the sense archive

Black and White headshot of beautiful woman looking confidently into the camera

  • Collaborative Member

    Ruth {she/her} is a dance artist, director, producer, educator and mother. Formative education with her mother and community in folkloric, sacred dances, storytelling, and music has greatly influenced her ongoing research and is integral to her performance and teaching. Continued studies and performance work led her to live many years in Montreal, Japan, England, France and Belgium. She is a part of ongoing research and multidisciplinary performances with Ecological Bodying and Strange Strangers Art Collective Billy Douthwright & Kevin O’Connor. Ruth is a graduate of EDCM (1997-Montreal), Laban (UK) and The Kyoto Arts Centre (Japan) and Nomadic Colleges Worldwide. From 2001-08 Douthwright performed with l'inattendu compagnie (Belgium), ABCDC (France), Dasein Dance (Ontario).

    Ruth is based in her hometown of London, Ontario in the community where she was raised. Ongoing collaborations with PDA Public Displays of Art Collective, Axis Syllabus research and education influence her current work. As an Artist In Residence with the London Arts Council, Ruth develops and facilitates curriculum for local school boards and delivers programming for people with a wide range of physical and intellectual abilities and disabilities - Healing Through the Arts with the L’arche Community and Participation House, Recovery Through the Arts at Parkwood Mental Health and The Art of Remembering at McCormick Dementia Services. Ruth is currently developing resources in somatic practices and creative process based on her experience as a breast cancer patient.

    photo credit: Michaela Devine

    www.ruthdouthwright.com

  • Collaborative Member

    Sally Morgan (she/her) lives in K’jipuktuk/Halifax. She is intrinsically an improviser and a performer and continues to question and practice ‘how to prepare to be present’ every day. She is a mother, an interdisciplinary dance/performance artist, and a movement and place- based/environmental educator. She has been a part of the Canadian dance community for over 25 years, studying nationally/internationally in contemporary and postmodern dance, improvisation/contact improvisation, and somatic practices. Her work has been presented across Canada, in Europe and the USA.

    Sally works within an ecosomatic framework and on/in/with the borderlands between body and place, performance and ecology, improvisation and the everyday. Her work is rooted in critical place studies, relational embodied ethics, slow pedagogies, and site responsive practices. As an educator she works towards an immersive and experiential praxis that highlights theory, practice, and reflection and strives to support and create the conditions in which participants can give themselves permission to notice, feel, think, listen, and move.

    Sally coordinated the Somatic Movement Exploration Lab in Toronto from 2013-2018 and has recently taught as contract faculty at both Acadia University and in The Fountain School of Performing Arts at Dalhousie University. In 2021, Sally began the research and development for a legacy project about the late Diane Moore with long term outcomes that include a book projects, a live retrospective event that includes a selection of re-performances, and a new choreographic work.

    She sits on the Board of Directors of Wonder’neath Arts Society. She is currently enrolled in the SME/BMC training through Esprit en Mouvement (Montreal) and is a certified Yoga and Pilates instructor (Eastward Moving Dance + Somatics). Sally works creatively under the umbrella of SLOW DANCE LAB and with artist collective the sense archive. She is a single parent (now partnered) and lives with invisible disabilities.

    photo credit: Linnet Finley

    www.sallymorgan.ca

    www.eastwardmoving.ca

  • Collaborative Member

    Jessica Winton (she/her) is a sculptor, collaborator, writer and mother. As an advocate for art in the public realm, her work includes gallery exhibitions, unsanctioned interventions, and participatory events while congruently developing critical discussion to support her writing. Her examinations of the environment have led her work to a variety of outcomes, though they are all drawn from her belief in the ability of the arts to support and imagine alternate futures.

    Winton has been working in the arts for more than twenty years, this includes working as a designer and builder in the Film & Television industry, curating exhibitions for commercial and artist-run galleries, presenting and exhibiting her own artwork locally and internationally, participating in artist residencies, juries and conferences. Winton’s family and art practice are based in the north end of Halifax, Nova Scotia though her projects often carry her off into the streets, woodland and open fields.

