Allies and Friends (November)

She moved from Edmonton, AB to T’karonto to study at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre’s professional training program, graduating in 2019. Following graduation, they travelled to Mexico for a residency with La Escuela Profesional de Danza de Mazatlán. Since then, she has worked with Frog in Hand, Human Body Expression, Kaeja d’Dance, Peggy Baker, the Citadel + Compagnie, the wind in the leaves collective, and Tiger Princess Dance Projects, and has performed in Nextfest, the Toronto and Edmonton Fringe Festivals, InSitu, Dance Ontario DanceWeekend, SummerWorks and the Festival des arts de Saint-Sauveur. 

Mata’s sensibility to inclusion and border stories is due to her eclectic upbringing in three continents before the age of fifteen. Mata’s intimate, dynamic and visceral aesthetic is rooted in traditional Venezuelan dance genres reframed through contemporary expressions. Intersectional, multi-framed community arts and the abolishment of violence against women are some of Mata’s passion. She has intricately weaved these themes in her MFA in Contemporary Choreography and is the foundation for some of her recognitions such as being a recipient of the Metcalf Foundation, a finalist of the Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award and 7 Dora nominations. Mata deeply believes in the arts as a core and tangible mode of sustaining and transforming the paradigms of oppressive tropes to populate a sphere of discourse, play, exploration and possibility.

His stay with Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH) afforded him two prestigious awards – the DTH Scholarship Award and the Maxwell and Muriel Bluck Scholarship Award. Taylor moved to Canada in the early ’90’s and emerged as a leading force in Black Dance. During that period, he turned his focus on training new graduates in theater and dance, at the same time collaborating with the umbrella of dance organization “Dance Immersion”. 

True to his Caribbean roots, his work fuses Modern with Folk, and traditional Ballet in a distinctive style which Taylor describes as “Contemporary Caribbean”. Ronald has successfully pursued a Master of Arts degree at York University. In his capacity as dance educator, Taylor taught at York’s Faculty of Fine Arts and at designated school programs across Ontario, Western Canada, Belize, USA, Africa and parts of the Caribbean. He was also selected to be part of The Djerassi Resident Artists Program in California, a program internationally recognized as one of the eminent artist residency programs for artists of superior talent, who are chosen from a diverse range of backgrounds and geographical locations. 

In June 2019, Ronald Taylor Dance explored/showcased the development of PSYCHOSIS; a collaborative 1hr full work inspired by the investigation of his mental health episode in Canada; pulling into the present, an awareness of adversity, reconciliation and resilience. Connecting relationships between disability, environments and the human spirit, PSYCHOSIS seeks to explore the trauma of ongoing mental health challenges. The World Premiere of PSYCHOSIS will take place in May 2023. 

As a musician and poet, Roula sings and plays qanun (table-harp) and percussion to accompany traditional Arabic songs and original songs created from her Sufi-inspired poems. Deeply interested in ceremony and meaningful transitions, Roula also works as a wedding officiant and a death doula, supporting and empowering individuals and families to expand into areas of greater choice, agency and even beauty when it comes to death care.