicians who he has worked with over the past 25 years, coming together to perform Jimmy’s new compositions on his latest album “Sobrinos”.
Traveling School Playjazz has been organizing the yearly jazz workshop at the acclaimed Mallorca Jazz Sa Pobla Festival since 2006. Over the years Jimmy has coordinated workshops with leading artists including Lee Konitz, Sheila Jordan, Chris Cheek, Dennis Irwin, Matt Garrison, Noah Preminger, Dan Fox, Toni Miranda, Pedro Cortejosa, Perico Sambeat, Marco Mezquida, Paolo Porta and Carlo Cattano.
Lilly / Liliana Santon / vocalist
Lilly Santon trained as an architect before venturing into the world of jazz and energy therapy. After spending her formative years in Brazil, she attended middle and high school in Padua, Italy and received her degree in architecture from the University of Venice.
Lilly lived in New York and Munich between 1980 and 2003 where she worked as an architect and studied jazz with the likes of Barry Harris, Sheila Jordan, Mark Murphy and Jay Clayton. During the 80’s in New York she performed with Don Cherry’s Collective Ensemble alongside Jim Pepper, Bob Moses, Dennis Charles and Clarence “C” Sharpe. While deepening her musical studies, she trained in bio-energetic therapy, which has been integrated into her teaching methods in private classes and workshops. In 2003, she moved to Italy and Spain, and co-founded the Cultural Association Traveling School. Lilly performs regularly with Satoko Fujii, Jimmy Weinstein Quintet, and different formations of the Traveling School Band.
Projects include Sten Hosfalt’s Microtonal Ensemble Dimensional States; vocal duet improvisations with renowned composer Constance Cooper; 2014 appereances in NYC recording sessions with Jimmy Weinstein Quintet, Noah Preminger. New collaborations 2016/2017 include Johnny Lapio’s Porta Palace featuring Satoko Fukjii, Giancarlo Schiaffini and Natsuki Tamura. Story Told By Sound a multi-media project with Elie Massias and Jimmy Weinstein.

Thinking Spaces: Melissa Noventa, "Movement Across Borders: Improvisation, Diplomacy, and Transcultural Dialogues"
2024-10-25 11:00 - 12:30 (America/Toronto) | Ontario
Please join us on Friday, October 25 at 11:00 AM (ET) for Thinking Spaces: “Movement Across Borders: Improvisation, Diplomacy, and Transcultural Dialogues” with Melissa Noventa, accompanied by percussionist Mario Allende.

This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph, as well as online via IICSI’s new Twitch Stream. As always, our Thinking Spaces events are free!
To attend the talk in-person or online, RSVP via our Google Forms.
More About the Workshop
In a world with ever increasing migration and cultural exchange, dance holds a unique power to facilitate dialogue across cultural and political boundaries. Combining an informal talk with an interactive movement session, we’ll dive into how movement can act as a tool for diplomacy, offering new ways to engage with people from different backgrounds and experiences. Participants will be encouraged to engage with the nuances of improvisation as both a personal and collective practice, experiencing how movement can communicate across borders. Whether you are a seasoned dancer, or someone just curious about how the body communicates, come ready to move, experiment and reflect. No prior experience is required—just a willingness to move and explore new ideas!
More About the Presenter
Melissa Noventa is a dancer and ethnographer originally from Guelph, Ontario. She has over 15 years of experience performing and teaching a wide range of dance genres, including classical, contemporary, urban, West African, Latin, and Afro-Caribbean vocabularies. Melissa has collaborated with renowned institutions such as NYU Tisch and performed alongside a diverse range of artists from Canada’s Arcade Fire to some of Cuba’s premier folkloric ensembles. Most recently, she performed in the Obeah Opera which toured South Africa over the summer. Melissa holds a BFA and MA in Dance from York University and is currently a PhD candidate at Queen’s University where her research focuses on cultural diplomacy through music and dance, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between Canada and Cuba.
For this presentation, Melissa will be accompanied by percussionist Mario Allende.

My Sextortion Diary - Co-presented by the Guelph Film Festival and Ed Video
2024-11-02 19:30 - 21:00 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us on Saturday, November 2 at 7:30 PM (ET) for the a screening of “My Sextortion Diary,” directed by Patricia Franquesa (Spain), co-presented by the Guelph Film Festival and Ed Video.

Patricia Franquesa ⋅ Spain ⋅ 64 min ⋅ Full Subtitles

This film screening will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. The event is $15 or Pay What You Want.
More About the Event
The Guelph Film Festival is back from November 1st–9th, showing films about our world and relationships, with themes of resistance, inclusion, and care!
In collaboration with Ed Video, the GFF will be screening Patricia Franquesa’s My Sextortion Diary at the ImprovLab. The film documents the experience of the filmmaker after her laptop is stolen and an anonymous hacker begins sending intimate images of her to her contacts, demanding payment to stop. Realizing that thousands of others have had a similar experience, and that the authorities will be of little help, Franquesa takes it on herself to figure out a way to end this situation. Franquesa tells her story with humour and candour, via texts, emails, and phone calls, refusing to be shamed, and “reclaiming the fragments of her body.”
After the screening, the audience will be able to take in Intimate Power, “a media arts exploration of vulnerability online and living in a digital culture.”
The suggested admission for this event is $15, but attendees are free to pay what they want—GFF would rather you come if interested than miss out because of the ticket cost, so please do come on out!
Grab your tickets here!

On Cuddling: Loved to Death in the Racial Embrace—Reading and Conversation with Dr. Phanuel Antwi (UBC)
2024-11-13 13:00 - 14:15 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us on Wednesday, November 13 at 1:00 PM (ET) for On Cuddling: Loved to Death in the Racial Embrace—a Reading and Conversation with Dr. Phanuel Antwi (UBC)
This event will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. This event is free and open to everybody!

More About the Event
Ranging from the terrifying embrace of the slave ship’s hold to the racist encoding of ‘cuddly’ toys, On Cuddling is a unique combination of essay and poetry that contends with the way racial violence is enacted through intimacy. Informed by Black feminist and queer poetics, Antwi focuses his lens on the suffering of Black people at the hands of state violence and racial capitalism. As radical movements grow to advance Black liberation, so too must our ways of understanding how racial capitalism embraces us all. Antwi turns to cuddling, an act we imagine as devoid of violence, and explores it as a tense transfer point of power.
More About the Presenter
Dr. Phanuel Antwi is the Canada Research Chair in Black Arts and Epistemologies in the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia. He is an artist, teacher and organizer concerned with race, poetics, movements, intimacy, and struggle. He works with text, dance, film, and photography to intervene in artistic, academic, and public spaces. He is a curator, activist, and associate professor. He is an alumnus of the U of G and a research team member with the IICSI.
Presented by Interdisciplinary Programs, the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, and the Office of Academic Equity and Anti-Racism

Thinking Spaces: Phil Mullen, "Ways Into Improvisation"
2024-11-15 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
*** Rescheduled to 12:00 PM (ET) ***
Please join us on Friday, November 15 at 12:00 PM (ET) for Thinking Spaces: “Ways Into Improvisation” with Phil Mullen.
This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. As always, our Thinking Spaces events are free!

