May 26 to 29, 2025
2:00 to 4:00 pm
Free by reservation at adj_direction@studio303.ca
The SPARK Series is an initiative that connects artists affiliated with Studio 303 with presenters. Through informal private presentations followed by discussion time, these meetings aim to be personal and refreshing. The featured artists are selected from the current and past cohorts of artists-in-residence.
Although showings are for presenters only, SPARK Series also hosts Performative Discussion, a public event that provides space for dialog on a chosen theme.
Emile Pineault & Baco Lepage Acosta © Marc-Olivier Hamelin
Alex ‘Bunny’ Turcotte, Martine ‘Éclipse’ Castera, Flame, Maude ‘Møødz’ Beaulieu, Audrey ‘Odd’ Sargent © Mare-Ève Dion
Lucy M. May © Anna Semenova Kozak
| Monday, May 26 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM |
Performative Discussion (Spark Series)
Supporting Palestine: PACBI and other initiatives- Free
In english or french, depending on participants
Welcome to all
Project Description →
In the current context of genocide in Palestine and vivid discussions around artistic practices that benefit the State of Israel, several organizations (including Studio 303) have joined PACBI and the boycott of artistic and cultural products from the State of Israel.
This performative discussion will be a space for dialogue around these initiatives. We will explore the why and the how. We will discuss how they apply within our local contexts.
Performative Discussions do not include a designated moderator. The format is modeled on Lois Weavers’s Long Table, where participants may:
– Join the table to contribute to the conversation
– Choose to sit in the outer ring as an observer
SPARK series takes place during the FTA/OFFTA, taking advantage of the large number of presenters already in town. Our goal is to get Studio 303’s associated artists known by them and to facilitate different moments of exchange where relational rather than transactional aspects are favored.
| Tuesday, May 27 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM |
Ivanie Aubin-Malo | Wahsipekuk : Beyond the Mountains
Wahsipekuk: Beyond the Mountains is a captivating performance accompagnied by violinist Julian Rice (Mi’kmaq and Kanien’kehá:ka). This creation takes us on a fascinating journey through the oral, sung, and danced traditions of the Wabanakiak peoples.
Project Description →
Wahsipekuk: Beyond the Mountains is a leap into the invisible realm of dreams. An attempt to reconnect and carry on the transmission of ancestral knowledge. This project, co-initiated by Ivanie Aubin-Malo and Natasha Kanapé Fontaine in 2020, invites the public to an experience where past and present meet in a vibrant celebration.
Biography →
Ivanie Aubin-Malo is a Wolastoq and Québécoise choreographer, performer, and curator, and the recipient of the Montreal Dance Award in the “Revelation” category in 2023. In 2024, Ivanie premiered Wahsipekuk: Beyond the Mountains at the Agora de la danse. Since 2020, she has also founded and coordinated the event series of the MAQAHATINE collective, bringing together aboriginal movement artists to facilitate the sharing of cultural and technical knowledge, and then to spark distinct collaborations. She also contributes to the development of recurring events such as OHAKWARONT and Nikak Tagocniok. Based in L’Islet (QC) in the Wolastokuk, Ivanie is involved in wolastoqiyik atonikek, a Wolastoqey cultural center project in the region to allow members to reconnect with their community through cultural and artistic events. Thanks to the EKOTE: Spotlight on Aboriginal Scenes program, Ivanie is currently working with seven performers from the Wabanaki confederacy on a tour scheduled for 2026.
Lucy M. May | The Conditions
Part live performance, part visual arts exhibition, The Conditions (excerpt-adaptation for three performers)
speaks to the dissonance and wonder of being alive in the so-called Anthropocene. Can feeling be a way of knowing?
Project Description →
This site-sensitive work embraces art gallery conventions while leveraging their inherent tension. Temples for seeing and sensing, museums invite visitors to feel their interrelation with the world, yet use climate control and security measures to prevent the outside from leaking in. Lucy M. May’s desire for an embodied and spiritual connection to their homeland in Wolastokuk as a white settler germinated this sprawling work. Animated by an intimate and urgent need to be affected by the living world, The Conditions evokes real and imagined landscapes and unmasks the anarchic alchemy of improvisation.
