MARIE FRANCE FORCIER is a Canadian choreographer, performer, writer and pedagogue of contemporary dance forms. She is the director of Forcier Stage Works and the co-director of ReLoCate . Through studio research, public performances, publications and community initiatives, she predominantly engages with the intersection between trauma studies, somatic practices and western contemporary choreography. Over the past 20 years, her body of creative work has been presented on film and on live platforms spanning little-known urban sites to dance-dedicated proscenium spaces across North America, Europe and Asia.  In collaborative artistic capacities, she has toured extensively on four continents performing in disciplines ranging from family theatricals to contemporary dance, to performance art to aerial circus. Her writing on various performance-related topics can be found in the Dance Current, and her academic publications, in the journal Dance Chronicles, and the books Literature and Psychology: Writing, Trauma and the Self (2019), Topography of Trauma: Fissures, Disruptions and Transfigurations (2019) and What Happened? Re-presenting Traumas, Uncovering Recoveries (2019). She is Associate Professor of Dance at the University of Calgary and chairs the arts service organisation Dancers Studio West. Forcier splits her time between Toronto, Montréal and Calgary with her two young sons.

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MELANIE KLOETZEL (MFA, PhD) is a performance maker, scholar and educator who is committed to research that spans stage, site, and screen. Director of the dance theatre company kloetzel&co., co-director of ReLoCate, and co-director of the art intervention collective TRAction, Kloetzel employs practice-as-research methodologies to develop performance, workshops and encounters in theatre spaces, alternative venues, spaces of public assembly, and online environments. Kloetzel is Professor of Dance at the University of Calgary, and her research publications can be found in Dance Research Journal, Contemporary Theatre Review, Choreographic Practices, New Theatre Quarterly, and the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, among others, as well as in her three books, the co-edited anthology Site Dance: Choreographers and the Lure of Alternative Spaces (2009), the co-authored Covert: A Handbook (2021), and the co-authored (Re)Positioning Site Dance: Local Acts, Global Perspectives (2019). www.kloetzelandco.com

 

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Born and raised in Saskatchewan, LINNEA SWAN has had the pleasure of working with many of Canada’s esteemed dance / theatre companies and artists for over twenty-five years. As a creator/performer, she has collaborated with a number of artists, most notably with Susie Burpee in a creative partnership spanning over a decade - together creating their signature duet Road Trip, and recently commissioning choreographer Alyssa Martin from Rock Bottom Movement to create a new duet to be presented at the Citadel in Toronto; as well as with David Danzon of Corpus to create and perform the one-woman, site adaptive work Swan Lake Syndrome which toured Canada and Japan. 

Also a filmmaker of note, her work includes dance film, documentary shorts, web series, as well as video to accompany live performance and promotional videos for productions. Her work has been commissioned by The National Ballet of Canada, Soundstreams, Chartier Danse, Corpus Dance Projects, The Dietrich Group, Canadian Alliance of Dance Artists, Sara Porter, The School of Contemporary Dancers, The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, and The University of Calgary among others. Her most recent film works include Made up - created in her role as Associate Artist with Dancers’ Studio West; MEN in charge - a documentary commissioned by kloetzel&co.; and Vicarious Time - created with Meagan O’Shea and presented by The Dance Centre in Vancouver.

A multiple nominee for the Dora Mavor Moore award, Linnea received the 2013 Dora for Outstanding Performance in Dance for Road Trip, as well as the K.M. Hunter Artist Award in Dance. Linnea is Co-director of ReLoCate. www.vimeo.com/linneaswan