To attend the talk in-person or online, RSVP via our Google Forms.
More About the Workshop
In this participatory workshop, Dr Mullen will look at three approaches to group improvising—1) improvising with pulse and rhythm, 2) using stimuli such as text, visuals and thematic starting points, and 3) the Search and Reflect methodology as pioneered by Phil’s mentor John Stevens, a key figure in European Free Group Improvisation. Please bring an instrument if possible.
More About the Presenter
Phil Mullen has worked for forty years developing music with people who are socially excluded. He specializes in working with excluded children and young people at risk. He has run workshops, seminars and training in 28 countries across Europe, North and South America, Australia and Asia.
Phil has a PHD from Winchester University and has written a number of book chapters on musical inclusion including for the Oxford Handbook of Community Music (2018). Phil’s book “Challenging Voices: Music making with young people excluded from school” is published by Peter Lang.

Thinking Spaces: Priya Zalis, "Clinical Improvisation in Music Psychotherapy"
2024-11-22 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
*** Rescheduled to 12:00 PM (ET) ***
Please join us on Friday, November 22 at 12:00 PM (ET) for Thinking Spaces: “Clinical Improvisation in Music Psychotherapy” with Priya Zalis.

This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. As always, our Thinking Spaces events are free!
To attend the talk in-person or online, RSVP via our Google Forms.
More About this Workshop:
In this workshop, Priya will introduce her approach to music psychotherapy in the context of adult mental health, inviting attendees to participate in exploring the role that clinical improvisation can play in accessing and processing emotions, building social connection, and developing personal insights and growth.
More About the Presenter:
Priya Zalis (RP, MTA, MMT) is a music therapist, psychotherapist, and educator working in adult inpatient mental health and addictions in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. She holds a Master’s in Music Therapy (Wilfrid Laurier University) and a Diploma in Gestalt Psychotherapy (Gestalt Institute of Toronto), and has prior experience in hospice, oncology, long-term care, and community mental health settings. Current research explores the impacts of group music therapy in trauma processing and issues related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in Canadian music therapy. She loves spending time with her family and getting lost in a good book.
To attend the talk in-person or online, RSVP via our Google Forms.

IMPR 6030: Research Methods Symposium
2024-11-27 13:00 - 15:45 (America/Toronto) | University of Guelph, MacKinnon Building, 87 Trent Ln, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us on Wednesday, November 27, from 1:00 PM–3:45 PM for the “IMPR 6030: Research Methods Symposium,” with Simon Flint, Mark Leroy, and Georgia Simms.
This event will take place in person at MacKinnon Building, Room 203 at the University of Guelph. Light snacks and beverages will be provided. The Symposium is free and open to everybody!
More About the Event
The University of Guelph’s newest IMPR cohort—Georgia Simms, Mark Leroy, and Simon Flint—have been hard at work this semester thinking and writing their way through their research topics, questions, and methodological frameworks. A significant part of research, especially in its early stages, is to come together to listen, share ideas, locate convergences, offer critique, and grow together as a supportive scholarly community.
Each week this semester we have been engaged in such activities. Now, we are pleased to invite the wider research community to join us for a few hours as the three present their work. Presentations will be twenty minutes with an additional ten to fifteen minutes allotted for Q&A.
Following is a list of presentation titles:

Simon Flint | “Stitching Queer Narratives: A Practice-Led Exploration of Improv Quilting”

Mark Leroy | “Ordinary Boy: Writing a Fictive Coming of Age Memoir based on Familial Intergenerational Trauma as a Rite of Passage”

Georgia Simms | “We Might As Well Dance: A Research Creation Case Study”

Feel free to reach out to their instructors, jashen and Lauren, if you have any questions: jashen@uoguelph.ca , springl@uoguelph.ca.
More About the Presenters
Simon Flint, originally from Calgary, Alberta, has received both a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Performance Production and Design, and a Master of Arts in Fashion from Toronto Metropolitan University. Simon is a practicing textile artist and designer; whose work explore craft, experimental design, and sustainable practices interwoven with queer and feminist theory. Throughout his career he has worked in an assortment of roles within theatre, both as a designer and a technician, as well as in academic institutions as a teaching assistant, costume coordinator and social media specialist. Presently, On top of his Ph.D. studies Simon is the Program Costume Coordinator for School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph.
Guided by attunement and awe for the beauty of the human condition, Mark LeRoy, in artistic and collectivistic collaboration, attempts to allow space and time for the unimagined, unthought, and unspoken in the hope that we may become witnesses to stories no longer lost in time or veiled by shame but voiced by aesthetic compassion and grace.
As a PhD student exploring how Bildungsroman memoirs—coming-of-age stories of initiated personhood—may help free the grasp of intergenerational trauma, Mark’s yearning for our culture is that we may find the courage to lay down our certainty for wonder as we are reformed into ourselves by that of which we have been entrusted and freed to give of ourselves for a time we will not live to see.
Georgia Simms is a performing artist, educator and facilitator. Her dance performance career spanning 25 years, both as an apprentice and company member with Dancetheatre David Earle and as a freelance artist, has taken her to stages in different parts of Canada, France and South Korea.
Since 2005, she has hosted technique classes for adults that honour the lineage of modern dance offered to her by David Earle (co-founder of Toronto Dance Theatre in 1968), with strong ties to the work of Martha Graham, José Limón and other leaders of American Modern Dance (1930-1960).
Sensing the edges of a ritualized technical practice, both for herself and her community of students, she began an investigation of improvisation in 2006 as part of a Guelph-based collective, Fall on your Feet, with Janet Johnson, Catrina von Radecki, Lynette Segal, Tanya Williams and Kelly Steadman. Finding ongoing astonishment and discovery in this realm, she established a class in dancetheatre improvisation in 2014 with musician Adam Bowman which continues to grow. The group explores an ever-evolving syllabus of tasks and parameters that provoke a generous investigation of the responsibilities and consequences of individual and collective choice-making.
She remains grateful for the opportunity to have been an artist-in-residence with Guelph Dance in 2020-2021 and for ongoing involvement as a guest choreographer and teacher with the Guelph Youth Dance Training Program.
Alongside her dance career have been academic pursuits including a Bachelor’s Degree in International Development and Environmental Studies, a Master’s Degree in Geography with an emphasis on environmental governance, and an integration of her worlds through arts-based community engagement through various projects. A long time member of the University of Guelph professional community, she has worked as a practitioner-in-residence with Community Engaged Scholarship Institute, a facilitator with ReVision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice, a workshop leader with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, and a Sessional Instructor with the former First Year Seminar Program.
Georgia also weaves movement and improvisation into methodology, program design, evaluation and group facilitation as an invited consultant and workshop leader for regional arts organizations and universities, most recently with Art Not Shame, Guelph Youth Music Centre, Elora Centre for the Arts, and McMaster University.
She lives in Guelph, Ontario, with her husband, Adam, and their six-year old daughter.

[Postponed until Spring 2025] Thinking Spaces: Eric Fillion, Sean Mills, and Désirée Rochat, "Statesman of the Piano: A Conversation on the Politics of Archiving, Curating, and Music Making"
2024-12-05 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
*Postponed until Spring 2025*
Please join us for Thinking Spaces: “Statesman of the Piano: A Conversation on the Politics of Archiving, Curating, and Music Making” with Eric Fillion, Sean Mills, and Désirée Rochat.

