Current Students

Aimée Dawn Robinson brings wild spaces, the conceptual, and the feminine to embodied performance practices. Aimée is a dancer and improviser – also an actor for movies and theatre, writer, video maker and director, performer, visual artist, researcher, musician, theatre-maker, teacher, producer, facilitator, curator with about 30 years of performance and teaching experience in across Canada, and in Japan, Malaysia, America, Scotland, London UK, and online.  

In the third year of her PhD with IMPR and IICSI at University of Guelph, Aimée’s research exists in interactions between: improvised dance, screendance, and the camera lens with critical, philosophical, and tangible concepts of “permission” in Aimée’s improvised screendance works in conversation with  the “Untitled Film Stills” of Cindy Sherman, works and life of silent film actor Theda Bara, Laura Mulvey’s concept of “the gaze”, and the Land and wild places.

Aimée’s doctoral project, Dissolution of Hierarchies Part Two – The Permission to Dance, is comprised of 140 one minute to one-minute and thirty second screendance videos…and counting. Find them on Instagram @tracedancepractice.

Aimée is grateful to live and work on the lands of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and Ta’an Kwäch’än Council and Carcross/Tagish First Nation in the so-called Yukon Territory. She also spends time in London and Guelph, Ontario.

For more about Aimée’s work and many fascinating collaborators, please visit:

www.tracedancepractice.com 

Instagram: @tracedancepractice.

Multi-media band with IMPR cohort four:  Almost Alchemy

annais is a musician and multimedia social practice artist from the Coachella Valley, CA, interested in working alongside underserved communities and communities of color in imagining and engaging ideas of collective future realities through improvisation, sound and play. her most recent pursuits include developing community experimental sound, voice and body exploration classes in her hometown and helping facilitate community programming with the Wyld Womxn Collective. she has worked with numerous arts organizations that focus on community engagement, arts activism, arts programming, education, and collaboration (such as Arts for LA, CalArts, Wyld Womxn Collective, Equal Sound LA) as an artist, program developer, arts curator, marketing manager, facilitator, councilmember, and more. she holds a BFA in Musical Arts from the California Institute of the Arts with a minor in Digital Arts and her current research focuses on the value of co-developed, co-designed musical, intergenerational, accessible, and delightful playgrounds in low-income and at-risk communities. feel free to get in touch with her: [email protected].

Ann Westbere is a PhD Candidate in the Critical Studies in Improvisation Program. She holds a MA in Sociology, a MA in Political Science, and a BA Honours in Music and Political Science. Her graduate research focuses on the interrelationships between improvisation, creative arts, and society. As a saxophonist, her musical repertoire includes a range of genres and styles, with improvisation transcending across all of them. As one of the founding students of the U of G Music Peer Helper Program, Ann has always had an interest in various teaching and learning styles along with ways to facilitate engagement in learning environments. Ann has been attending and participating in events held by the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation for several years. As a graduate student in the Critical Studies in Improvisation program, she has taken a diverse range of courses in that field and is continuing her research.

Carey West is a vocalist and educator whose professional experience motivates her research. She is interested in questions surrounding voice, agency and improvisation. Her MA thesis focused on best practices and liberatory experiences during extended vocal techniques and sound singing workshops. Her Ph.D. research continues this inquiry with an eye on using vocal improvisational pedagogy as a musical model to inform legal processes where testimony is required. She is also interested in the work of teachers as influential cultural agents and the work of musicians as public pedagogues. Carey has enjoyed several high profile performances including, Roy Thompson Hall, live broadcast on CBC RadioOne, and Young and Dundas Square. Her recording projects have enjoyed support from the Ontario Arts Council and Factor and she has held a residency at the Rex Hotel and the Cameron House in Toronto. She continues to perform and record and her latest album Made of Clay was released in the fall of 2017. Carey was the Event and Outreach Coordinator for the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation from 2017–19.

