Meagan Woods is an interdisciplinary artist who works in dance, theatre, and costume design. She holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies from Simon Fraser University and a BFA in Dance from Rutgers University, where she earned the Margery Turner Award for choreography. Meagan has guest taught at both her alma maters, as well as The New School and Montclair University. Her research investigates movement theories across creative practices, including dance, film, and sewing. Meagan is currently a performer and collaborator with Re:Current Theatre and a librettist for the Breathing Bass ensemble. She also co-founded the modern dance festival Your Move, for which she was granted the Dance NJ Jete Award. You can view her recent TEDx talk that explores how “backwards action” can be a daring and progressive act: Stitching a New Form of Progress- lessons from sewing about making and moving in Reverse.
Jersey City based Nancy Cohen’s work examines resiliency in relation to the environment and the human body. Current projects include Your Water/My Sky, a series of 9 double sided banners commissioned by Summit Public Art and Between Seeing & Knowing, a collaborative installation with Anna Boothe at the Bergstrom Mahler Museum of Glass in Neenah, WI. Her work was recently featured in NJ PBS State of the Arts. In 2022 Cohen was a recipient of the Murray Reich Distinguished Artist Award from NYFA and a Works of Paper Fellowship from the NJ State Council on the Arts.
Casper Leerink originally had two great affections, Music and Technology. After high school, torn between the two, he chose to pursue a career in music. From 2013 until 2017 he studied Piano performance with Sepp Grotenhuis at ArtEZ University of the Arts in Zwolle, resulting in his graduation in July 2017. Because Casper’s interests grew bigger than the piano, he managed to start a second major at ArtEZ in Composition, for which he studied with Alex Manassen and Wilbert Bulsink. After his graduation, Casper moved to Vancouver in Canada to study composition at the Simon Fraser University where he graduated from the Master of Fine Arts with topics in interactive composition and machine learning. In his compositions Casper seized the opportunity to integrate his two interests. Technology in his compositions have an important role. It is used to connect a variety of features into his compositions, like Dance, Theater, Film and even the Audience. With the help of technology these features aren’t a separate entity but rather part of a whole interactive experience.
Xinyue Liu (刘新悦) is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher in fine art. Nostalgia, ever-present in her work, takes form as film, photography, and installation. She works with objects trouvés—archival material and images alike—to examine public memory and family history. Xinyue’s work has been exhibited at the Polygon Gallery, VIFF (XINEMA), and Vancouver Outsider Arts Festival. She holds a BFA in Radio and Television Production from Jilin University and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies from Simon Fraser University. Currently, Xinyue is a doctoral candidate in Fine Art at the University of Oxford.
Kourosh Ghamsari-Esfahani is an Iranian-Canadian composer-violinist, currently based out of San Francsico, California. He has presented at festivals and artist residencies across North America and internationally, including: The Brush Creek Arts Residency in Wyoming, the Arteles International Creative Residency in Finland, and the Montreal Contemporary Music Lab. He holds a Bachelor of Music from Wilfrid Laurier University, and a Master of Fine Arts from Simon Fraser University.
Kourosh's work draws from many different fields: neo-romantic, contemporary-classical, minimalist, electro-acoustic, soundscape, chamber, interdisciplinary, and more. He strives to inhabit the intersections between performance, composition and improvisation.
Amanda Sum is a performer and creator dancing between theatre and music. Recent theatre projects include do you want what i have got? a craigslist cantata (The Cultch), 4 seasons of the East Van Panto (Theatre Replacement), and Chicken Girl (rice&beans). Amanda released her debut album, New Age Attitudes, this fall. As Theatre Replacement’s COLLIDER Artist in Residence, Amanda created New Age Attitudes: Live in Concert which will be presented in full at PushOFF 2023, and at The Cultch in May. Amanda holds a BFA from SFU.