Performers
Leslie Baker
Leslie holds a B.F.A. (acting) New York University TISCH School of the Arts; an M.A. (Theatre) Southwest Missouri State University; and an M.F.A. (performance/directing) Towson University. A performer, director, and teacher, Leslie has devoted her creative life to exploring the boundaries of performance. Her work spans the range of theatrical performance art, movement installations to public interventions. She employs gesture, sound, text, and image in a non-hierarchical approach, to explore various means of aesthetic communication. During her career she has had the opportunity to collaborate with Robert Wilson, Richard Foreman, Dumbtype, Leeny Sack, Circus Ethiopia, Neill Gladwin, Peter Bottazzi, Mark-Lynn Baker, Touchstone Theatre, Bettina Hoffman, Roger Babb, Shozo Sato, and Tedi Tafel.
Leslie has lead workshops Internationally as well as taught movement at the National Theatre School of Canada, University of Costa Rica, and Concordia University. Leslie is currently researching the practice of ensemble and physical theatre training, and the requirements of the post-dramatic performer.
Marc Boivin
Dancer, improviser, teacher and choreographer, Marc Boivin began his dance career at Le Groupe de la Place Royale in Ottawa under the directorship of Peter Boneham. In 1985 he joined Ginette Laurin and her newly formed company O Vertigo Danse. Since 1991 he has worked as an independent dancer, performing the works of many choreographers, notably Louise Bedard, Sylvain Emard, Jean-Pierre Perreault, Catherine Tardif and Tedd Robinson. A teacher of technique and interpretation, he has been affiliated with LADMMI in Montreal since 1987. He regularly guest teaches and choreographs across Canada, more specifically with Peter Bingham and Andrew Harwood at the EDAM summer intensive as a member of the improvisation group The ECHO CASE. He is the 1999 recipient of the Jacqueline Lemieux prize, awarded each year by the Canada Arts Council.
Bill Coleman
Born in Berwick, Nova Scotia in 1961, Bill Coleman studied dance at the Doreen Bird School of Theatre Dance in London, England. His professional career started in 1979 with Sir Anton Dolin of the Dublin City Ballet. Since then, he has created over 50 works presented in Scotland, Italy, Singapore, Mongolia, Russia, throughout the United States and Canada. Mr. Coleman has also been commissioned to create dances for Toronto Dance Theatre, Dancemakers and Canadian Children’s Dance Theatre. He regularly collaborates with diverse groups and communities in the creation of one-of-a-kind theatrical events. He is the co-founder of Bill Coleman & His North American Experience with composer John Oswald, Heartland Events with Michael Caplan, and Coleman/Lemieux & Compagnie with his wife Laurence Lemieux. In New York in 1988, Mr. Coleman received the Jerome Foundation’s First Light Award for Baryshnikov: The Other Story. In 2002 he was selected for the Canada Council Jaqueline-Lemieux Prize on the basis of his considerable contribution to Canadian dance. Bill’s most recent work is Hymn To The Universe performed with the legendary Sun Ra Arkestra.
Dean Makarenko
Dean Makarenko is a dancer and choreographer from Montreal. He began dancing in Vancouver where he worked with Karen Jamieson, Battery Opera, Jennifer Mascall, and Kathlene McDonagh among others. More recently in Montreal he has performed with Tedi Tafel in Life World and Thea Patterson in Rhyming Couplets. Since 1994 he has been an on going collaborator in the work of Deborah Dunn (Trial and Eros). His own choreographies include Decorations for a Romatic Coquitlam and and Daylight which priemiered in October 2008. He is a founding member of the improv group Chien Perdu.
Lin Snelling
Lin Snelling has toured the world extensively as performer with Carbone 14 (1989-2001). As choreographer, performer and teacher, she continues to investigate, perform and teach improvisation, both as a tool for creating choreographic material and a way to keep performances alive and present – which has cultivated an exploration into bodywork in relation to dance and the spoken, sung and written word. An interest in multidisciplinary art and re-invention fuels her choreographies, and she creates works, and collaborates with choreographers and directors, throughout Canada and Europe; most recently in Austria, Athens, Belgium, Cyprus and the UK with Repeating Distance, a collaboration with the dramaturge Guy Cools. Lin is presently teaching dance and improvisation to actors in the Drama Faculty at the University of Alberta, and working on Room a performance process including 11 artists of diverse disciplines.