Cathy Nosaty is a musician, composer, musical director and teaching artist. She began her musical training at age three as a classical pianist and her love of creative collaboration led her to work in dance, theatre, scoring to picture and community-engaged arts. Over the past thirty-eight years Cathy has created scores for over one hundred theatre productions across Canada: her work has been heard on international stages with Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes, Manitoba Theatre For Young People and DynamO Théâtre. Cathy has scored a dozen documentary films including The Motherload for CBC Doc Zone and was Assistant Conductor/Keyboard 1 for the Toronto company of Jersey Boys. As a passionate teaching artist, Cathy has worked with programs at the Canadian Opera Company, Massey Hall/Roy Thomson Hall, Tapestry Opera, the Royal Conservatory of Music, TDSB/Prologue for the Performing Arts, Children’s Peace Theatre and Princess Dance Productions. Cathy led community choirs for Community Arts Guild’s Unfolding and Moving Parts for Fujiwara Dance. Cathy has been nominated for five DORA awards and for the 2020 Louis Applebaum Composer Award – Music For Young People. She is a member of the Toronto Musicians Union Local 149 and the Screen Composers Guild of Canada, and a University of Guelph M.A. candidate in Critical Studies in Improvisation.

Emmalia Bortolon-Vettor is a guitarist and multidisciplinary researcher whose work involves live sound technology and improvisation. Emmalia recently earned their MA in the IMPR program, involving the creation of a free recording and producing curriculum for Girls Rock Camp Guelph. Embarking on a PhD, they are exploring the process of mixing as a research methodology to sonify invisble labour—​asking the question: is invisible labour improvised? ​Outside of research, Emmalia’s second life exists with their twin sister making darkened shoegaze / post-punk drone music as Bonnie Trash. Together, they create the soundtracks of the horror stories they want to tell, drawing inspiration from modern fears and family. Their debut album Malocchio was released in October of 2022 on Hand Drawn Dracula Records. If you don’t see them on stage, you can catch them in Guelph coordinating the Girls Rock Camp Guelph chapter, curating live music and theatre, or behind the board at a DIY show. (Photo credit: Rebecca Pardy)

Erin Felepchuk is a singer-songwriter and poet, who is currently in the PhD program in Critical Studies in Improvisation. Erin has an MA in Music and Culture from Carleton University and a Bachelor of Music from Carleton University. From 2010 to 2016 Erin worked and performed as a singer-songwriter and released four albums. In their PhD work, Erin examines autistic culture and improvisation, and autistic stimming as an embodied cultural practice that has aesthetic value and is at the core of community-making strategies. Stimming refers to repetitive sensory practices in which autistic (and other neurodivergent) people engage, often to regulate emotional states, to cope with external sensory stimuli, or for the purpose of self-expression. As an autistic person, Erin views their own stimming as inseparable from their creative practice, as well as similar and inextricably linked to their consumption of musical and artistic forms.

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.

Hayden Mesnick (he/they; b. 2002) is a composer, pianist, accordionist, and curator based in Guelph, Ontario, where he is pursuing a PhD in Critical Studies in Improvisation. He received his B.M. in Music Composition from Bowling Green State University, where he studied composition with Piyawat Louilarpprasert, Elainie Lillios, Mikel Kuehn, Marilyn Shrude, and Christopher Dietz; and piano with Ariel Kasler and Yevgeny Yontov. Hayden’s compositional work frequently centers on the development of notational and creative systems for choice-making performers to construct ambient, polystylistic, and absurd performances. His music has been premiered by individuals and ensembles such as Cerulean Trio, FLYDLPHN, Joshua Lyphout, Abigail Petersen, and Tacet(i).

As a performer, Hayden has premiered his own compositions as well as works by Alric Godfrey, JD Fuller, Joseph Miller, Elijah Stewart, and others. Ensembles he has worked with include BGSU’s Middle Eastern, Early Music, and New Music Ensembles, Black Swamp Polka Collective, dmg quintet, One Billion Lions, and Sankofa Sounds. His musical background is diverse, spanning jazz, free improvisation, contemporary concert music, polka, and more.

