LURCH

COMING SOON

mark your calendars!

June 18 | June 20 | June 21

2025

VENUE: Studio T, SFU School of Contemporary Arts, Vancouver, BC

Lurch explores a body and an inanimate object. Each commissioned choreographer was given the same inanimate object (a large set piece, welded by sculptor Alan Storey in 2010) and the same dancers. From Streetdance to Somatics and Ballet to Ballroom, their diversity in age and life experiences bring profound questions to their improvisations.The three investigators are well known for provocative work, big ideas, and a powerful knack for talking about dance. From each set of discussions and research has emerged a unique ecosystem containing philosophies of movement, stillness and life. For the first time these perspectives are being presented together.

ABOUT THE 2025 CHOREOGRAPHERS:

Justine A. Chambers (she/her/hers) is a dance artist and educator living and working on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations in Vancouver, Canada. Her practice is a collaboration with her Black matrilineal heritage, and extends from this continuum and its entanglements with Western contemporary dance and visual arts practices. At the centre of her practice is a question often posed by her grandmother: “You feel me?” This question is both a declaration of one’s personal orientation, and an invitation to reorient and include what is held in our flesh. Chambers meets this question in her work by attending to individual and collective embodied archives, social choreographies of the everyday, and choreography/dance as otherwise ways of being in relation. Chambers’ work has been hosted at galleries, festivals and theatres nationally and internationally including EMPAC, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Toronto Biennial of Art, Libby Leshgold Gallery, Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery at Concordia University, Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), Sophiensaele (Berlin), National Arts Centre of Canada, Agora de la Danse, Art Museum at University of Toronto, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Artspeak, Vancouver Art Gallery, The Western Front, The Dance Centre (Vancouver), Burrard Arts Foundation and the Hong Kong Performing Arts Festival. Chambers holds a MFA in Interdisciplinary Art and is currently Assistant Professor in Dance at the School for Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University and Associate Artist to The Dance Centre. Chambers is Max Tyler-Hite’s mother.  justinechambers.com   

Sarah Chase (she/her/hers) is based on Hornby Island, in the Salish Sea. She is a performer and choreographer whose distinctive signature has garnered her an international reputation. Her work has been presented across Canada and Europe, at such venues as the National Arts Centre (Ottawa), Festival TransAmerique (Montreal), DanceHouse (Vancouver), the Holland Dance Festival, Klapstuk Festival (Belgium), Salzburg Szene Festival (Austria), Kaaitheater (Belgium), Tanz Quartier (Vienna), Fondation Cartier (Paris) and Theater der Welt (Germany). She has performed and toured with Benôit Lachambre’s Dance par B. Lieux, and German choreographer Raimund Hoghe, and has created work for many Canadian artists including Peggy Baker Dance Projects, Toronto Dance Theatre,  Dreamwalker dance and Andrea Nann, Heidi Strauss and Darryl Tracy, Theatre Replacement, Jacinte Armstrong, Robin Poitras and Ron Stewart, Antonija Livingstone, Montreal Danse and Marc Boivin.

In recent years she has extended her work into visual art, using botanical materials to create portraits of dancers, animals and birds.  In 2024 her work  “hidden botanical universe” was chosen to be the first exhibit at San Francisco’s new Public Works Street Tree  Nursery. Sarah is the recipient of the 2004 Jacqueline Lemieux Award for Excellence from the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Prize of the Festival at the 2006 Munich Dance Biennale for her piece The Passenger. Solos she created for both Peggy Baker and Andrea Nann won Doras in the category of Outstanding Performer in Dance. She is an associate dance artist of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. https://www.sarahchase-hiddenbotanicaluniverse.com/gallery

Ame Henderson (Tkaronto) (they/them/she/her/hers) is an artist working with dance and choreography. With a practice that spans publication, performance and exhibition, her work proposes experiential modes of being together. She co-founded the collective company Public Recordings in 2004 with whom she produced and toured over a dozen ensemble works from 2005-2015 and she was a collaborator at Toronto Dance Theatre from 2013-19. Her creations, developed through co-production and residency with a range of national and international partners, have toured across Canada as well as to Croatia, Slovenia, Belgium, France, Japan, Australia, Malaysia and the UK. Henderson is currently working on the final dispatch in a triptych of duets co-created and performed with the Croatian artist Matija Ferlin, and is a collaborator in new performance projects with Katie Ward and Evan Webber. She has facilitated choreographic practice in a variety of contexts including University of British Columbia – Okanagan, University of Calgary, Toronto Dance Theatre, Toronto Community Love in and Banff Centre. Henderson holds a graduate degree in choreography from the Amsterdam School for the Arts, is a Gestalt Psychotherapist in private practice, and is a facilitator of the Resilience Toolkit, a trauma- and social justice-informed framework to support holistic wellness and self-agency.   amehenderson.com 

ABOUT THE 2025 PERFORMERS:

NICK MIAMI BENZ is a performance artist celebrated for their unique ability to embody characters and animal movements through physical theatre. Based in Vancouver, Nick’s artistic career began with dance studies in New York City, where they also worked as an equestrian for The Metropolitan Opera. This experience influenced their creative path, inspiring a return to theatre as an actor and singer.  Nick’s exploration of cultural intersections (Polyculturalism) and socio-political dynamics serves as a powerful source of inspiration for their solo works. Their dynamic theatre credits, includes Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer, In My Day, God's Lake and Blackhorse, as well as dance collaborations with Atomic Vaudeville, Burnaby Art Gallery, Van Vogue Jam and Mascall Dance. In Vancouver’s creative community, Nick supports movement coaching for local artists and Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week. They specialize in Gyrotonic and Pilates to inspire strength, awareness, and self-expression.

