Aeriosa’s Home/Domicile is choreographed by Julia Taffe

A collaboration with visual artists Sarah E Fuller and Stuart Ward. This new aerial dance work is inspired by moths, and the dancers, wearing stunning ‘moth’ cloaks designed by Sara E Fuller, will perform on the north wall of the Scotiabank Dance Centre

Sound by Winnipeg sound artist Keri Latimer.

Choreography: Julia Taffe

Choreographer Julia Taffe combines art, environment and adventure, making dances for buildings, mountains, neighbourhoods, theatres and trees, finding new movement perspectives in the realm of suspension.

Julia is the artistic director of Aeriosa, a Vancouver-based vertical dance company. She has choreographed over 25 works on location including: Stawamus Chief Mountain in Squamish BC, Taipei City Hall, Cirque du Soleil Headquarters, Vancouver Library Square, Banff Centre, Scotiabank Dance Centre and Toronto’s 58-storey L Tower.

Prior to founding Aeriosa, Julia performed across Canada with Ruth Cansfield, and around the world with Bandaloop. Julia attained ACMG Rock Guide certification in 1997. She has worked as a co-producer, choreographer, cast member, stunt performer, mountain safety rigger and creative movement consultant on various film and television productions in Canada and abroad.

Visual Artist: Sarah E Fuller

Sarah Fuller is a Canadian artist who works across the mediums of photography, video and installation. Sarah has been an artist in residence at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Laughing Waters in Nillumbick Shire, Australia, the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture, Yukon, Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Italy, and the Association of Visual Artists (SIM), Iceland. She holds a MFA from the University of Ottawa and a BFA from Emily Carr University.

Recent exhibitions include Refugio at the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery and And perhaps in me someone very old still hears the living sound of wood at the Ottawa Art Gallery. Her video work has been screened at Art on the Screens (Mississauga 2019) and Photophobia (Hamilton 2019) . In 2017 she collaborated with Moment Factory and the Banff Centre on the site-specific installation Illuminations: Human/Nature. She is currently collaborating with the vertical dance company Aeriosa on creation of new work.

Her work is in public and private collections including the Canada Council for the Arts Art Bank, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Walter Phillips Gallery and the Department of Foreign Affairs.

She currently teaches photography at the University of Manitoba and in the summer works as a certified ACMG Apprentice Hiking Guide in the Canadian Rockies.

Visual Artist: Stuart Ward

Specializing in live video performance, exhibition, and projection mapping, Stuart Ward has created installations for fashion shows, club nights, festivals and art spaces. His current artistic interests include 3D projection mapping and multi-sensory experience works, collaborating with musicians and other performers. In 2008, he founded Hfour, a multidisciplinary team of artists and designers who collaborate using video, light, code, architecture, and sound to create unique immersive installations for events, conferences, public spaces, festivals, and museums.

Sound Artist: Keri Latimer

Keri Latimer is a musician from Winnipeg, Manitoba. With her alt-folk group Leaf Rapids and previous band Nathan she has been touring internationally for 15 years. Aside from crooning about vultures and barbershop stabbings, she plays the theremin and scores music for film.

Career highlights include featured solo performances with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, most notably in 2018 for the Canadian premiere of Bjork‘s composition, Family for strings. She has contributed music for films including Academy Award nominated feature film Frozen River by Courtney Hunt, Only Dream Things by Guy Maddin, and Shelagh Carter’s feature film, Before Anything You Say.

With the help of Canada Council, the Winnipeg Arts Council and the Manitoba Arts Council an album of music for theremin is being recorded to be released in 2020.

Dancer: Cara Sui

Cara Siu is a movement artist and emerging choreographer and movement facilitator, engaged in exploring performance research and community dance. Her passion to share expression, physicality and imagination with audiences have fueled many diverse dance experiences. After acquiring her modern dance training in Vancouver, BC at Simon Fraser University, she continued her dance training in the US, winning scholarships to both Jacob’s Pillow Festival in Massachusetts and Lewitzky Dance Company in Los Angeles.

Upon returning to Vancouver, she became captivated by the emerging form of dance theatre and apprenticed with Lee Eisler of Jumpstart Performance. As a collaborator/performer, she has contributed to the creation of dance theatre productions for Gambling Soles, Donna Redlick Dance Theatre, Link Dance Foundation and Raven Spirit Dance.

Dancer: Chandra Krown

Vancouver born, Chandra Krown is a dancer, aerialist, choreographer and multi-disciplinary artist. She started with a ballet foundation as a child but soon discovered gymnastics and enjoyed competing.

