William Ronald Reid Jr. was a Haida artist whose works include jewelry, sculpture, screen-printing, and paintings. Producing over one thousand original works during his fifty-year career, Reid is regarded as one of the most significant Northwest Coast artists of the late twentieth century.
Robert Bringhurst is a Canadian poet, typographer and author. He has translated substantial works from Haida and Navajo and from classical Greek and Arabic. He wrote The Elements of Typographic Style, a reference book of typefaces, glyphs and the visual and geometric arrangement of type. He was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in June 2013.
Alwin Nikolais was an American choreographer, dancer, composer, musician, teacher. He had created the Nikolais Dance Theatre, and was best known for his self-designed innovative costume, lighting and production design. Nikolais gave the world a new vision of dance and was named the "father of multi-media theater."
Barbara Bourget is a dancer, choreographer and the artistic director of Kokoro Dance Theatre Society in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is known for her butoh performances and choreography. Her work has been described as difficult, punishing and uncompromising. She was born in Port Alberni, British Columbia in 1950.
Jean Swanson is a Canadian politician, anti-poverty activist, and writer in Vancouver, British Columbia. She represented the left-wing Coalition of Progressive Electors on Vancouver City Council as one of Vancouver's 10 at-large city councillors from 2018 to 2022.
Catherine Turocy co-founded The New York Baroque Dance Company in 1976, with Ann Jacoby. The NYBDC is dedicated to reconstructing Baroque dances. Catherine Turocy studied historical dance under Ohio State teacher, Shirley Wynne. She has reconstructed and choreographed “over 300 dances and 60 opera-ballets” including numerous Rameau operas, including Les Boréades. She has worked ten years at the Handel Festival in Goettingen, Germany. She has toured the world and made numerous dance videos. As director of the New York Baroque Dance Company, she presents reconstructions of 17th- and 18th-century dances, often in collaboration with Concert Royal, a musical group directed by James Richman that uses period instruments."
Crystal Pite is a Canadian choreographer and dancer. She began her professional dance career in 1988 at Ballet BC, and in 1996 she joined Ballett Frankfurt under the tutelage of William Forsythe. After leaving Ballett Frankfurt she became the resident choreographer of Montreal company Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal from 2001 to 2004. She then returned to Vancouver where she focused on choreographing while continuing to dance in her own pieces until 2010. In 2002 she formed her own company called Kidd Pivot, which produced her original works Uncollected Work (2003), Double Story (2004), Lost Action (2006), Dark Matters (2009), The You Show (2010), The Tempest Replica (2011), Betroffenheit (2015), and Revisor (2019) to date. Throughout her career she has been commissioned by many international dance companies to create new pieces, including The Second Person (2007) for Netherlands Dans Theater and Emergence (2009) for the National Ballet of Canada, the latter of which was awarded four Dora Mavor Moore Awards.
Marian Penner Bancroft is a Canadian artist and photographer based in Vancouver. She is an associate professor at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, where she has been teaching since 1981. She has previously also taught at Simon Fraser University and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She is a member of the board of Artspeak Gallery and is represented in Vancouver by the Republic Gallery.
David MacIntyre is a Canadian composer of opera, music theatre, choral, orchestral and chamber music, and site-specific works in dance and theatre, based in Vancouver. He is a professor of Music Composition at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. His music has been performed in more than thirty countries.
