Heather Lamoureux is a community organizer, artist, and facilitator living on the Coast Salish Territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsliel-Waututh nations. She is committed to her responsibility to imagine and work towards futures where leaders care for community and the land. Heather is the founder and Artistic Director of Vines Art Festival, an arts organization and festival that is responsive to and nurturing of artists that are working toward land, water, and relational justice. She is also the Engagement Director at Raven Spirit Dance and has worked for other performing arts organizations including the PuSh International Arts Festival and Dancing on the Edge. She is trained in Somatic Education from Tamalpa Institute under instruction of Anna and Daria Halprin. Heather uses this practice with youth in foster care and runs various youth and senior programs. Many incredible women including Cease Wyss and Joyce Rosario have mentored Heather. She has a BFA in Dance with minor in Business Administration from Simon Fraser University. She loves to spend time Gardening at Harmony garden, X̱wemelch’stn pen̓em̓áy, hanging out by a river and eating good food with community. And can sometimes be found performing in unexpected outdoor spaces with the collective Pressed Paradise.

jaye is a spoken word Champion, holding titles for both Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Slamapalooza 2017 and Vancouver Poetry Slam’s Women of the World 2019. they were in the Vancouver Poetry Slam’s 2018 team which placed third in the Nationals at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word 2018.

jaye is a displaced indigenous person living, creating and occupying on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-waututh), and sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) First Nations territories.

Jesse Del Fierro is a non-binary, second generation Filipinx settler, originally from Treaty 7 Territory, and now currently residing on the ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations. A recent grad from SFU, they work to decolonize their practice, defy binaries and foster community through performance and facilitation. They have collaborated on works presented at PuSh International Performance Art Festival, SummerWorks, Audain Gallery and rEvolver Festival amongst others. 

Originally from Tehran and based in Vancouver, Arash Khakpour is privileged to be a dance artist who has immigrated to the ancestral and unceded Coast Salish territory including the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations.
Arash’s desire is to see whether the theatre can be a place to interrogate the body and to investigate the alternate ways of being – how can one just be a body? He is interested in dance as a way to research human nature and human conditions through historical, social, political and existential interpretations.

Arash is the cofounder of the dance-theatre company The Biting School (alongside his brother Aryo Khakpour), the cofounder of Vancouver’s performance group Pressed Paradise and the founder and co-host of How About A Time Machine a podcast on the history of Canadian performance. Arash is grateful to be the 2017 recipient of Dance Victoria’s Chrystal Dance Prize’.

Photo by Sheng Ho