Biography →
Lucy M. May (she/they) is a dance artist born in Eqpahak/Wolastokuk (Fredericton) and based in Tiohtiá:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal since 2003. Her choreographic projects, presented across Canada, explore the materiality of human attention and our relationships to place and to each other. Improvisation resides at the heart of their work as a dancer, maker, and teacher, nourished by experiences performing in Contemporary companies, in CHSLDs, and practicing Krump since 2016. She battles under the aka Pluto. Their studies in Contemporary dance were completed at l’École de danse contemporaine de Montréal and CODARTS | Rotterdamse Dansacademie. Moonlighting as an illustrator, Lu explores links between dance and drawing practices.
| Wednesday, May 28 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM |
Gabriela Jovian-Mazon | Find your light
With the intrigue of the whodunit board game Clue and the extravagance of a Broadway musical, FIND YOUR LIGHT playfully reveals the themes of self-expression, community and visibility while sharing the origins of the powerful dance Punking (also known as whacking and waacking).
Project Description →
Draped over a couch, in the spotlight, a dancer mouths: “I’m ready for my close-up!” Set to the audio of a 1950s film, she’s one of five colourfully-clad performers moving to the DJ’s voice, reciting text from a movie script. The dancers’ gestures are extravagant, circular and rapid-fire quick. Set against an old Hollywood theatrical vibe, they are poised, yet flamboyant and navigate through an underlying tension that drives the work’s momentum. With the intrigue of the whodunit board game Clue and the extravagance of a Broadway musical, FIND YOUR LIGHT playfully reveals the themes of self-expression, community and visibility while sharing the origins of the powerful dance Punking (also known as whacking and waacking).
Biography →
Gabriela Jovian-Mazon, alias Ellégance, is a playful, theatrical, and character-based movement artist driven by discovery, collectivity and authenticity. Her training includes Mexican folkloric dancing, a bachelors in civil engineering and experience as a puppeteer. She has danced for the ‘Scooby-Doo and The Lost City of Gold’ musical, “Michel!” a physical comedy show, and with contemporary companies Ample Man Danse and Asymmetry Creations. She has presented work for Ville de Montréal, Fringe Festival, Vue sur La Relève, Art-Fulness Whacking Festival and Festival de Danse Contemporaine de Sherbrooke. Currently, her movement is most inspired by Punking dance, authentic jazz dance, miming and puppeteering. Punking has brought her to battle and learn in Los Angeles, Mexico, Italy and Greece as well as teaching beginner classes in Montreal. In her eccentric work, she creates characters by defining their gestures, ways of moving and intentions that create texture. She believes that by sharing true stories, our lived experiences and culture, we can create a more resilient community.
Mara Dupas | Olympia 2.0
Exploring a fluid and undulating movement, the solo Olympia 2.0 is inspired by Manet’s famous painting of the same name, and more specifically the character portrayed by Laure, a black model whose last name remains unknown.
Project Description →
The piece focuses on two elements of the body: the back and the hair. Between shadow and light, the artist oscillates between postures and characters, in order to reclaim her body and sensuality through gesture and imagination. Primarily performed from the back and with partial nudity, the piece creates tension around the audience’s expectations of what is revealed and what the performer chooses to conceal. By refusing to reveal her face directly, She attempts to slip away, while allowing observers the possibility of discovering her, in part, through a mirror. This work is part of a series of reflections on the relationship with the colonized body, and explores notions of exoticism and fantasy through the subversion of the gaze.
Biography →
Mara Dupas is a dance artist developing a writing practice in Montreal. She collaborates with other creators as a performer, while developing her own choreographic practice. From 2021 to 2025, she created the solos Olympia 2.0 and Dépi temps (presented in Montreal by Tangente Danse and on tour across Quebec in Victoriaville, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, and Gaspé). Her piece FANM was presented at the Phénoména Festival and OFFTA, and her writing practice has led her to publish a number of texts, notably in Zinc magazine. She is fond of archives and mysteries. Navigating between words and gesture, her works explore Afro-descendant and queer experiences, and draw on themes linked to popular culture, family memory and nostalgia.
Natsumi Sophia Bellali | Salam Tata
What does it mean to be the child of immigrants in Montreal? Created and performed by Natsumi Sophia Bellali, Salam Tata explores this complex identity through a 38-minute dance-theater solo. Of Japanese and Moroccan descent and born in Montreal, Bellali weaves an intimate narrative where cultural heritages and contemporary realities intersect.
Project Description →
Salam Tata parallels the expectations of her family back in Morocco with the daily challenges she – and so many other Montreal-born children of immigrants – face. Inspired by her personal experiences, the work addresses themes such as religious practice, beauty standards, marriage and femininity, through telephone conversations with her Moroccan aunt.
