Workshop Presenters

Peter Ryan has used the body and things physical as his lifelong organizing principle. He is one of Canada's most accomplished proponents of contact improvisation. A former member of Canada's national rowing team, Ryan studied dance during the 1970s in Vancouver, worked closely and performed with American contact improvisation pioneers Steve Paxton and Nancy Stark Smith.

Peter danced for a number of Vancouver choreographers before joining forces with several Vancouver artists to establish EDAM (Experimental Dance and Music), a multi-media performance company. In Ottawa, he founded and directed Four on the Floor Dance, a multi-disciplinary, improvisational performance group. Peter also has extensive teaching experience in both French and English. He has taught movement to both actors and dancers at many Canadian institutions, including Simon Fraser University, Studio 58, the Vancouver Playhouse, the University of Ottawa and the National Theatre School. For several years he traveled to Greece to teach the Sxedia Dance Company in Athens. He also mentors and coaches actors, singers and dancers. Recently Peter co-founded Guerilla Heart Juice, a physical theatre training company.

 

Kathy Armstrong is a percussionist and educator who is well-known for her work in bringing Ghanaian music and dance to choirs, schools and community groups in North America and Europe. She received her Master’s of Music from the University of Toronto, where she studied with members of Nexus, and has studied extensively in Ghana since 1990 with Kwasi Dunyo, whom she subsequently brought to Canada. Performance highlights include soloist with the Rochester Philharmonic orchestra, the NAC Orchestra and at Expo 98 in Lisbon. In addition, she has been artist-in-residence at Queen’s University and University of Wisconsin-Madison and has taught in the summer programs at the Hartt School of Music and Ithaca College. For many years she was a faculty member of Doreen Rao’s Choral Music Experience Summer Institute, staging “Gahus” in locations as diverse as St Martin-in-the Fields in England, and an ancient Roman marketplace in a small village in France. She was recently the keynote presenter at the Scottish Association for Music Education's National Conference. Based in Ottawa since 1994, she teaches at Carleton University where she created a rhythmic ear-training program, using drumming, movement and singing, as well as directing the University’s West African Ensemble. She is the founding director of Baobab Drum Dance Community (www.baobabtree.org), an Ottawa based non-profit arts education organization. She has strong ties to the village of Dagbamete in Ghana where she regularly takes students for educational and humanitarian trips. Her commitment to community development and cross-cultural understanding informs and strengthens the inherent power of this art form. 

Babette Lightner is director of Stones in Water - a Movement Education and Learning Methods Center in the Minneapolis, Minnesota and western Wisconsin. Lightner is a Registered Somatic Movement Educator, has a degree in Dance, is a Certified Teacher of the Alexander Technique and is one of four Certified LearningMethodsTM Teachers in the United States.
For ten years she taught in the Professional Actor Training Program at the University of Minnesota. She created human coordination classes for the Music Department at the University of Minnesota and at Macphail Center for the Arts. She was the Artist in Residence for the Theatre Department at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls. Lightner has lectured and taught for many universities, institutions and organizations including the Guthrie Theater, Sister Kenny Institute, Balk Opera Music Institute, Voice Center of Fairview, Taipei National University of Arts in Taiwan, and with the internationally acclaimed a cappella group Rajaton. She is on the faculty of the VoiceCare Network. For 20 years Lightner has maintained an individual practice, as an Alexander Technique Teacher and LearningMethodsTM teacher. In this practice she works with people dealing with pain, stress issues, and with performers who want to get better at what they do. Her explorations into human movement have taken her around the world, from dancing with a folk dance troupe in the villages of South India to performing with a post-modern physical theatre company in the warehouses of Boston. She is currently one of a handful of teachers pioneering a new paradigm for understanding human structure and function in the Anatomy of Wholeness workshops. She has developed her own movement work called Wholeness in MotionTM. This innovative approach brings together her range of expertise in movement work including: Alexander Technique, Yoga, Tai Chi Chuan, Body Mind Centering, Bartenieff Fundamentals, Modern and Ethnic Dance, Mindfulness, Laban Movement Analysis and LearningMethods. She has a studio in Minneapolis and on 160 acres outside of River Falls, Wisconsin and maintains an active workshop and lecture schedule.

Jennifer Moir is a highly respected conductor, educator and adjudicator with a growing international reputation. She is the recipient of numerous teaching awards, including the Dr. Pedro Goldman Humanitarian Award, (2008). She was honoured with the distinguished Leslie Bell Prize Award for Choral Conducting from the Ontario Art Council in 2004 and in May of 2010, she was nominated for the Premiere’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts, in the category of Emerging Artist. Ms. Moir is invited regularly to serve as a clinician for festivals and leads workshops for music students and educators in both Europe and North America. Ms. Moir teaches for the Department of Performance Studies and the Department of Music Education at The University of Western Ontario, Don Wright Faculty of Music. In 2001, Jennifer founded Project Sing! a vocal ensemble for young women dedicated to exploring innovative choral expression. Projects included an award winning recording entitled, “The World Awaits ~ songs for a winter’s night” and music video of the Huron Carol that was regularly featured on Bravo and wtn.

