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Biography – Lisa Sandlos, PhD, MA, CMA, EMA

Dr. Lisa Sandlos has been a faculty member at York University since 1998, teaching in the Department of Dance, the School of Kinesiology and Health Sciences, the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, and the Faculty of Education.

Dr. Sandlos holds a PhD in Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies and an MA in Dance at York. She is qualified as a Certified Movement Analyst (CMA) through the Laban Institute of Movement Studies (LIMS) in New York and as an Expressive Movement Analyst (EMA) at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). These certifications equip her to work with a diverse range of students in educational or coaching contexts.

Building on her doctoral thesis, a main trajectory of Dr. Sandlos’ research focuses on the sexualization of young female dancers and the impacts of this trend on dance education, public perceptions of dance, and girls’ psychological and social development. Another branch of her work is accomplished through Soma-City, an organization that uses interdisciplinary methods of research and teaching to explore topics at the intersection of human movement and landscape design.

An enthusiastic presenter of her academic research and the various embodied movement/dance modalities that she practices, Dr. Sandlos has been invited to share her expertise at various conferences, festivals, and educational and training programs in international locations including Theatrum Mundi in Paris, France; The University of El Paso, Texas (UTEP); The University of California Polytechnic, Pomona; The University of the West Indies, Bridgetown, Barbados; The University of Porto, Portugal; and Etobicoke School of the Arts (ESA) in Ontario, Canada. Drawing on her extensive experience in facilitating inclusive, community-based dance, she is the co-director of two eco-somatic arts education projects: Global Water Dances (Hillsburgh, ON chapter) and Sonic Kinesthetic Forest.

Together with her husband, Dave, children, Maya and Zachary, and dog, Elsa, Dr. Sandlos enjoys dancing, playing music, and living close to nature at their home near Erin, Ontario, Canada.

John Ottmann’s career as a dancer, choreographer, teacher, rehearsal director and artistic director has spanned 27 years. He has garnered a reputation as a highly versatile, powerful dance artist,  choreographer and inspiring mentor known for pushing and crossing the boundaries of ballet and contemporary dance. As a performer Ottmann danced with several companies including the National Ballet of Canada, Ballet BC, Mascall Dance, Fortier Danse Créations, Holy Body Tattoo and co-founded the collective, Quorum.

As the Artistic Director of the Quinte Ballet School of Canada he implemented his progressive approach to teaching and mentoring. Ottmann has also taught and/or rehearsal directed for organizations including: Cirque du Soleil (“ZAIA”), Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, BJM Danse, La La La Human Steps, Coleman Lemieux Company, Compangnie Marie Chouinard, O Vertigo Danse, Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Toronto Dance Theater, Ballet BC, Dutch National Ballet, Transformation Danse, Vancouver Ballet Society, Anna Wyman School of Dance Arts, Main Dance Bridging Program, Simon Fraser University, LADMMI.

Ottmann has created over 20 choreographies. His work has been shown at The Canada Dance Festival, the Vancouver International Dance Festival, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Danse Cité –Traces Interprétes, The Fringe Festival Montreal, Dancing on the Edge Festival, and the National Ballet of Canada choreographic workshop.

Newly transplanted to Toronto, Ottmann is a course director at York University and rehearsal director for Coleman Lemieux Company.

Area of Academic Specialty: Ballet Technique

Tracey Norman is an independent dance artist based in Toronto with a focus on creating interdisciplinary work. She splits her time between choreographing, teaching, interpreting and facilitating dance. Tracey’s choreography has been commissioned and presented by many Canadian organizations including, DanceWorks, Dance Ontario, Canadian Children’s Dance Theatre, York Dance Ensemble, the Season Finale of Series 8:08, Dance Matters and Kinetic Studio. Her work has been described as “refreshing and original” (the Globe and Mail).

Tracey has recently performed in works by independent choreographers, Susan Lee, Meagan O’Shea and Darcey Callison. She received her MFA in Choreography & Dramaturgy from York University and is currently a part-time faculty member in York’s Dance Department, teaching Dance Composition and Modern Technique. Tracey works as an outside eye to several artists, teaches dance at studios in Toronto, and teaches creative process workshops in public schools. She worked for Series 8:08 from 2006-12 as Alternative Technique Class Program Manager and Program Assistant and served on the board for the Canadian Alliance of Dance Artists from 2008-11.

Areas of Academic Specialty: Dance Composition; Modern Technique

Personal Website

Blake Martin holds a PhD in Kinesiology and a Graduate Diploma in Neuroscience from York University, B.F.A. and M.A. degrees in dance, and a bachelor of education. His doctoral research was in neural mechanisms of attention when trying to perform more than one movement at a time. Blake has danced with choreographers Allen Kaeja, Tom Stroud, Holly Small and Richard Haisma, and is a founding board member of the Pulse Ontario Youth Dance Conference, a province wide initiative uniting secondary  dance educators and students with professional dance artists.