Heather Cornell is a Canadian tap dancer, (NYC based from 1981 – 2021), who lives in the intersection of music, dance and theatre. She is Artistic Director and co-creator of Manhattan Tap, an international touring music/dance company that helped to define the rhythm tap renaissance in the 80’s and 90’s.

Ms. Cornell is known for her collaborations with acclaimed musicians, most notably with jazz bassist, Ray Brown. She created CanTap, a company celebrating Canadian artists; Walk to the Beat, a community-based festival of improvisational music and dance, and the music/dance Lab TapMotif, which ran for 8 years on the island of Lefkada in Greece, and presently is on faculty at ImprovJazz Fest in Vamvakou, Greece. She has created numerous solo shows that toured internationally, including Finding Synesthesia (w Andy Milne, commissioned by the London Jazz Festival), Making Music Dance, (w Andy Algire, CD release Nov. 2015), and Conversations (commissioned by Capilano University). She has choreographed for Broadway and numerous shows and companies worldwide and has been featured internationally at jazz, music festivals, theaters, clubs, TV, and annual live radio (WNYC, Around NY, 1993 – 96).

Many of the leaders of the physical percussion world trained with Cornell over a span of 35 years at her Tap Labs, and in her numerous professional training programs. Her 9-hour oral history was recently added to the dance collection at the NYC Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center and she is the recipient of numerous awards for excellence in her field and for life-time achievement.

Cornell was one of a small group of artists to be mentored by a number of the first generation tap masters, and her archives and her work resonate with their living history, their inspiration, and their passion. Her curiosity has led her to the Critical Studies in Improvisation PhD program, in an effort to discover, anew, what this spontaneous life has been all about.

Improvisation is the conversation that heals. https://www.manhattantap.org/

Jemma Llewellyn is a community-based arts practitioner and Post-Compulsory Education teacher from Wales, UK, and PhD Candidate in the IMPR Program. She has worked in formal education settings and youth arts organizations, with children and young people from the ages of 6 to 25, including ESL students, and students with additional and complex learning needs, in China, England, Wales, and Canada. Jemma’s PhD research, practice, and scholarship focuses on addressing human rights issues by providing an artistic platform where youth voices are amplified and the practice of adult allyship is modeled through improvisation and collaborative mentoring. It is her belief that to make real social change in the world we need to address the transhistorical hierarchy paradigm between children/youth and adults, through youth-led dialogical participatory practices.

Whilst living, working, and studying in Canada, she has had the privilege of working on a language revitalization and drama project, with Coast Salish peoples, on the West Coast of Canada. Through this project, she discovered a deep connection to Indigenous ecologies, ceremonies, and language, all of which are inherent in the complex history and legacy of Welsh culture. Jemma is committed to the process of decolonization, anti-racism, and anti-oppression which are foundational to her personal values, projects, and partnerships.

Canadian drummer and percussionist Joe Sorbara has spent decades developing a reputation as a dedicated and imaginative performer, composer, improviser, collaborator, organiser, listener, writer, and educator. A consummate sonic adventurer, Sorbara’s music draws on a vast array of influences, most notably the African American Creative Music tradition. They have performed and recorded with Ken Aldcroft, Anthony Braxton, Jared Burrows, Nikita Carter, Marilyn Crispell, Christine Duncan, Paul Dutton, Friendly Rich, Hafez Modirzadeh, Evan Parker, William Parker, Allen Ravenstine, Clyde Reed, and Bry Webb, among many many others. Their own projects include a sextet featuring Ted Crosby, Tania Gill, Rebbecca Hennessy, Michael Herring, and Aline Homzy. Collaborations include duo projects with Norman Adams, François Houle (SoHo), Jonathan Kay (The Rest), Thollem McDonas, and Steve Sladkowski, as well as groups Never Was (with Brandon Davis, Bea Labikova, and Patrick O’Reilly); Carry On – Continuing from the End (with Matthias Mainz and angela snæfellsjökuls rawlings); and the Imaginary Percussion Ensemble (with Germaine Liu and Mark Zurawinski).