As a young adult she began performing with local companies in Vancouver and decided to train at Main Dance’s professional training program to improve her skills and techniques. After the program, she launched XtravaDance Productions with some peers and pursued her career in the performing arts/entertainment. She worked with various companies in Vancouver.

In 2004 she started to work with Aeriosa Dance Society which was her first experience dancing on buildings as a Vertical dancer. She is honored to return to Aeriosa Dance and excited about the current projects blending her love for nature and trees with dance!

Dancer: Meghan Goodman

Originally from Toronto, Meghan Goodman is an interdisciplinary dance artist and Iyengar yoga instructor. Graduating from Simon Fraser University in 2003 with a BFA in dance and minor in mathematics, Meghan has continued to actively perform, choreograph, and teach in Vancouver for the past 17 years. In addition to her work with Aeriosa, she has performed pieces by choreographers such as Jennifer Clarke, Hanna Kiel, Justine Chambers, Michelle Olson, Rob Kitsos, and Sarah Chase. Meghan has also performed in two productions with the Vancouver Opera. Meghan is currently teaching Iyengar yoga, training with Aeriosa, and raising her two young boys.

Dancer: Julia Carr

Julia Carr is a dancer, interdisciplinary creator (choreographer), educator, emerging photographer, Mother, wife, sister, and daughter; originally from Vancouver. Julia trained professionally at Arts Umbrella and with the Ballet BC Mentor Program (2004/2005).

Carr works as a dancer for Aeriosa, Compaigni V’ni Dansi, and independent contemporary choreographers. Julia is a collaborative creator who founded Body Narratives Collective in 2008 and in 2014 was selected as one of three Canadian artists to participate in a nomadic interdisciplinary art residency in Australia called Time_Place_Space: NOMAD.

She also acts as Assistant Artistic Director for Dancestreams, a Vancouver-Island based pre-professional dance company for dedicated young dancers aged 12-19 and helps schoolteachers use dance to explore curriculum subjects thanks to Artstarts and Vancouver Biennale ‘Big Ideas’ resources.

Head Rigger: Colin Zacharias

Colin Zacharias is an internationally certified mountain guide and has worked in avalanche or guiding operations since 1980. He enjoys working with Aeriosa’s dancers whether on mountain cliffs, tall buildings, trees or in the theatre. Colin also guides thoughtfully designed climbing and skiing adventures to destinations spanning the globe, from Nunavut to Antarctica.

Colin was one of the riggers for the 2000-2002 video production of Granite Ocean, that featured Julia Taffe dancing on vertical rock faces of the Stawamus Chief Mountain in Squamish, BC. Since then, he has worked with Julia and Aeriosa on more than 40 productions. His responsibilities have included site safety inspections, risk management planning and documentation, dancer safety supervision, rigging and climbing, tree climbing, training riggers and dancers, and writing the Aeriosa safety manual.

Aeriosa is one of the foremost vertical dance companies in Canada and as a result has collaborated with the Vertical Dance Forum (Europe), Gravity and Levity (England), Kate Lawrence Vertical Dance (Wales), Il Posto (Italy), Wired Aerial Theatre (England), Histeria Nova (Croatia), Compagnie Retouramont (France) and Bandaloop (USA) to support and develop risk management planning and training strategies for the art form.

Colin is the past Technical Director for the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides, and currently participates in professional level curriculum development for the Canadian Avalanche Association and the American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education. He is a professional level avalanche educator and operations safety consultant for ski areas, cat and heliski operations. Outside North America, his work training and mentoring mountain professionals has taken him to Europe, Japan, Chile, and Iceland. His rigging and mountain safety experience also includes feature films such as iRobot and Touching the Void and TV programs including Burnett Productions EcoChallenge and Expedition Impossible series filmed in Morocco, Argentina New Zealand, Fiji and Borneo.

Colin’s certifications include ACMG/IFMGA/UIAGM (internationally recognized mountain guides associations), SPRAT (rope access), ACTSAFE Fall Protection, ACTSAFE Aerial Lift Operator, and the Wilderness First Responder.

Site and Stage Manager: Peter Jotkus

Aeriosa is so grateful to have Peter helping keep things together for us! With over forty years experience in the entertainment industry as a professional stage manager, production assistant, program and special event coordinator.

His background is in theatre, musicals, opera, dance, symphony concerts, conferences, corporate and special events.