    Photo credit: Greg Baller.

    https://www.jessicawinton.com

Collaborating Artists

Head and torso of Joshua looking downwards with glasses and shortly cropped brown hair


  • Sound Design and Composition

    Joshua Van Tassel is a sideman, producer, composer, podcast producer, sample maker and sonic landscaper. He regularly performs some of Canada's best song writers such as Great Lake Swimmers, Amelia Curran, Sarah Slean, Donovan Woods, Rose Cousins, David Myles, among others. Joshua and his studio Dream Date Studio in Toronto have worked on albums for Sarah Slean, David Myles, KIRTY, Justin Rutledge, Christine Bougie, Megan Bonnell, and more. He has been nominated for numerous ECMA, JUNO, and NSMW Awards.


  • Dramaturge

    My interests are in explorations of improvisation, dramaturgy and choreography, principles of disability arts aesthetics, and an investigation of things. The work resulting from these processes and investigations aims beyond interdisciplinariness, beyond a synthesis of disciplinary approaches towards something else, another dimension of expression and experience. My current fascinations include everyday cold water and sound, social art practice, and archipelagic thinking.

  • Curatorial Consultant

    Becka Viau is a cis-female, queer identified, white settler, Canadian artist in the unceded territory of the Mi’kMaq, Epekwitk’, known as Prince Edward Island. She received her BFA, 2008 and MFA, 2013 from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and has exhibited throughout the Maritimes and Europe. She was long listed for the Sobey Art Award in 2011 and 2014 and has completed multiple artist residencies and retreats. She has worked as a curator, educator and founder/director of arts organizations and festivals. Much of her artistic practice engages with questions relating to the institutions, dissemination and social networks of power, art and culture.

  • Lighting Design

    Rebecca is a Toronto based Lighting Designer. Theatres and Dance companies include: 1000 Islands Playhouse, Adelheid (Heidi Strauss), The Blyth Theatre, Buddies in Bad Times, Canadian Stage, GCTC, Musical Stage, National Arts Centre, The Shaw Festival, Tarragon Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille, Mirvish Productions, Nightwood, Nightswimming, Vancouver Arts Club, and Volcano Theatre Company. She has received 3 Dora awards for outstanding lighting design.

  • Design of Vibrotactile Devices and Assistive Technology

    David Bobier is a hard of hearing and disabled media artist whose creative practice is developing accessible vibrotactile technology as an artistic and experiential medium leading to the establishment in 2014 of VibraFusionLab, a creative multi-media, multi-sensory centre in Canada that has an international reputation as a leader in accessibility for the Deaf and Disability Arts movement.

    VibraFusionLab supports the creation of new accessible art forms; focuses on inclusive technologies having the potential of expanding art-making practices and investigates new experiences of sensory accessibility for artists and audiences of all abilities.

    His exhibition career includes 19 solo and over 30 group exhibitions in Canada and internationally.

    As an artist and through VibraFusionLab, Bobier has received funding from Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, SSHRC Canada, Ontario Centres of Excellence, Grand National Centres of Excellence, Farnham Maltings, High Commission of Canada in the UK, Province of Quebec and British Council Canada.

    Bobier served in advisory roles in developing Deaf and Disability Arts Equity programs for both Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, was an invited participant in the Canada Council for the Arts – The Arts in a Digital World Summit and a presenter at the Global Disability Summit in London, UK.

  • Costume Design

    Andrea was born and lives in K’jipuktuk (Halifax). Her foundation in theatre is costume design and producing, with occasional forays into set design.

    She was a long-time member/designer with The Irondale Ensemble Project. For over a decade, she designed and built costumes for all of the ensemble’s more than thirty original theatre and dance works.

    In theatre, dance and performance art, she has worked as part of numerous productions with a wide range of artists, including Ship’s Company Theatre, One Light Theatre, Zuppa Theatre, Hear Here Productions/Mocean Dance, San Family Productions, Forerunner Playwrights Co-op, Theatre New Brunswick, Neptune Theatre, Keep Good Company Theatre, among others. Her focus is in Nova Scotia, and in sharing those stories near and far.

    Andrea has worked as an administrator and organizer with not-for-profit arts organizations including AFCOOP, The Halifax Jazz Festival, suddenlyLISTEN Music, Word On The Street and Halifax Brewery Farmers Market.

    Currently, she coordinates PAINTS, a province-wide artist in the schools program of Visual Arts Nova Scotia.

    All of Andrea's work involves making and holding space for creation, for connection, for nourishment and growth, building community through art education and art making.