This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph, as well as online via IICSI’s new Twitch Stream. As always, our Thinking Spaces events are free!
To attend the talk in-person or online, RSVP via our Google Forms.
More About the Roundtable Discussion
Please join co-editors Eric Fillion, Sean Mills, and Désirée Rochat for a conversation around and about Statesman of the Piano: Jazz, Race, and History in the Life of Lou Hooper (MQUP, 2023). The book “sparks new conversations about Hooper’s legacy while shedding light on the cross-border travels and wartime experiences of Black musicians, the politics of archiving and curating, and the connections between race and music in the twentieth century.”
More About the Presenters
Eric Fillion is director of the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) and assistant professor at the School of Languages and Literatures (SOLAL) at the University of Guelph. His research explores the social and symbolic importance of music, within countercultures and in Canadian international relations. His ongoing work on cultural diplomacy and Canadian-Brazilian relations builds on the experience he has acquired as a musician. It also informs his current research on the postwar Canadian cultural public sphere: his two main projects examine the emergence of the music festival phenomenon in Canada and the entangled sonic histories of diasporic social movements. An affiliate of the North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative (NACDI), Eric Fillion is the founder of the Tenzier archival record label and co-editor of the journal Critical Studies in Improvisation. He is the author of JAZZ LIBRE et la révolution québécoise: musique-action, 1967-1975 and Distant Stage: Quebec, Brazil, and the Making of Canada’s Cultural Diplomacy. His latest book, Statesman of the Piano: Jazz, Race, and History in the Life of Lou Hooper (co-edited with Sean Mills and Désirée Rochat), is now available through McGill-Queen’s University Press
Sean Mills is professor and Canada Research Chair in Canadian and Transnational History at the University of Toronto. He is the author of The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal, and A Place in the Sun: Haiti, Haitians, and the Remaking of Quebec. Most recently, Mills is the co-editor (with Eric Fillion and Désirée Rochat) of Statesman of the Piano: Jazz, Race, and History in the Life of Lou Hooper (2023). Mills is a Member of the College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada and a 2024 Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.

Désirée Rochat is a community educator and transdisciplinary scholar with a PhD in Educational Studies from McGill University. Guided by an integrative approach connecting historical research, community archival preservation and education, her work aims to document, theorize and transmit (hi)stories of Black communities’ activism. Rochat is a FRQSC Post-doctoral fellow at the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University.

Audiopollination Guelph—Season 3, Episode 2
2024-12-18 20:00 - 22:00 (America/Toronto) | Silence, 46 Essex Street, Guelph, Ontario, N1H 3K8, Canada
Audiopollination Guelph returns for our second episode of Season 3, featuring new lineups of musicians and performers performing improvised music never before heard! It’s most likely going to be a chilly evening, but I hope you can make it for the final night of improvisation and community in 2024! (more to come next year)
The 2025 shows still have open slots, but they’re filling up quick! Sign up here!
Audiopollination Guelph is devoted to being identity-affirming space for all people, please come as you are and/or as you desire to be!
Wednesday, December 18th, 2024
Cost: $20/PWYC
Silence (46 Essex Street, Guelph, ON)
Doors Open at 7:30pm | Music Starts at 8pm
Ensemble 1: Nico, Connor Kurtz & Claire
Ensemble 2: Thomas Rolf, Tyson & Monte Fenske
Ensemble 3: Jamie Eriksen, David Sait & Tess Martens
Ensemble 4: Wettendrop
Please do your part to keep Audiopollination Guelph scent-free.
We are so thankful for support to the show from the Guelph Arts Council!
It’s flu season, so masks are encouraged and will be provided at the door.
Note: While the suggested payment is now $20, the show is still fully PWYC and NOTAFLOF.

Thinking Spaces: Justine Woods, “Re-stitching as Methodology: Garment-making as a Transformative Practice in Research-creation”
2025-01-21 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us on Tuesday, January 21 at 12:00 PM (ET) for Thinking Spaces: “Re-stitching as Methodology: Garment-making as a Transformative Practice in Research-creation” with Justine Woods.

This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. As always, our Thinking Spaces events are free!
To attend the talk, RSVP via our Google Forms.
More About this Workshop:
In this combined presentation and workshop, Justine Woods will discuss garment-making as research-creation with particular focus on the role garments play in resisting settler colonial displacement of Indigenous ontologies and bodies to place. Informed by her PhD dissertation research, Justine will expand upon the concept of ‘re-stitching’ as both a theoretical framework and embodied practice in exploring how the act of garment-making done by the Indigenous body can regenerate Indigenous ontology and re-stitch new worlds and futurities.
To support the workshop component of the talk, attendees are encouraged to bring an article of clothing that they do not mind making permanent changes and or adjustments to.
More About the Presenter:
Justine Woods is a garment-artist, creative scholar, educator, and curator. Stretching across fields of study, including but not limited to, fashion studies, performance and embodiment, and research-creation, Justine’s work passionately situates fashion as a pluriversal phenomenon. Her research centres garment-making as a practice-based method of inquiry toward re-stitching alternative worlds that prioritize Indigenous resurgence and liberation. To learn more about Justine, please visit her website: www.justinewoods.com
To attend the talk, RSVP via our Google Forms.

Wet Sounds Series Presents: Pantayo
2025-01-25 19:00 - 21:30 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us Saturday, January 25 at 7:00 PM (ET) for Wet Sounds 2: Pantayo, presented by our friends at Musagetes.

This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph.

Suggested PWYC tickets of $15 will be donated to Filipinos United for Palestine. No one turned away for lack of funds (NOTAFLOF).
Purchase your tickets here!
More About the Event
6:30 doors open
7:00 Talk
8:00 refreshments + cash bar
8:30 performance
On Saturday January 25th, 2025, Wet Sounds: feminist + queer music practices in the polycrisis presents a performance and conversation with PANTAYO. The second guest in the series hosted by Musagetes in Guelph, Pantayo are queer Filipinx kulintang gong punks based in Tkaronto, Canada. The ensemble combines traditional Kulintang music from the Philippines with contemporary influences and experimental sounds derived from their experiences as queer diasporic Filipinxs on Turtle Island.
More About the Series
Wet Sounds is a quarterly arts series that presents conversations and performances centring the intersections of feminist and queer musicians’ academic work, artistic practice, and collaborations in the polycrisis. This series will examine notions of grief, ritual, queerness, pleasure, land, embodiment, colonialisms, decay, noise, and sound. Wet Sounds will ask how artists see their practice as impacted by or responding to the interconnected crises unfolding around us—climate chaos, genocide, fascism, an erosion of democracy, and multiple sites of oppression and resistance.

Book Launch—Soundin’ Canaan: Black Canadian Poetry, Music, and Citizenship, by Paul db Watkins
2025-02-06 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Vancouver) | The Vault Cafe, 499 Wallace Street, Nanaimo, BC, Canada
We are pleased to announce the initial book launch for Soundin’ Canaan: Black Canadian Poetry, Music, and Citizenship, by Improvising Futures team member, Paul db Watkins on Thursday, February 6, at 7:00 PM (PST).

The event will take place in person at The Vault Café, (499 Wallace Street, Nanaimo, BC). The book launch is by donation (5$ suggested).

Learn more about the book and pre-order by following this link!