RALPH ESCAMILLAN is a queer, Canadian-Filipinx performance artist, choreographer and teacher based in Vancouver, BC. Ralph started his training in street dance styles, and is a graduate of Modus Operandi in 2015—a Vancouver-based Contemporary Dance program. He has danced/toured/created with Vancouver-based companies, Film and TV as well as a beacon for the Vancouver Ballroom Scene since 2017, through VanVogueJam, his other non-profit. As the artistic director of FakeKnot, he develops collaborative performance works that have been presented both nationally and internationally. Having ancestral roots in the Philippines, he’s fascinated by inquiries into what it means to be North American, especially within the context of cultural traditions, dance, music and costume in an increasingly interconnected global community. The exploration of how culture is created through the accumulation of ideas and concepts is at the center of his work. He has found the body to be a powerful vessel through which these ideas can be investigated—incorporating music, costume, and new media design.

BEN KAMINO is a dancer who believes the field of dance & choreography to be a very special place in which humans are invited to study qualities of the body (corporeality), the self (identity), and relation (togetherness). Kamino’s dances are intentionally conceptual, always pursuant to wondering how bodies interact with materials as emerging choreographic events. He is thankful for those dear times of collaboration with other artists, most notably with Ejay Smith, Daina Ashbee, Sook-Yin Lee, Virgil Baruchal, his brother, Alex Kamino, his father Tim Kamino, and his mother, Gabby Kamino. As a dancer, he has been fortunate to work under the direction of Peggy Baker, Michael Trent, Ame Henderson, Jennifer Mascall, Gerry Morita, Lars Jan, Marie Chouinard, Robin Poitras, and Clara Furey. Kamino was an inaugural curator at Dancemakers Centre for Creation in Toronto alongside colleague Emi Forster. He is the recipient of the 2016 Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award, the 2013 Audience Choice Award at the Dance:MIC festival, and the 2009 DanceWeb Scholarship. Kamino holds a BFA in Dance from the Tisch School of the Arts and an MA in Choreography from DAS Choreography.

Photo credit: Alex Kamino

CHRIS WRIGHT  was first introduced to contemporary dance while finishing a Kinesiology degree at the University of Western Ontario. He furthered his training in the BFA dance program at Simon Fraser University. He has performed for various Vancouver based dance companies, including Edam, Mascall Dance, MachineNoisy and Battery Opera. Chris became a certified Stott Pilates instructor and has taught individual and group classes for the past 10 years. He continues to offer instruction with an athletic, sensation-based approach bringing a focus on helping bodies find greater functional strength, stability and stamina.  Chris currently lives on Hornby Island with his partner Darcy and their two children Jesse and Solange.

SAMPLES OF LURCH IN PROCESS

LURCH TASTER VIDEO CREDITS

LEFT VIDEO 2022 with AME HENDERSON - BENJAMIN KAMINO, ALEXA MARDON, CHRIS WRIGHT, BENNETT TRACZ, RALPH ESCAMILLAN,

CENTRE VIDEO 2021 WITH JUSTINE CHAMBERS - CHRIS WRIGHT, NICK MIAMI BENZ, BENJAMINO KAMINO, CHRIS WRIGHT, RALPH ESCAMILLAN, BENNETT TRACZ.

RIGHT VIDEO 2020 WITH JUSTINE CHAMBERS - CHRIS WRIGHT, NICK MIAMI BENZ, BENJAMIN KAMINO, RALPH ESCAMILLAN,

ABOUT THE INSTIGATOR

JENNIFER MASCALL (any), Founder and Artistic Director of MascallDance, is a first-generation settler of Norman/Celt descent, Canadian choreographer, teacher, mentor, and advocate for the art form.  Born in Winnipeg, Mascall studied dance in Toronto and New York with Merce Cunningham and Douglas Dunn. In her early twenties, she established an international solo dance career, wrote and published “Footnotes” a volume of collected choreographic notations, and co-founded GRID, a site-specific performance collective. In the 80’s she joined forces with like-minded post-modernist choreographers to co-found the Experimental Dance and Music (EDAM) Collective in Vancouver. Her unique choreographic style developed and in 1989 she launched MascallDance. As its’ Artistic Director she has created over 200 works, collaborating, researching, and providing somatic movement education.

Somatic movement inquiry is central to her practice, informed by studies with master teachers Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and Linda Putnam. A committed dance innovator and thinker, she encourages new generations of artists through BLOOM and other MascallDance programs. Her work has received numerous awards and has been presented across Canada and internationally.  Three new productions by Mascall are underway,  in collaboration with over forty artists.  mascalldance.ca 

ABOUT THE SCULPTOR

THE LURCH ARTISTIC CONTRIBUTORS:

Justine Chambers, Sarah Chase, Ame Henderson, Jennifer Mascall, Nick Miami Benz, Dario Dinuzzi, Ralph Escamillan, Bynh Ho, Benjamin Kamino, Alexa Mardon, Alan Storey, Bennett Tracz, Chris Wright.