June 3/5/7: Vanessa Goodman
In Fiction by David Cooper
Class Description: Exploring what is real and what is imagined, Vanessa's class plays with the possibility of the body’s capacity. We will work through anatomical organization and curiosity of state. This class begins with guided TLC for the body and moves into working with generative systems preparing your body for the day ahead.
Vanessa Goodman respectfully acknowledges that she lives, works and creates on the ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō, Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations. She holds a BFA from Simon Fraser University and is the artistic director of Action at a Distance Dance Society. Vanessa is attracted to art that has a weight and meaning beyond the purely aesthetic and uses her choreography as an opportunity to explore the human condition. She has received several awards and honours, including The Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award (2013); The Yulanda M. Faris Scholarship (2017/18); The Chrystal Dance Prize (2019); The Schultz Endowment from Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (2019); and the "Space to Fail" program (2019/20) in New Zealand, Australia and Vancouver. Vanessa's work has been presented in Vancouver by DanceHouse, SFU Woodwards, Music on Main, The Firehall Arts Centre, The Dance Centre, The Chutzpah! Festival and The Shadbolt Centre for the Arts.
Presentations further afield include Tanzmesse (Germany), Tanz Bremen (Germany), Third Angle (Portland), Brain Webb Dance (Edmonton) Fluid Festival (Calgary), Kinetic Studio (Halifax), The Dance Made in Canada Festival (Toronto), On the Boards (Seattle), Risk/Reward Festival (Portland), Offset Dance Fest (Brooklyn), Switch Lab (Bucharest), L1 Festival (Budapest), Estorgenuis (New York), BioFriction/ FACTT (Lisbon) and The Bienal Internacional de Dança Do Ceará (Brazil). Vanessa has been artist-in-residence at Cutivamos Cultura/BioFriction (Portugal), The Dance Centre, Dance Victoria, Harbourfront Centre, The Shadbolt Centre and The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, where she was also on faculty. Recently, Vanessa presented work and was a facilitator for Trinity Laban's 2020 Co-Lab Project (London). Commissions include works for Alexis Fletcher, Springboard Dansé Montréal, Votive Dance, Lamon Dance, Modus Operandi and The SFU rep class. This past season the company premiered two new works, "Core/Us" and "Tuning". Upcoming touring includes "Graveyards and Gardens" with Caroline Shaw in Canada, the USA and Europe.