More About the Event:
This initial book launch will feature poet and musician Sonnet L’Abbé (Sonnet’s Shakespeare) and Nanaimo Poet Laureate Neil Surkan (Unbecoming). The author will also be performing remixed versions of sections from the book.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and the readings will run from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m.
More About the Book:
Part exploration of a key group of Black Canadian poets, part literary, cultural, and musical history, Soundin’ Canaan demonstrates how music in Black Canadian poetry is not solely aesthetic, but a form of social, ethical, and political expression.
Soundin’ Canaan refers to the code name often used for Canada during the Black migration to Canada. The book analyzes the contributions of key Black Canadian poets, including their poetic styles and their performances. The book has several key objectives, including recuperating the collision of the historical and the Biblically derived figure of Canaan, the promised land of freedom and security for an African American population seeking to leave the shackles of slavery behind and the northern terminus of the underground railroad. Centering around the poetry of George Elliott Clarke, Dionne Brand, M. NourbeSe Philip, Wayde Compton, and rapper K’naan, it delves into how these poets draw inspiration from African American and Afro-diasporic musical genres, such as blues, jazz, reggae and dub, hip-hop, and remix, to reshape the notions of identity and citizenship. Soundin’ Canaan asks: what does Canadian citizenship sound like, especially when voiced by Black Canadian poets who embrace a fluid and multicultural form of citizenship that moves between local and global spaces, much like music does?
More About the Presenter:
Paul db Watkins is a Professor of English at Vancouver Island University. He is also a research team member with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI). He has published widely on multiculturalism, hip-hop, Canadian poetry, jazz, DJ culture, and improvisation. Under his DJ alias, DJ Techné, he has completed several DJ projects that explore the spaces between poetry, hip-hop, and jazz.

Sam Newsome—The Popeye Effect: Unlocking the Artist's Power to Transcend (talk + solo concert)
2025-02-09 13:00 - 15:00 (America/Toronto) | Silence, 46 Essex Street, Guelph, Ontario, N1H 3K8, Canada
Please join us on Sunday, February 9 at 1:00 PM (ET) for “The Popeye Effect: Unlocking the Artist’s Power to Transcend (talk + solo concert)” with Sam Newsome.

This presentation will take place in person at Silence, 46 Essex Street in Guelph. Tickets are $20/PWYC (available at the door).

About the Event
In this masterclass, we explore the importance of moving beyond our earthly selves to reach our true creative potential when improvising. As artists, our improvisational journeys can take us from the explainable to the unexplainable, from the ordinary to the extraordinary. Using the iconic cartoon character Popeye the Sailor Man as a metaphor, we will discuss what true transcendence looks like in the creative process. We will also delve into how to employ extended techniques and instrument preparations as methods of transcendence, pushing the boundaries of traditional performance. Active participation from fellow musicians is highly encouraged.
About the Artist
Sam Newsome stands as a multifaceted figure in the world of jazz—a saxophonist, music professor, and accomplished writer. In 2023, his artistic endeavors manifested in two duo recordings: Soprano-Logues, a collaborative effort with saxophonist Dave Liebman, and Cosmic Unconsciousness Unplugged, where he joined forces with pianist Jean-Michel Pilc. These releases showcased Newsome’s ability to engage in sonically-rich musical dialogues across different instrumental landscapes. His contributions to the music world have not gone unnoticed. In 2022, Newsome received the prestigious Bronx BRIO Award for Instrumental Music and secured the title of Soprano Saxophonist of the Year in the 14th Annual International Critics Polls. His accolades extend to the 2020 Instant Award in Improvised Music, the 2018 Alpert/Ragdale Prize in Music Composition, the 2016 NYFA Fellowship for Music Composition, and he’s been a consistent nominee for Soprano Saxophonist of the Year by the Jazz Journalist Association over the past five years. Beyond his musical accomplishments, Newsome is a prolific author, having penned two books of personal essays: “Be Inspired, Stay Focused” (2022) and “Life Lessons from the Horn” (2015). In 2023, his piece, “From NoHa to SoBro” was featured in the Bronx Memoir Project Anthology, VII. Newsome’s avant-garde approach, particularly in the realm of prepared saxophone, has positioned him as a sought-after player in New York’s improvised music scene. His innovative voice has resonated in collaborations with notable artists such as Elliot Sharpe, William Parker, Fay Victor, Daniel Carter, Joe Morris, and Dave Liebman. Through his diverse talents and contributions, Sam Newsome continues to shape and enrich the landscape of contemporary jazz.

Thinking Spaces: Andrew Goldman, "The Cognition of Musical Improvisation: Theories and Experiments"
2025-02-11 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us on Tuesday, February 11 at 12:00 PM (ET) for Thinking Spaces: “The Cognition of Musical Improvisation: Theories and Experiments” with Andrew Goldman.

This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. As always, our Thinking Spaces events are free!
To attend the talk, RSVP via our Google Forms.
More About this Workshop:
Improvisation is a challenging topic to study using the theories and methods of cognitive science owing to the difficulty of defining it, and the diversity of improvisatory practices. I share my theoretical frameworks for engaging this challenge as well as the results from some behavioral and neuroscientific studies. Ultimately, I draw upon improvisation as a case study for exploring the difficulties of using science to understand music more generally.
More About the Presenter:
Andrew Goldman is a music theorist and cognitive scientist, and is currently Assistant Professor in Music Theory and Cognitive Science at Indiana University, where he also directs IU’s Music and Mind Lab. He received his PhD in 2015 at the Centre for Music and Science at the University of Cambridge. He was in the inaugural cohort of Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience at Columbia University, and also held a postdoctoral position with the Music, Cognition, and the Brain initiative at Western University before joining the faculty at Indiana University.
His research considers how we can (and cannot) use scientific methods to learn about musical perception and cognition in theory, and he also designs and conducts behavioral and neuroscientific experiments on music perception and cognition. Goldman’s research has focused on improvisation in music and dance, and more recent work has addressed the perception of musical form, melodic contour, metrical perception, and embodiment in music. His work has been published in both music and psychology journals, and has been presented at national and international conferences including the Society for Music Theory, the International Conference for Music Perception and Cognition, and the American Psychological Association. Goldman is also a pianist and composer. His original musical, “Science! The Musical” provides an alternate platform to explore the worlds of music and science. Musical numbers include “The Interdisciplinary Rag,” “The Real World,” “Publish or Perish,” and more!

To attend the talk, RSVP via our Google Forms.

[Cancelled due to Inclement Weather] | hakosalo_tuohino: “How a Sound Follows Another” (Talk @ ImprovLab)
2025-02-13 10:00 - 11:30 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
* Cancelled due to inclement weather *
Please join us on Thursday, February 13 at 10:00 AM (ET) for a public talk: “How a Sound Follows Another” with hakosalo_tuohino.

This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. This is a free event.
A free performance by the duo will follow at 3:30 PM at Silence, 46 Essex Street, Guelph, ON.
More About this Performance:
In this discussion, we’ll shed light on the art-theoretical approaches of the hakosalo_tuhino duo. Our improvised music comes from the archaic kantele playing tradition, where you are in the music instead of making it. Drawing from the deep listening method, our sonic expression is a spatial and temporal experience that cannot be recorded and repeated.
Our relationship with musical transitions is two-fold: we understand the power of slow transitions when creating our musical structures, but at the same time they inevitably set up new boundaries and classifications. How can we compose together with each other and the audience without creating new structures and boundaries?
With our music, we aim for sonic freedom, where we break away from the western understanding of music and our musical backgrounds. The drone has a special role in our music, because we think of it as a purely experiential unit where compositional logic breaks down. At the end there is only sound, a resonance.
On the other hand, the importance of silence is even greater: you must be quiet in order to listen. What will thus remain of our musical deconstruction?
More About the Performers:
hakosalo_tuohino
(duo for kantele and computer from Finland)
CHANGE FROM DOING TO BEING
What happens when ancient traditions collide with experimental electronic
music?