Sorbara is a long-time student of master drummer Jim Blackley. They hold an Honours Bachelor of Fine Arts in Music from York University in Toronto, a Master’s degree in English from the University of Guelph, and are currently studying toward a PhD in Critical Improvisation Studies. Joe has worked extensively as a workshop facilitator and guest lecturer and taught through the School of Fine Arts and Music at the University of Guelph for over a decade. As an organiser, they have contributed substantially to Toronto’s creative music scene, co-founding the long-running Leftover Daylight Series and the Association for Improvising Musicians, Toronto (AIMToronto). Joe now resides with their family in Guelph, serving on the board of directors of local artspace, Silence, and as the Artistic Director of the Guelph Jazz Festival.

Hailing from Canada’s Capital region, Loop pedal violist, visual artist, composer, and educator Kathryn Patricia Cobbler has crafted a singular niche in music improvisation and classical performance. She obsesses over creating uniquely arresting soundscapes, whether in solo recitals, composing and performing for art installations, and more. Named a CBC Trailblazer in 2021 and a recipient of one of Ottawa Arts Council’s Emerging Artist awards, she has been featured in Canada’s most notable Concert Series, Chamberfest, Music and Beyond, NUMUS Concert series to name a few.

Kathryn Patricia Cobbler holds degrees in viola performance from Western University (B.M.) the University of Ottawa (M.M.) and was a 2022 fellow of the Global Leaders Institute. She is currently a PhD student in Critical Studies in Improvisation through the University of Guelph. Kathryn’s study explores the performer-composer connection; through creation as research, unpacking Johann Sebastian Bach’s 5th solo suite performed on the viola through the use of free improvisation, fragmentation, pre-composed melodies, loop pedal and effects. The purpose of this study is to critique and to investigate new definitions of the terms creative voice, agency, and virtuosity and to examine the role music improvisation can play, if any, in aiding classically trained string players in achieving creative voice and agency in their music-making.

Named one of ‘3 Classical Musicians You Should Know ‘ in 2022, by SHIFTER Magazine and the NAC, Kathryn is a seasoned performer, speaker, presenter and workshop facilitator. As a performing artist and educator, Ms. Cobbler is a performance instructor at Carleton University and an artist on the MASC Artist roster. As a composer, Kathryn has been featured in the Boston based Concert series, Castle of Our Skin’s Black Composers Miniature Challenge, which resulted in the world premier of her piece A Home Called ‘Wander’ for solo viola and spoken word. Most recently, Kathryn Patricia was commissioned by the National Art Gallery of Canada to compose a piece of music for their exhibit, Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Moment. Kathryn Patricia performs on a viola by luthier Sibylle Ruppert and a
Boss RC-30 loop pedal.

You can keep up with Kathryn on the web and through social media (@kathrynpatriciaviolist on Instagram; @kpviolist on Facebook; @kathrynpatrici7 on X; her personal website, kathrynpatricia.com; and on Bandcamp).

Lucas Carravetta is an actor and improvisational performer in the Ph.D program. He graduated from York University with an M.F.A. in Theatre Acting, Toronto Metropolitan University with a B.A. from the RTA School of Media, and Humber College with a diploma in Acting for Film and Television. As an alumnus of Second City’s Longform Conservatory, he performed comedy and improvisation at Yuk Yuk’s, Comedy Bar, Meridian Hall, The Fringe Festival, Harbourfront Centre’s Hatch Series, and The East Side Players.

He taught improvisation at a bilingual school in Costa Rica, and collaborates with artists in Latin America to encourage the use of improvisation as a sustainable practice for mental health and artistic expression in underfunded communities. 

Currently, Lucas explores the relationship between performance and technology by modifying open-source software and virtual applications to better serve creative practitioners and remote performers.

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.

Matthew Endahl is a pianist, improviser and educator. She lived and worked as a musician in southeast Michigan until 2013, when he moved to Nashville, TN. In Nashville, Matthew taught at Belmont University and Middle Tennessee State University, and recorded with some of Nashville’s top jazz artists, including Dara Starr Tucker, Rahsaan Barber, and the Nashville Jazz Orchestra. In 2022, Matthew moved to Guelph, ON, Canada where he is working on her PhD in Critical Studies in Improvisation. Matthew works with an interdisciplinary improvisation project Almost Alchemy, and also plays with the Ted Warren Trio and Joe Sorbara’s Temporary Ensembles.