Blake teaches in York University’s Dance Science Diploma program, as well as speaking provincially, nationally and internationally on issues related to yoga and the brain, arts and the brain, anatomy, and classroom management.  He is a respected teacher in Traditional Thai Massage, a long distance runner, and a martial artist for more 30 years. If it moves and thinks, he likes it.

Areas of Research and Academic Specialty: Dance and the body, Dance Education

Terrill Maguire is an award-winning dancer, choreographer, teacher, and artistic director. She has been an advocate for the integration of the arts into everyday life and mainstream society wherever she has lived – in her native California until the mid ‘70s, in New York City in the early ‘80s, and since then, in her long-time home, Toronto.

Among her accomplishments, Maguire founded and directed the Inde Festivals of New Dance and Music, a seminal series of national festivals that took place between 1985 and 1995, which were dedicated to building creative synergy and community through collaborations between artistic disciplines. She has also done extensive Artists-in-Schools residencies throughout Ontario, making annual trips to remote communities in the James Bay region of northern Ontario since 1997.

Throughout her career, Maguire has produced, and participated in, numerous interdisciplinary community arts events: these have included performances in the Toronto Music Garden, site-specific dance/music/art-making works for Opening Days at the Evergreen Foundation’s Brick Works, and interactive dance-music pieces in the Zen Rock Garden at York University, including at the recent Dramaturgy conference of the Society of Dance History Scholars, in June 2011.

She has choreographed and performed as well for theatre, opera, television and film: most recently she provided the dance sequences for a film of native poet/artist/educator Duke Redbird’s Totem Impact. Primarily a western contemporary dancer, Maguire has been inspired and informed by the dance styles of many cultures. Among her fruitful collaborations have been those with Menaka Thakkar Dance Company (for whom she has also acted as rehearsal director), choreographer Sashar Zarif, and Troy Emery Twigg of the Blackfoot/Blood Nation in southern Alberta. She has found her own ancestral heritage another rich source of creation, mining elements of Irish/Celtic sacred traditions in works such as Bile, (Dusk Dances in Withrow Park, Toronto), Grove (Yo Yo Ma’s Toronto Music Garden), Shivering Tree (Riverrun Centre, Guelph), and Sanctuary (Trinity Bell Plaza, Toronto).

Terrill has also been inspired by involvement with artists of other artistic disciplines, most notably, composers. Her 2008 premiere at the St. John’s Sound Symposium of a solo dance, Pond Life, was the result of a commission from composer Ann Southam, and was accompanied by internationally renowned pianist and York U Music Faculty member, Christina Petrowska Quilico. She has collaborated with many other musicians and composers, and continues to value this experience.

Her work has been presented in a range of theatrical venues in Canada, the U.S., Europe, and the British Isles. Some of these include: The Banff Centre for the Arts (Alberta, Canada), Centre de la Danse National (Paris, France), The Abbey Theatre (Ireland) and Highways Performance Space (Santa Monica, California). Non-conventional locales including trees, fountains, sidewalks, piers, pools and gardens have also been sites of her choreographic inventions.

The recipient of various choreography commissions, grants, and awards, including the Jean A. Chalmers Award in Choreography, she is currently holds an Ontario Arts Council/ Chalmers Arts Fellowship, which will provide the means for travel to Ireland in 2012, for a period of creative research.

She is a former full-time member of the Department of Dance of York University, and following an extended time working in the professional realm, returned in 2002 as a sessional faculty member. She teaches, or has taught, modern dance technique, repertory, composition/choreography, performance, as well as Animating Communities Through Dance and Related Arts; a Certificate in Arts Practice course taught in conjunction with the Faculty of Environmental Studies. Maguire is also a guest teacher at Toronto’s Centre for Indigenous Theatre, as well as a long-time teacher of yoga.

Areas of Academic Specialty: Modern Dance, Repertory, Composition/Choreography, Animating Communities Through Dance and Related Arts

Dora-nominated dancer, Susan Lee’s professional career as a performer, choreographer and teacher spans twenty years. Based in Toronto, Canada she has originated roles in almost fifty world premieres by many established Canadian choreographers including Allen Kaeja, Holly Small, Yvonne Ng, Peter Chin and Maxine Heppner, performing across Canada, the US, Mexico, Portugal, Singapore and Indonesia. As a company member of Kaeja d’Dance (1997- 2008) she originated roles in most of their major work including Abattoir, Asylum of Spoons, Resistance, Courtyard and Buried Monuments. She is also featured in their award winning dance films, Asylum of Spoons, Witnessed, Resistance, Departure and the Gemini-nominated Old Country, as well as in Aroma, Terrain, and Verge, dance film collaborations with Allen Kaeja and Emmy-nominated videographer Douglas Rosenberg.