Simone Orlando is a Canadian ballet dancer and choreographer born in Vancouver, British Columbia. Orlando received her early dance training at the Carisbrooke School of Dance, the Vancouver Academy of Dance, and the Goh Ballet Academy. She completed her training at the National Ballet School in Toronto and subsequently joined the National Ballet of Canada in 1989 under the direction of Reid Anderson where she danced a wide range of repertoire from the ballets of John Cranko and Kenneth MacMillan to those of George Balanchine and Glenn Tetley. In 1995, Robert Desrosiers invited her to join Desrosiers Dance Theatre, where she originated roles in several new productions and toured to Brazil and Aruba. In 1996, Orlando joined Ballet British Columbia under the direction of John Alleyne where she danced for twelve years as principal artist, joining the reorganised Ballet BC as Artist in Residence for 2009–10. She has performed in theatres and festivals around the world including The Kennedy Centre, The Joyce Theatre, The Bayerische Staatsoper, The Hong Kong Cultural Centre, Cervantino Festival, Canada Dance Festival, and Ballet Expo Seoul. While dancing with Ballet BC, Orlando was prominently featured in new creations by John Alleyne, garnering accolades for her performances as Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire, Puck in The Faerie Queen, Fate in Carmina Burana, and the Elder in The Rite of Spring. She has also created roles with James Kudelka, Crystal Pite, Dominique Dumais, Mikko Nissenen, and Jean Grand-Maitre and has been featured in the works of William Forsythe, Paul Taylor, Nicolo Fonte, Jiri Kylian, Martha Graham, and Twyla Tharp, among others. Orlando also taught and set repertoire on the dancers of Ballet BC and the pre-professionals in the Ballet BC Mentor Program.
Kidd Pivot, is a contemporary dance theatre company based in Vancouver, Canada. The company, currently comprising eight full-time dancers and several guest artists, is led by its founder and artistic director, Crystal Pite. Since its formation in 2002 Kidd Pivot has toured extensively around the world, presenting several works, many of which have received awards and accolades from the international dance community.
Alvin Erasga Tolentino is a Filipino Canadian choreographer and dance artist, and the founding Artistic Director of Vancouver, British Columbia's Co.ERASGA Dance.
Goh Ballet Academy is a school of classical ballet in Vancouver, British Columbia, founded in 1978 by Chan-hon Goh and Lin Yee Goh.
Gweneth Lloyd, OC was a co-founder of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, a ballet teacher and choreographer.
David Earle is a Canadian choreographer, dancer and artistic director. In 1968 Earle was co-founder and co-artistic director of Toronto Dance Theatre alongside Patricia Beatty and Peter Randazzo, where Earle choreographed new modern dance pieces. In 1996 Earle started his own company called Dancetheatre David Earle where he continues to choreograph new works, to teach, and to create with the next generation of modern dancers. David Earle has received many accolades; a member of the Order of Canada, a recipient of the Jean A. Chalmers Award for Distinction in Choreography, also an honorary doctorate degree from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
Miriam Elaine Adams is a dancer, choreographer, and dance archivist from Toronto. After performing with the National Ballet of Canada, she co-founded 15 Dance Laboratorium with her husband Lawrence Adams. It was the first theatre to present experimental dance in Toronto. In 1983, Miriam and Lawrence launched Encore! Encore! to document the works of six Canadian choreographers from the 1940s and 1950s, and in 1986 they launched a centre for archiving dance and publishing books called Arts Inter-Media Canada/Dance Collection Danse (DCD).
Noam Gagnon is a Canadian dancer. Outside of his work in dance, Gagnon is a certified teacher in pilates and the Franklin method. He is currently an associate dance artist with the National Arts Center in Ottawa and artistic director of Vancouver-based dance company, Vision Impure.
Helen Goodwin was an English-born, British Columbia-based artist, dancer, teacher, and organizer who specialized in dance and choreography. Goodwin was an active member of Vancouver experimental art community in the 1960s and 1970s, organizing and performing at festivals, exhibitions and artist-run centres. She is best known for co-founding Intermedia and for forming TheCo, a dance troupe.
Doris Shadbolt, née Meisel LL. D. D.F.A. was an art historian, author, curator, cultural bureaucrat, educator and philanthropist who had an important impact on the development of Canadian art and culture.
Judith Rose Marcuse is a Canadian dancer and choreographer. She created over 100 choreographic works many of which are focused on community-engaged art for social change. Marcuse's performance and choreographic work has been recognized in Canada and around the world.