Michael F Bergmann is a techno-optimist and enjoys exploring novel technological approaches to storytelling, performance, and play. His research and creative practice aim to apply the principles of improvisational techniques and critical discourse to human-robot and human-AI interactions and communication with the goal of fostering empathy. Their mediums of engagement include theatre, dance, installations, robots, video games, virtual and augmented reality, and exploration of the metaverse. His physical being is mostly located in Toronto and is a faculty member in Performance at The Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University, where they teach and conduct research through their Technological Research in Performance Lab (TRiPL) tripl.ca

Michael received his MFA in Design from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University and held an Eldon Elder fellowship there. They are a member of IATSE Local ADC 659 and continue to design when possible. Michael is a founding member of Synectic Assembly, an arts collective for projects organised in response to questions about artificial intelligence and algorithmic culture. 

Drummer and composer Nick Fraser has been an active and engaging presence in the Toronto new jazz and improvised music community for over 25 years. He has performed with a veritable “who’s who” of Canadian jazz and improvised music and with such international artists as Tony Malaby, Kris Davis, William Parker, Roscoe Mitchell, Marilyn Crispell, Anthony Braxton, Donny McCaslin and David Binney. A JUNO award winner, he was also awarded a 2017 Chalmers Arts Fellowship.

Nick’s recorded works as a leader include Owls in Daylight (1997), Nick Fraser and Justin Haynes are faking it (2004), Towns and Villages (2013), Too Many Continents (2015), Starer (2016), Is Life Long? (2017), Zoning (2019) and If There Were No Opposites (2021). For ten years, he co-led the group Drumheller, who released four critically acclaimed recordings. Other projects that occupy him regularly are Peripheral Vision, Eucalyptus, Titanium Riot, The Brodie West Quintet, Mark Godfrey Quintet, Ugly Beauties (with Marilyn Lerner and Matt Brubeck), and the Lina Allemano Four. Nick has performed on over 100 commercially released recordings. Recently, he has worked with the Calgary-based Decidedly Jazz Danceworks as musical director for their productions of Juliet & Romeo (2017) and Mimic (2018).

Nick is now a PhD student, after completing the MA.IMPR program in 2023. His research is focused on the philosophical underpinnings of his work, particularly around conceptions of embodiment in Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty and how these relate to improvisation and music pedagogy.

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.

Sophie Brown is a harpist from South Wales. Having studied with Mary Stephens and Rhodri Davies, she bridges a space between classical technique, improvisation, and integration of electronic and vocal elements.  Sophie completed a BA and MA in Music at Durham University, culminating in a thesis on the history of the harp and its gendered associations over time.  Sophie was selected for the Global Undergraduate Awards Summit in Dublin 2019, for an essay which brought together Kantian philosophy and musical improvisation.  Sophie’s PhD research continues to examine the synergy between Kant and improvisation, which offers novel insights on the nature of knowledge, learning, and creativity.  Sophie is on the collaborative International Development PhD program, and will be working with a community partner in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.  Her project involves engaging young people in arts-based participatory action research. 

Steve Donnelly is a live artist from Wales. His work explores and combines his interests in improvised play, performance studies, contemporary and historical uses of social space, popular culture, belief, and the commons.

Through playful research, interactive performance, place-making, and protest, Steve has collaborated with diverse audiences, communities and creative partners throughout the UK. Originally training as a devising performer, Steve’s work has grown to incorporate divergent approaches to exploring public space and the commons, including; devising, producing, and performing live art; touring site-responsive theatre and pervasive games; and organising grass-root campaigns and award-winning community spaces.

His research interests include; Infinite Play as Improvisation; critical walking, psychogeography, and vernacular speculative practices; and the use of humor in art. You can connect with Steve via donnells[@]uoguelph.ca, on Instagram (@biod.en), or on Twitter (@StDonnelly).