Lee’s creative interest lies in improvisation in performance, the integration of live music and dance, and combining dance with other disciplines and media. Her recent work integrates video projection and  real-time based interactive technologies in a variety of settings. Susan’s choreography has been presented in dance festivals and series in Toronto, Ottawa, Halifax and Peterborough. Her work has been described as “…simple and extraordinary.” (Halifax Chronicle-Herald) and “…a tour de force of magic and mystery” (the Globe and Mail). She has been awarded grants and scholarships to support her creative research and productions.

Susan has taught in a variety of contexts including public schools in Toronto and northern Ontario, York University, professional and community workshops in Canada, Portugal and the US. She teaches contact improvisation, partnering techniques, structures for improvisation as a performance art and modern technique.

From 1995- 2006, Susan was co-Artistic Director of Series 8:08 and has also worked on the boards of several prominent dance organizations, including Canadian Alliance of Dance Artists and the CanAsian Dance Festival.

Areas of Academic Specialty: Contemporary/Modern Dance

Helen Jones began dance classes in her home town in Wales when she was four. She was accepted into the Royal Ballet School full-time program in London when she was ten. Following graduation from the RBS upper school she continued her training in classical ballet, and in contemporary dance, with master teachers in London. Brussels, and New York.

Over a lengthy performing career Helen danced with companies and choreographers, at events, and in film and television, in Europe and North America. Notably, she was a member of the Martha Graham Company with whom she toured extensively and performed on Broadway and at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, a guest artist at Bejart’s “Mudra” in Brussels, and was a featured dancer with Toronto Dance Theatre.

Helen has had a parallel career as a teacher of professional and pre professional dancers, and currently is faculty at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and York University’s Department of Dance.

Her interest in dance in the community is presently focused on her dance program for children, youth and adults, in rural Grey Highlands in the County of Grey, Ontario, where she also holds a summer dance arts day camp, runs an intergenerational dance program in a long term care facility, and brings professional caliber performances to the area.

Helen has a BSc in Psychology (UT), and Diploma in Adult Training and Development (OISE/Ontario Council for Leadership in Educational Administration). Other professional development studies include courses at the National Ballet School’s Teacher Training Program.

 

Catherine began her training as a teacher of Classical Ballet at The Canadian College of Dance, Ryerson Theatre School. She then studied at The National Ballet School and is a graduate of the Teacher Training Program. From 1991 to 2004 she was Manager of the Ballet Program at The Claude Watson School for the Arts in Toronto and was a faculty member at The Etobicoke School of the Arts. She was a frequent guest teacher for George Brown Dance and a supply teacher for the National Ballet School, Teacher Training Program. In 2004 Catherine joined Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet School as a full time member of the Artistic Staff. From 2004 to 2008 she taught in the RWB School’s Professional Division, Teacher Training Program and the Recreational Division, Intensive Training Program. After four years in Winnipeg, Catherine returned to Toronto and directly accepted a Part-time Faculty position at York University’s Department of Dance. She has recently been a guest teacher for Ballet Jörgen Canada and Quinte Ballet School and has returned to The National Ballet School as a supply teacher for the Teacher Training Program. Catherine is a certified teacher of the Cecchetti Method of Classical Ballet and is presently serving as an elected member of the National Administrative Council of the Cecchetti Society of Canada.

Academic Specialty: Ballet Technique

Dr. Bridget Cauthery is a dance and cultural studies scholar focusing on the impact of post/neo-coloniality and the processes of globalization on contemporary and popular dance practices in the Global North. In 2016 she was the recipient of a twelve-month research leave to complete the manuscript for her forthcoming book Choreographing the North (McGill-Queens University Press) that examines eleven contemporary dance works from the northern and southern hemispheres that take the North as their source and inspiration.  She was one of four keynote speakers for the 2016 Selma Odom Lecture Series celebrating forty years of dance studies at York. In 2015 Bridget received Academic Innovation funding for a new blended learning course that uses social media to manufacture undergraduate student engagement in critical theory.  In 2014 Bridget won the inaugural e-learning teaching award in the School of Arts, Media, Performance and Design for her course Dance, Film & Culture.  She has presented at conferences in Canada, the U.S. and Europe and her research has been published in Ethnologies, Culture & Tradition, Canadian Dance Studies, Performance Journal UK, TOPIA and appears in Fields in Motion: Ethnography in the Worlds of Dance (2011).  Since 2008 she has been lecturing in the Dance Department at York University and in the Theatre School at Ryerson University and was appointed to York’s Faculty of Graduate Studies in 2014.

Area of Academic Specialty: Dance Studies