The duo for kantele and computer consists of folk musician Osmo Hakosalo and sound artist Jussi Tuohino.
The Finnish ancient traditional instrument kantele is estimated to be 1500 years old and belongs to the Baltic zither family. The tradition of playing kantele relies heavily on archaic, improvisational techniques where kantele is seen as a vehicle, rather than a musical instrument, to travel to the essence of music transferring the experience from making music into being in it. Furthermore, the prepared kantele and immersive spatialized digital expression will transform the delicate kantele sonicality into the modern art of electroacoustic music.
In this journey one reaches other states of consciousness, and the total communication between the musicians and their dedication provides a fascinating sonic landscape to the audience.
hakosalo_tuohino duo takes the sonic properties of kantele still many steps further: from the acoustic sound immersive soundscapes are built in an intuitive and open-ended fashion. With both performers having varied musical backgrounds in folk, classical, jazz, and electronic music, the duo is able to perform without preset plans regarding musical form and microscale decisions concerning sound material. Kantele-playing is traditionally improvised, and an interesting confluence to freeform electroacoustic live performance can easily be made.
The duo builds their soundscapes up from live kantele sound, which is the only sound source, and performs with specialized surround sound systems to help the performers and audience to reach their immersive sonic goals.
Duo was formed in January 2024, but it has been able to gain success quickly, with performances already in Finland, Japan, Lithuania and Canada. Duo has also prepared a commission piece for a Swedish modern music ensemble Elefantöra. The piece had a premiere in Stockholm in October 2024 and was performed in Nordic Music Days in Glasgow in November 2024.
In addition, the duo started a collaboration with a Japanese film/media artist Keitaro Oshima for a joint multimedia piece in the fall of 2024. The duo is also working in academia with Jussi Tuohino leading the music technology program in Oulu University of Applied Sciences and Osmo Hakosalo working in the same university’s research program of Art Innovations.
For more info, please visit our web page www.hakosalotuohino.com

[Cancelled due to Inclement Weather] | hakosalo_tuohino: "How a Sound Follows Another" (Performance @ Silence)
2025-02-13 15:30 - 16:30 (America/Toronto) | Silence, 46 Essex Street, Guelph, Ontario, N1H 3K8, Canada
* Cancelled due to Inclement Weather *
Please join us on Thursday, February 13 at 3:30 PM (ET) for a performance of “How a Sound Follows Another” with hakosalo_tuohino.

This presentation will take place in person at Silence, 46 Essex Street, Guelph, Ontario.
This is a free event that follows the duo’s talk at the University of Guelph.
More About this Performance:
This performance of “How a Sound Follows Another” follows-up on the duo’s talk at the University of Guelph.
In this performance, hakosalo_tuohino will demonstrate their art-theoretical approaches.
In their own words:
Our improvised music comes from the archaic kantele playing tradition, where you are in the music instead of making it. Drawing from the deep listening method, our sonic expression is a spatial and temporal experience that cannot be recorded and repeated.
Our relationship with musical transitions is two-fold: we understand the power of slow transitions when creating our musical structures, but at the same time they inevitably set up new boundaries and classifications. How can we compose together with each other and the audience without creating new structures and boundaries?
With our music, we aim for sonic freedom, where we break away from the western understanding of music and our musical backgrounds. The drone has a special role in our music, because we think of it as a purely experiential unit where compositional logic breaks down. At the end there is only sound, a resonance.
On the other hand, the importance of silence is even greater: you must be quiet in order to listen. What will thus remain of our musical deconstruction?
More About the Performers:
hakosalo_tuohino
duo for kantele and computer from Finland
CHANGE FROM DOING TO BEING
What happens when ancient traditions collide with experimental electronic
music?

The duo for kantele and computer consists of folk musician Osmo Hakosalo and sound artist Jussi Tuohino.
The Finnish ancient traditional instrument kantele is estimated to be 1500 years old and belongs to the Baltic zither family. The tradition of playing kantele relies heavily on archaic, improvisational techniques where kantele is seen as a vehicle, rather than a musical instrument, to travel to the essence of music transferring the experience from making music into being in it. Furthermore, the prepared kantele and immersive spatialized digital expression will transform the delicate kantele sonicality into the modern art of electroacoustic music.
In this journey one reaches other states of consciousness, and the total communication between the musicians and their dedication provides a fascinating sonic landscape to the audience.
hakosalo_tuohino duo takes the sonic properties of kantele still many steps further: from the acoustic sound immersive soundscapes are built in an intuitive and open-ended fashion. With both performers having varied musical backgrounds in folk, classical, jazz, and electronic music, the duo is able to perform without preset plans regarding musical form and microscale decisions concerning sound material. Kantele-playing is traditionally improvised, and an interesting confluence to freeform electroacoustic live performance can easily be made.
The duo builds their soundscapes up from live kantele sound, which is the only sound source, and performs with specialized surround sound systems to help the performers and audience to reach their immersive sonic goals.
Duo was formed in January 2024, but it has been able to gain success quickly, with performances already in Finland, Japan, Lithuania and Canada. Duo has also prepared a commission piece for a Swedish modern music ensemble Elefantöra. The piece had a premiere in Stockholm in October 2024 and was performed in Nordic Music Days in Glasgow in November 2024.
In addition, the duo started a collaboration with a Japanese film/media artist Keitaro Oshima for a joint multimedia piece in the fall of 2024. The duo is also working in academia with Jussi Tuohino leading the music technology program in Oulu University of Applied Sciences and Osmo Hakosalo working in the same university’s research program of Art Innovations.
For more info, please visit our web page www.hakosalotuohino.com