Biography →
Natsumi Sophia Bellali was born to a Japanese mother and a Moroccan father, and grew up in Montreal. She graduated from The Ailey School in New York (2017). She is a founding member of MICHIYAYA Dance. She deepened her artistic voice during the creation of Calling: a dance with faith with Ping Chong + Company, presented as part of the LaMaMa Moves! Dance Festival.
Her works Salam Tata was presented at the Sherbrooke Contemporary Dance Festival, and Watashi(tachi), benefited from a residency at the Dance Centre in Vancouver. Bellali is also assistant choreographer for the immersive project We Fancy of Virgin Voyages, currently touring around the world. She was part of the ensemble for the musical TOOTSIE at Espace Saint-Denis and is currently working on La Trilogie des dragons with Ex Machina / Robert Lepage, as well as Entre nous sommes pris entre nous by Marilyn Daoust and Gabriel Léger-Savard.
| Thursday, May 29 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM |
Ellen Furey and Hanako Hoshimi-Caines |
Chopped Up Mountain
Chopped Up Mountain is a new work co-created by Ellen Furey and Hanako Hoshimi-Caines that explores questions of belonging through myth, autobiographical fiction, diasporic identity and counter-colonial processes.
Project Description →
Together, they are developing two distinct but interconnected solos, created in tandem with a shared production team. For Ellen, this work involves learning to play the bagpipes and embodying various family personae and historical icons from the Cape Breton island (i.e. Rita MacNeil, chorals of coal miners, the voice of the atlantic ocean, the collective depression and resilience of the chronically unemployed). Hanako revisits Eastern philosophies’ animistic and non-dualistic traditions, such as Japanese lore like Tsukumogami—objects that gain a soul and self-awareness after a century of service—and Yokai, personifications of supernatural or unexplainable phenomena, as a way of engaging with techniques of resistance and transformation through a cultural and mythological lens.
Biography Hanako Hoshimi-Caines →
Hanako Hoshimi-Caines is a performing artist working at the intersections of choreography, dramaturgy, curation, installation and community practice. Her works unfold across a range of formats—from stage to gallery to local community spaces—blending high and low-fi aesthetics that draw equally from the structured formalism of art and the stuff of lived experience. Her career as a dancer includes collaborations with both independent artists and major companies, such as Sweden’s Cullberg Ballet and artists Andrew Tay and Stephen Thompson (Make Banana Cry). Hanako’s solo work has been featured at MAI, OFFTA, Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery, and Galerie de l’UQAM. Radio III, an internationally co-authored dance work with Zoë Poluch (SE) and Elisa Harkins (US) premiered at the MAI and has since toured to Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States with a Canadian tour slated for 2026.
Biography Ellen Furey →
Ellen Furey is an experimental dance artist in Tiohtiá:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal. Since 2012, she’s worked on collaborative and interdisciplinary processes that insist on a mess of subjectivities, often through explicit co-authorship. Her creations use virtuosity, spectacle and nonsense narratives to create surprising trajectories that include elements of song, bad theatre, scored movement, sacred approximation, disgust, play and solemnity. Her work has been presented in Europe, Canada, in the USA and the UK.
Ellen’s artistic work also extends to emergent caring fields as a death doula and psychic. A graduate student at Queen’s University, she studies the place of spirituality and para materialities in critical theory and art practice. She has been a leadership consultant at Danse-Cité since 2022 and is originally from Unama’ki-Cape Breton, Mi’kmaq territory.
Ellen’s artistic work also extends to emergent caring fields as a death doula and psychic. A graduate student at Queen’s University, she studies the place of spirituality and para materialities in critical theory and art practice. She has been a leadership consultant at Danse-Cité since 2022 and is originally from Unama’ki-Cape Breton, Mi’kmaq territory.
Emile Pineault & Baco Lepage Acosta | Bottommost
In Bottommost, Emile and Baco approach vulnerability as a playground, where failure becomes a raw material for raucous performances of pleasure and paradox.
Project Description →
Bottommost finds value at the bottom of the barrel. Sinking into fragility and decline, they dig a choreographic hole where degradation leads to learning and emancipation. With its rough companionship and a tenderness beneath its claws; where love hides in the dirt, and in submission, the figure of the dog guides this brutal dance of intimate friendship. In a back-and-forth between desire and failure, instinct and listening, they reframe what it means to hit rock bottom; not trapped under collapsed expectations, but as invitation to open outwards and inhabit these seemingly sordid depths.