Ms. Moir is currently the Artistic Director for the Woodstock Fanshawe Singers, and is the Founder and Artistic Director of The Kaleid Choral Festival ~ “a kaleidoscope of voices”, based in Woodstock ON. This festival seeks to educate, energize and inspire choral singers, and provides outstanding educational and performance opportunities for school and community choirs across Ontario. In 2010, Jennifer initiated “Kaleid-on-the-road” as a means of broadening the scope of the Kaleid Choral Festival. The first incarnation took place in Ottawa, in collaboration with the Ottawa Children’s Choir, and the festival’s Honorary Patrons, Rajaton (Finland). Through both Kaleid and regular concert programming with her choirs, Jennifer has commissioned over 70 new works to date by Canadian composers. 

Bill Shields For the past twelve years, Bill has provided organizational consulting support to organizations in the non-profit and public sectors. For ten of these years he practiced as a partner in the collaborative work group. This firm closed in 2003 and since that time, he has practiced as an independent consultant. During this time, Bill has also offered support to individuals accompanying them through the transitions and crisis they are experiencing. Prior to establishing his consulting practice, he served as the Executive Director of a national professional association, The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, for ten years. 
Bill's formal education involved undergraduate studies in Literature, Psychology and Theology. He received a B.A. (English) form the University of Ottawa and a bachelor of Theology form St. Paul University, Ottawa. Over the past ten years, he has been engaged in an intensive program of self-directed study in the areas of adult education, personal development, organizational learning and leadership.

Alice Vander Vennen was born in 1957 to immigrant parents in rural, southwestern Ontario, Alice lives with her husband and three children in Cobourg, Ontario. Alice completed her BA in Art Education at Calvin College in Grand, Rapids, Michigan, and has studied visual art at the Ontario College of Art and Design. A professional artist since 1980, Alice has exhibited her work in numerous juried exhibitions in Canada and the United States, including Chicago and New York. She was a founding member of the Colborne Society of Artists.
Workshops: Presenter of Workshops in Fibre Art, Toronto, Richmond Hill, St. Mary’s, Kingston, Cobourg
Featured artist in Toronto ArtPost, Issue 20, February 2009 Artist Representation Petroff Gallery: Toronto, Ontario, OENO Gallery: Picton, Ontario.
Selected Exhibitions 2011 Commission, Town of Cobourg, “Community Fish Quilt Project” Tom Thompson Gallery, “Convergence”, Juried Exhibition, January-March
2010 Rock, Paper, Scissors, Group Exhibition, OENO Gallery Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, Juried Invitational Exhibition, July, Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto. Participant since 2001 The Toronto Artist Project, Juried Invitational Exhibition 2009 Art Gallery of Northumberland, “Free Motion” Petroff Gallery South, solo exhibition, Upstairs Gallery, AGN, Collective Fibre Artists Toronto Art Expo, Metro Toronto Convention Center, juried exhibition. Participant 2004 - 2009. The Colborne Art Gallery, Annual Artists Group Exhibition, since 1997. 2007!Colborne Art Gallery, “Sticks, Stones and Colour Tones”, solo exhibition. Petroff Gallery, Feature Artist, solo exhibition. 2006 The Guild Shop: Ontario Crafts Council, one month exhibition, “Distant Voices”, traveling multi-media exhibition with La Jeunesse Girls Choir and Project Sing, University of Western Ontario. The Art Gallery of Northumberland, Cobourg, Ontario, Annual Artists juried exhibition, since 1988 - 2006. 2005Red Thread Gallery, Oakville, Ontario, group exhibition as part of the Festival of Fibres. 2004 Craft as Art Festival, Nassau County Museum of Art, Long Island New York, Juried Exhibition. Wells Street Art Festival, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A., Juried Exhibition

Megan Jerome's artistic vision stems from her continued exploration of music and other art forms. Since obtaining a degree in Jazz Piano from Carleton University in 2003, she has honed her writing and performance skills and participated in projects that have led her to work with musicians, choirs, dancers, choreographers and actors. Megan’s captivating performances have delighted audiences in a variety of venues, from local and not-so-local pubs and art galleries to major festivals such as the Salmon Arm Roots and Blues Festival in BC.

Megan has been featured on CBC Radio’s Canada Live, has participated in the Ottawa International Jazz Festival’s Composer’s Collective and mentored a young singer-songwriter during the Ontario Council of Folk Festivals’ annual conference. In the summer of 2009, Megan collaborated with renowned choreographer Tedd Robinson on a new contemporary dance work set to her songs.

"Megan’s music is deceptively transient. The simple song structure and lyrics feel like folk songs, but the musicianship on her albums is rooted firmly in jazz".                  —Travis Boisvenue, Guerilla Magazine