IBPOC ARTISTS NETWORK TOUR: FROM WORDS TO ACTION—Newton Moraes and Meryem Alaoui
2025-02-28 19:30 - 21:30 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join Guelph Dance and the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation on February 28, 2025 at 7:30 PM (ET) for an evening of dance with Newton Moraes and Meryem Alaoui at ImprovLab. The program features two solo works by these fantastic artists.
Tickets: $10 or $20 (sliding scale, please choose the option that best suits your needs).
‘My Dance is Not a Hobby’ by Newton Moraes
“Dance is far more than a hobby for me—it’s a profound expression of my identity, personal journey, and deep connection to the world around me, informed by African Brazilian Spirituality and the love of those who shaped my path. At 63, I embrace dance as a powerful medium to explore my LGBTQ identity, navigate my struggles, and celebrate life’s transformative experiences, honoring both my past and present. Guided by legendary mentors and fueled by the unwavering love of my partner, my solo performances honor resilience, connection, and the transformative power of dance.” – Newton Moraes
Choreographer/Dancer: Newton Moraes
Lighting Designer: Eliajah Stefura
Stage Manager: Sharon DiGenova
Music: Iyo, Strobe and Gleymdu.
Photo (top left) by Claire Whitaker
‘Sand Body’ by Meryem Alaoui
“I see you. You see me. We see objects and their shapes; the marks and traces of the object. We listen, make decisions and feel our surroundings. Perhaps we also feel the spaces between us. We share a sonic, visual and textural experience, together, for a few moments here and now.” – Meryem Alaoui
Choreographer & Performer: Meryem Alaoui
Text: Meryem Alaoui and Christopher Willes
Recording of text: Jonathan Adjemian
Photo (top right) by Frederic Chais
About the Artists
Newton Moraes is a celebrated choreographer and founder of Newton Moraes Dance Theatre. Born in Brazil, he has brought his vibrant, cross-cultural dance styles to Canada and beyond. Moraes’ work is deeply influenced by his Brazilian roots and explores themes of identity, migration, and the human condition. He has performed and choreographed internationally, earning acclaim for his dynamic and expressive pieces. Over the past 27 years, Moraes has contributed significantly to the dance community through performances, tours, and workshops in cities such as Toronto, Montreal, and internationally. His passion for dance continues to inspire audiences and dancers alike, solidifying his place as a pivotal figure in contemporary dance.
Newton Moraes Dance Theatre is a company dedicated to the creation, performance and production of contemporary dance works to explore, maintain and develop the links between the arts of Canada and Latin America. Newton Moraes Dance Theatre had toured in Canada and internationally to public and critical acclaim. NMDT has received support over the years from Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Laidlaw Foundation, Goethe Institute Toronto, Foreign Affair Canada, Dance Ontario Association, Polo da Zona Norte in Sao Paulo/Brazil. Newton Moraes Dance Theatre‘s vision is to inspire and provide role models for young people. Support dance artists who work with dance forms of the Latin American Diaspora in Canada and bring together dance professionals who preserve the history and traditions of Latin America and who foster an appreciation of its heritage. Increase the visibility of the sector, and improve understanding by disseminating information. Raise the level of critical discourse concerning the practice of dance forms of the Latin America diaspora in Canada. This will include creating an awareness of the complexity of Latin American dance as concept and encouraging closer critical engagement with the work of practitioners. Also to provide an environment to support artists in the creation of innovative forms of artistic expression to reach the widest possible audience and to be cultural ambassadors, nationally and internationally.
Meryem Alaoui is a dancer and choreographer from Morocco based in Toronto. Founder and co-artistic director of Jasad Dance Projects, her work is at the intersection of somatic research using movement and voice, and the exploration of contemporaneity through the reclamation of embodied performance practices, dances and knowledge from her culture as a Moroccan diasporic dance artist. A graduate of the School of Toronto Dance Theatre, she has performed in numerous projects led by choreographers such as Amanda Acorn, Peggy Baker, Antony Hamilton and Karen Kaeja. She has shared her choreographic work nationally and internationally, notably in Ontario, Quebec and Morocco. A certified Body-Mind Centering® Somatic Movement Educator, Meryem also enjoys being involved in community and arts-education projects.

This presentation is courtesy of IBPOC ARTISTS NETWORK TOUR: FROM WORDS TO ACTION, initiated by wind in the leaves collective.

Thinking Spaces: Fron Reilly, “Acoustic Innovation: Is There Anything Left to Invent?”
2025-03-04 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us on Tuesday, March 4 at 12:00 PM (ET) for Thinking Spaces: “Acoustic Innovation: Is There Anything Left to Invent?” with Fron Reilly—“Is there still room for Innovative Design in the field of purely acoustic musical instruments in an age of digitization?”

This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. As always, our Thinking Spaces events are free!
To attend the talk, RSVP via our Google Forms.
More About this Presentation:
In his talk/workshop, Fron Reilly will showcase his latest musical invention—the fron2, a ten-string rotating bowed zither—while sharing the story behind its creation. He’ll also explore the acoustics behind its distinctive sound and explain what sets it apart from electronically generated tones. Afterwards, audience members are invited to join a live improv session. Bring your instrument!
More About the Presenter:

Fron Reilly is a maker, designer, builder, and inventor living in Guelph. He holds a BSc in physics from the University of Waterloo. Now retired, he has worked in many fields including teaching, industrial automation, and electronic transformer design. In addition, he has always been and remains busy in his workshop creating things that work, including wooden sculptural clock mechanisms, musical instruments, kinetic sculptures, stirling engines, and sundials. You can see many of his innovative instruments in action on his YouTube channel, @fronreilly4787, which has garnered over two million views.

To attend the talk, RSVP via our Google Forms.

Immersive Soundscape Music
2025-03-25 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us on Tuesday, March 25 at 7:00 PM (ET) for “Immersive Soundscape Music” with compositions by Andra McCartney and Darren Copeland.

This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. The event is free and open to everybody!
This event celebrates sound works by Andra McCartney (1955-2019) and Darren Copeland (1968-) that will be interpreted for multi-channel listening in a performance by Darren Copeland using the NAISA Spatialization System. Thematically the pieces on the show explore movement and travel from different personal perspectives and using contrasting approaches to sound creation.
This immersive event is co-presented by the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation and the School of Fine Art and Music at the University of Guelph.
More About the Event
Andra McCartney’s radio piece Learning to Walk is an experimental radio story made in 2004 about traumatic memory, love, and walking. Her piece Waiting games and widespread smoke (feat. Narcy) from 2018 is based on a train trip from Toronto to Vancouver reflecting on the widespread smoke and freight delays that structured it during the 2018 fires prevalent in Western Canada at the time.
Darren Copeland’s works on the program combine acousmatic and soundscape approaches to sound creation. His piece …while working and walking is based on exploring his new rural home on foot back in 2015 and while cleaning up and removing old building structures. His piece On Schedule from 2003 transforms a soundscape recording from the World Soundscape Project collection at Simon Fraser University. Synthetic sounds are also generated by plotting the times of station stops on the multi-day route from London Waterloo to Moskva Byelorusski.
More About the Composers
Andra McCartney was a sound artist, scholar and composer that led public SOUNDwalks, created gallery installations, made soundscape recordings, performances and radio works. She taught at Concordia University and published articles with Organised Sound, Leonardo Music Journal, Perspectives of New Music, Musicworks and organized the conference In and Out of the Sound Studio.
Darren Copeland is a Canadian sound artist who has been active since 1985 and currently lives on a rural property outside of South River, Ontario. His fixed-media soundscape and electroacoustic compositions are published by empreintes DIGITALes and have been premiered in concerts by Akousma Festival, The Sounds Like Festival and New Music Edmonton among many others. He is the founding and current Artistic Director for New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA) in South River.
Copeland’s work with multichannel spatialization took focus with residencies in Europe and Canada from 1999 to 2001 where he facilitated the exploration of automated octaphonic spatialization using the Richmond Sound Design Audiobox and ABControl diffusion software. In 2006 he developed a performance-oriented system using the Polhemus Patriot as a gestural controller along with customized Max programming by Benjamin Thigpen. Later in 2011 he explored making spatialization an ensemble practice by adding two more spatialization performers that manually manipulate directional loudspeakers.

Turntable Trio: Maria Chavez, Mariam Rezaei, Evicshen—Wet Sounds #3
2025-03-30 18:30 - 22:00 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join IICSI and Musagetes on Sunday, March 30 at 7:00 PM (ET) for Wet Sounds #3: Turntable Trio.

