ROUNDHOUSE COMMUNITY DANCERS
Community-engaged dance residencies at the Park Board bring together non-professional movers of all ages, sizes, dance abilities and cultural backgrounds to work alongside professional dance artists creating, practicing and performing dance. They are working collaborations between professional dance artists and community members who might not think of themselves as dancers and choreographers. Community-engaged dance recognizes all participants as important contributors to the collaborative process – together, artists and participants explore creative movement and develop work that is important to them.
Roundhouse Community Dancers
Established in 2000, The RH Community Dancers is a constant, ever changing group of community participants that comes together to learn about their bodies and how they move – and to dance! They are united by a shared fearlessness and playfulness when it comes to exploring the body, mind and emotion through dance. Over the years they have worked with dance artists in diverse practices including contemporary dance, clowning, aerial dance and flamenco. Artists who have worked with this group include Barbara Bourget, Rosario Ensor, Jai Govinda, Karen Jamieson, Julie Lebel, Donna Redlick, Alvin Tolentino and many others. Currently, the Roundhouse Community Dancers are working with artists Luciana D’Anunciação and Kelly McInnes.
Artist Biographies
Gratefully based on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, Kelly McInnes is driven to explore the expressive, transformative power of movement through her work as choreographer, performer and facilitator.
With an artistic approach prioritizing research, creation and performance, Kelly’s choreographic practice is concerned with embodying the socio-political and imagining ways of being that inspire collective healing. Often multi-disciplinary, collaborative and site specific, she explores the complex relationships of body, community and earth.
Kelly’s work has been presented throughout Canada and in Mexico and Germany. She received the Choreographic Award at the 2019 Vancouver International Dance Festival for her work SHINY. As a performer, Kelly has danced the works of EDAM Dance, MACHiNENOiSY, Restless Productions, Out Innerspace Dance Theatre, 605 collective, LINK Dance/Gail Lotenberg, Metal Dog, Chick Snipper, Anne Cooper, Olivia Davies/O.Dela Arts, Daina Ashbee, Sammy Chien, Jacinte Armstrong & Ashley Whitehead.
Community-engagement is integral to Kelly’s practice. In addition to her residency co-leading Roundhouse Community Dancers, she is director and co-facilitator of Epoch Youth Project. Kelly is a member of Pressed Paradise collective, focusing on activating public and unconventional spaces with performance, alongside Arash Khakpour and Heather Lamoureux.
Luciana D’Anunciação is a dance artist and choreographer whose works has been exhibited/performed in institutions internationally such as Vancouver Fringe Festival (Vancouver), Shooting gallery Series (Vancouver), Recife International Dance Festival (Brazil, 2017/2016) Vizualeyez Festival (Edmonton, Canada, 2015), Perfomance Biennale Deformes (Santiago, Chile – 2014), European Performance Art Festival (Poland – 2011).
She has also danced for other choreographer’s works such as Kelly McInnes’s SHINY at the Vancouver International Dance Festival 2019; Emmaleana Fredrickson and Arash Khakpour’s Untitled Distances; and Daisy Thompson’s Remarks on Being.
Her works consider the body as an instrument of creative expression in connection with the other and with the world in a poetic and political way. She is interested in the dynamic between spectacle and ritual, rational and intuitive, individual and collective.
She holds a master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies in Arts from Simon Fraser University and has a background in somatic dance practices, contact improvisation, improvisation in dance, butoh, dances from the African diaspora, physical theatre and clown.