Biography Emile Pineault →
Emile Pineault is a choreographer, performer, and curator based in Tiohtiá:ke / Mooniyang / Montreal. Through a practice that intersects performance, experimental dance, writing, and sculpture, he explores states of vulnerability, humiliation, and shame as powerful vectors for change and emancipation. His undisciplined and intestinal choreography merges intense textures, exacerbated physicalities and deep sensuality. His work has been presented at venues and festivals such as MAI (CA), YC Festival (DK), The Rhubarb Festival (CA), Workspacebrussels / KaaiStudio (BE), OFFTA (CA), La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines (CA), fabrik Potsdam (DE), Dansens Hus Stockholm (SE), Hiljaisuus Festivaali (FI), and New Baltic Dance (LT).
Biography Baco Lepage-Acosta →
Baco Lepage-Acosta‘s artistic and personal career is rich and eclectic. A multidisciplinary artist, both homebody and eager explorer, they enjoy blending disciplines and approaches. Based in Tio’tiá:ke/Mooniyang, they have been performing since 2021 in Dog Rising by Clara Furey. They are also engaged in research and performance alongside Emile Pineault for his next creation, Bottommost (2026). In addition, they are working on the projection for Nien Tzu Weng’s new piece, 《{光 (陰 | 影) }之∞》── [guāng yīn]: the lightest dark is darker than the darkest light (2025). At the same time, Baco is developing a solo project: an interactive installation around juggling that merges movement, technology and interaction.
Gui B.B | I Have Such a Horrible Voice
In a long spectral corporeal poem, Gui B.B
engages in a complex exploration of her
experience with debt. She delves into
how it is both endured and fought
within her own body.
Project Description →
The artist establishes a symbolic trans space where she reclaims ambiguity, uncertainty, hyper-vulnerability, and chaos. Thus, she invites us into a haunted space where she confronts the inherent precarity of her indebted life, transforming it into a vital force. Along the way, she exudes her own ghost, offering her body as a sacrifice as it fails to be more than just a system.
Biography →
Gui B.B is an artist based in Tio’tia:ke/Mooniyang (colonially known as Montreal). She primarily works in the field of experimental performance. Reflecting on performance as a world-building practice, Gui B.B deploys undisciplined performative statements where theatricality, irony, and voice emerge as key materials. By engaging in various forms of kinships while exploring a reclaiming dramaturgy of the body, her process brings forth new constellations, potential reconfigurations of dominant narratives. In a profusion of gesture-objects, she creates spaces where the audience can experience nonsense, an eruption of alterations to normative identifications. It is within baroque spaces that she imagines playful “trans-fictions”, poetic narratives where a dissident mythology is crafted. In her work, she self-explores the medium of performance, examining its potentials for impostures and healing.
Kama La Mackerel | // ZOM-FAM // MON CORPS // THE OCEAN //
// ZOM-FAM // MON CORPS // THE OCEAN // is a multilingual, interdisciplinary and immersive work that unfolds across two connected spaces — a gallery and a black box theatre — forming a scenographic archipelago where installations, videos, textiles, soundscapes, voice and performance coexist in a sensorial journey shaped like a constellation.
Project Description →
The audience is invited into a slow, embodied experience woven from textile materials, video mapping, projections, Creole soundscapes and objects of remembrance. Creole moves as breath, rhythm, and poetic substance, in close interplay with French and English. The piece draws from fragmented narratives, physical gestures, dance, imagery, and the shifting presence of the body.
Biography →
Kama La Mackerel is a multilingual writer, visual artist, performer, educator, and literary translator, deeply committed to love, justice, and individual and collective empowerment. Their practice blurs the boundaries of traditional artistic disciplines to create aesthetic spaces where decolonial and queer/trans vocabularies can emerge.
Born in Mauritius and based in Tio’tia:ke/Montreal, Kama works across Mauritian Creole, French, and English, exploring trans spiritualities, island memory, decolonial cosmogonies, and narratives from the Global South. Their work has been presented in galleries, theatres, performance venues, and universities across Quebec and Canada, as well as in Paris, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Johannesburg.
Kama is the author of ZOM-FAM (Metonymy Press, 2020), a poetry collection that received critical acclaim and was a finalist for several literary awards, and Indrazaal et la quête de l’océan (Éditions KATA, 2023), a children’s book about island ecologies. Alongside their artistic practice, Kama is a dedicated educator and currently teaches decolonial practices in the Department of Contemporary Dance at Concordia University.
Gui B.B © Maude Archambault-Wakil
Chopped up Mountain © Hanako Hoshimi-Caines & Ellen Furey
Ivanie Aubin Malo & Julian Rice © Pierre Tran
The Caisse Desjardins de la Culture supports this event.