This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph.
Suggested PWYC tickets of $15 will be donated TBD.
No one turned away for lack of funds (NOTAFLOF).
Purchase your tickets here!
More About the Event
On Sunday March 30th, 2025, Wet Sounds: feminist + queer music practices in the polycrisis, presents a performance and conversation with female pioneers of new turntablism, Turntable Trio—Maria Chavez, Mariam Rezaei, and Evicshen (Victoria Shen).
Premiered at Counterflows festival in Glasgow and Rewire in The Hague in April 2023, the project represents the first time three female turntablists of colour have come together in this way. The trio bring together elements of musique concrète, free improvisation, noise, techno and hip-hop with instrument building and modification. Each artist has a wildly different approach to turntablism. Among the techniques deployed will be skratching, beatjuggling, sampling and looping, while the technologies will include double needle head shells and acrylic needle nails. The trio’s compositional aesthetics weave through sound sculpture, maximalism/minimalism and sonic destruction. Together, they will show that New Turntablism is beyond technique, genre or compositional theory; it’s about the unknown.
The event launches with a conversation with the artists around queer and feminist performance and practice in the polycrisis.
More About the Artists
Maria Chavez (she/her) is an abstract turntablist, sound artist and DJ, renowned for repurposing broken vinyl into sonic sculptures that can sometimes be compared to improvised musique concrète pieces, or, conceptually, improvised sonic sculpture sessions. Her recital style approach focuses on the various forms of Deep Listening, a practice developed by her mentor Pauline Oliveros. Coincidence, chance and failure are themes that run through her projects. Chavez’s 2012 book on abstract turntablism, Of Technique: Chance Procedures on Turntable, written and illustrated by Maria, was the first book on abstract turntablism and has developed a reputation as both an academic resource and a foundational text for a new generation of turntablists. Born in Lima, Peru, Chavez is based in New York.
Evicshen is the nom de guerre of San Francisco-based sound artist, experimental music performer, and inventor Victoria Shen (she/her). Shen’s sound practice is concerned with the materiality/physicality of sound and its relationship to the human body. Her music features analogue modular synthesizers, vinyl/resin records, and self-built electronics. Shen’s music eschews conventions in harmony and rhythm in favour of extreme textures and gestural tones. Notable for her Needle Nails, Shen uses modified acrylic fingernails with embedded turntable needles, allowing her to play up to five grooves of a record at once. Her DIY approach extends to hand-made resin records embedded with found materials. Each piece functions not only as playable music media but a unique art object.
Mariam Rezaei (she/her) is a multi-award winning composer, turntablist and performer. She previously led experimental arts project TOPH, TUSK FRINGE and TUSK NORTH, and in November 2022, she received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation #AwardsForArtists, in recognition of her contribution to music composition. Her music has recently been described as ‘genuinely ground-breaking’ (London Jazz News 2022) and ‘high-velocity sonic surrealism’ (4* The Guardian 2022). Recent release BOWN (Heat Crimes) charted no.6 in The Wire and no10 in The Quietus’ best albums of 2023. Recent performances include a three-day residency at Café Oto, soloist with Frankfurt Radio Orchestra for the closing concert at IM Darmstadt 2023, soloist with London Sinfonietta at HCMF 2023 and Taipei Biennial 2023 in a quartet with DJ Sniff, Rex Chen and DJ SlowPitchSound.
Turntable Trio is the third guest in the Wet Sounds series hosted by Musagetes in Guelph, co-presented by the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) at their ImprovLab venue.
Suggested PWYC tickets of $15 will be donated TBD
No one turned away for lack of funds (NOTAFLOF)
Improv Lab at the University of Guelph
MacKinnon Building, Room 108
Masks will be available; we encourage guests to stay home if they’re not feeling well. Please reduce the use of scented products (e.g. perfume, cologne) for this event.
More About the Series
Wet Sounds is a quarterly arts series that presents conversations and performances centring the intersections of feminist and queer musicians’ academic work, artistic practice, and collaborations in the polycrisis. This series will examine notions of grief, ritual, queerness, pleasure, land, embodiment, colonialisms, decay, noise, and sound. Wet Sounds will ask how artists see their practice as impacted by or responding to the interconnected crises unfolding around us—climate chaos, genocide, fascism, an erosion of democracy, and multiple sites of oppression and resistance.

Sounds Like Us 2.0 | Final Showcase
2025-04-02 14:30 - 16:00 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us on Wednesday, April 2 at 2:30 PM (ET) for “Sounds Like Us 2.0 | Final Showcase” with Campus Friends Community Members and workshop facilitators jashen edwards and Valentina Morelli.
Join us in celebrating the amazing work Campus Friends students have done this semester. Come listen to their original sound explorations, musical improvisations, and extended compositions, as well as their reflections and insights on the creative works they’ll be sharing.
This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. The event is FREE and open to everybody!
More About the Event
Sounds Like Us—presented by the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) and the Campus Friends (CF) program—brings professional musicians into collaboration with community members of varying developmental and physical needs through a series of fun and playful improvisation-based workshops. This season facilitators include postdoctoral fellow jashen edwards, PhD student Joe Sorbara, and community musician special guest, Valentina Morelli.
Sounds Like Us draws upon IICSI’s 12+ years of co-running “Play Who You Are” workshops in partnership with KidsAbility Centre for Child Development, a research-outreach project that has offered all participants—from new musicians to the very experienced; from music aficionados and scholars to first-time listeners—revelations about the links between music and community-making, improvisation and individual/community well-being, sound and self-expression. (And indeed, Sounds Like Us 2.0 includes alumni from Campus Friends and Play Who You Are!) This ongoing research has investigated and demonstrated the effectiveness of improvisation as a means of empowering and animating special needs youth. Researchers have documented and analyzed the myriad relationships between specific improvisational activities and their effects on, for example, socialization, self-esteem, physical coordination, and mental acuity.
As part of IICSI’s ongoing research into Improvisation, Wellbeing, and the Social Determinants of Health, Sounds Like Us will help us continue investigating how community arts participation impacts social connectivity and equitable participation in society. We have seen how improvisation builds resiliency, helps develop key skills, promotes self-expression and leads to greater feelings of belonging for participants.
Please join us to celebrate a semester of music and community making at this final public concert for the Sounds Like Us program. Feel free to spread the word to others who might be interested.

Journée d’étude: Improvisation, Pedagogy, and Cocreative Worldmaking
2025-04-03 09:00 - 17:30 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
—”An adept improviser can find ways forward amid impasse, agency amid oppression, and community amid division.”
– The Improviser’s Classroom
Join us on April 3, 2025 at ImprovLab for a full-day symposium investigating ways to re-imagine pedagogy through the prisms of activism, reciprocity, and communal care. This free, open-to-everyone event is focused around the launch of The Improviser’s Classroom: Pedagogies for Cocreative Worldmaking, the new collection edited by Daniel Fischlin and Mark Lomanno and published through Temple University Press.

Demonstrating how improvisation can inform scenes of teaching and learning, The Improviser’s Classroom also outlines how improvisatory techniques offer powerful, if not vital, tools for producing connection, creativity, accompaniment, reciprocity, meaningful revelation, and lifelong curiosity. This event will explore the ideas brought up in this book through several offerings, including:
• presentations by the Critical Studies in Improvisation graduate program’s newest cohort: Simon Flint, Mark Leroy, Emma Bortolon-Vettor, and Georgia Simms
• the book launch for The Improviser’s Classroom: Pedagogies for Cocreative Worldmaking, featuring a conversation with jashen edwards, Daniel Fischlin, Mark Lomanno, and Carey West
• a keynote by David L. Clark, featuring improvised musical responses by annais linares and Germaine Liu
• closing reflections by Fred Moten, professor of performance studies and comparative literature at New York University
Find the full schedule for the day’s events below:
9:00-9:30 AM—Coffee and Gathering
9:30-9:45 AM—Welcome (IICSI)
9:45-11:45 AM—IMPR 6010/6410 Student Presentations on Emergent/Embodied Teaching Philosophies and Multidisciplinary Approaches to Improvisation; moderated by jashen edwards and Daniel Fischlin;
11:45 AM-1:00 PM—Lunch Break
1:00-2:30 PM—Book Launch: The Improviser’s Classroom: Pedagogies for Cocreative Worldmaking (“Insubordinate Spaces” series edited by George Lipsitz; Temple UP, Edited by Daniel Fischlin and Mark Lomanno; featuring contributors Carey West and jashen edwards)
2:30-2:45 PM—Coffee Break
2:45-4:15 PM—Keynote David L. Clark “I do not know how to teach: scenes from a life, made up” with improvised musical response from annaïs linares and Germaine Liu. Moderated by Daniel Fischlin.
4:15-4:30 PM—Break
4:30-5:15 PM—Fred Moten (Closing Reflections). Moderated by Mark Lomanno.
6:00 PM—Downtown Gathering for Food and Conversation – TBA

Why Arts Matter Research Speaker Series: Technology
2025-04-24 16:00 - 17:30 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us on Thursday, April 24 at 4:00 PM (ET) for Technology, the third and final event of the Winter 2024 Why Arts Matter Research Speaker Series.
This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. The event is free, although seating is limited. Reserve your spot here!

More About the Event
This panel will explore the transformative impact of technology on culture, the arts, and our understanding of the world. Featuring Dr. Peter Kuling, Dr. Susan Brown, Dr. Rozita Dara, and Dr. Donald Bruce, this discussion will examine how digital performance, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence are reshaping cultural engagement and artistic expression. The panelists will delve into the ethical implications of emerging technologies, the role of digital humanities in fostering collaboration, diversity, and inclusivity, and the ways science and technology are portrayed in media.
This series will be video recorded for later distribution. Following the panel, audience members can engage in a Q&A session. This series will be video recorded for later distribution. Audience members will not be on camera, however will be asked to sign a release for their voice to be included in the recording if they choose to ask a question.
More About the Series
The “Why Arts Matter” research speaker series is hosted by the College of Arts in partnership with the International Institute for Critical Studies and Improvisation (IICSI), and explores the intersection of disciplines to address individual experience, social life, and culture. This series highlights the importance of the arts in shaping our understanding of the world.
For more information, follow this link.

Listening in the Dark: equilibrium
2025-05-04 12:00 - 15:00 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us on Sunday, May 4 at 12:00 PM (ET) for a “Listening in the Dark: equilibrium”—part of the 2025 ArtsEverywhere Festival.
This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. The event is free and open to everybody!

More About the Workshop

If we do not live near the ocean are we separate from it? Some would say this is a planet of water with land interruptions. If we listen down into the ground to the tributaries that connect to great lakes, the brackish waterways towards the ocean, can we listen with the ocean? If we take a deep breath, are we sharing the breath of cetaceans? The deep ocean, this life-giving and complex multi-being body of water, is described as unknowable. In listening with the ocean we may discover something as yet unknown.
In this three-hour gathering with Anne Bourne, participation stems from Deep Listening practice and the Sonic text scores of Pauline Oliveros, with standing by artist/osteopath Lesley Greco, as well as sound interventions by composer/percussionist Germaine Liu. The practice of Deep Listening offers embodied listening, extreme slow walk, attunement, and collective creative expression.
The experience invokes notions of interstitial places of rest, sonic presence, listening and equilibrium in darkness. No experience necessary. The intention is to create a choral sound field in a particular moment in time, with movement influenced by the temporality of the wave patterns of water. The workshop invites a deeper attunement to each other, ourselves, our bodies, and the more-than-human by expanding sensory listening imagination. “In listening within my field recordings I propose an environmental attunement experience leading towards the algorithmic text score, The Tuning Meditation by Pauline Oliveros when we sing!,” explains artist Anne Bourne. “It is transmitted aurally. I invite participants to listen, and find equilibrium within the surroundings.”

More About the Festival
The ArtsEverywhere Festival is the place where conversations, ideas, and artistic experiments presented on ArtsEverywhere.ca come alive in our home community of Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
Over four days, the festival offers lectures, conversations, music, artistic performances, circle gatherings, literary readings, exhibitions, and much more. As the publisher of ArtsEverywhere.ca, Musagetes presents the festival with support from many community partners.

the space between (Guelph Dance Festival—In the Lab)
2025-05-31 16:00 - 17:00 (America/Toronto) | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us on Saturday, May 31 at 4:00 PM (ET) for the space between, part of the 2025 Guelph Dance Festival!
This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. Tickets are $15 (discounted) or $25. Purchase your tickets here.
More About the Event
the space between is a research-based creation that explores the intersection between sacred geometry (the transcultural belief that the universe is based on geometric principles such as the Golden Mean and double helix) and our relationship to the embodiment of the unseen and ‘déjà là’ (‘already there’).
the space between navigates the fine line between artistic, scientific and intuitive practices. I am gathering artists with the intention to bring approachable and friendly ways of experiencing the unseen (but felt) to the Guelph Dance community.
I wish to cultivate a reciprocal offering with the space between. I want to offer experiences that deepen wonder and inspire sharing. In this time of collective unhinging and chaos, it is my hope that this creation will offer a window into our human bodies as a site for reconnection and transformation.
CHOREOGRPAHY
Katie Ewald
PERFORMERS
Andrea Nann, Kevin O’Connor, Julia Garlisi, Katie Ewald
DRAMATURGICAL SUPPORT
Coman Poon
OUTSIDE EYE
Ame Henderson
EMOTIONAL SUPPORT
Leslie Fisher
BREATH-WORK SUPPORT
Tiago Ferreira
ABOUT THE CHOREOGRAPHER
Katie Ewald lived and worked as a dancer in Montréal for fifteen years. Spliced inside that time she lived in Brussels, Belgium and went to the dance school P.A.R.T.S., which formed her as an artist.
She dedicated her career to working with avant-garde/conceptual artists and choreographers like: Ame Henderson/Public Recordings, Martin Bélanger/LAPS, k.g. Guttman, Lin Snelling, Chanti Wadge, Shary Boyle, Daniel Léveillé Danse and Forced Entertainment.
During her time in Guelph, she worked with Janet Johnson, as well as curated/produced six Short&Sweet shows (Wants&Needs), as well as two Double Time shows for Guelph Dance and Kazoo! Fest.
Currently she is cultivating the dance project the space between, while pursuing her Masters in Spiritual Integrated Psychotherapy and Art Therapy.
ACKNOWLEDEMENTS
Thank you, Asa.
Thank you, sacred geometries and source.
Thank you to all the ancestors before me, whether they be dance, movement, spiritual guidance, mathematician, seeker, believer, helper and healer, and truth teller ancestors, and those working to raise this world in both quiet and obvious ways currently.
the space between is in process. It is an unfinished art work. I would like to thank artist Jenn E. Norton for the inspiration for the space between, and for conversations about our common interests in Chladni plates and sacred geometries, but most importantly for sharing her knowledge and PHD research with us.
the space between has been supported by both the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.
