Morrow | 910 Richards Street, Suite 204
Sept 4 – 7, 2025
in the wake of a sleeping machine is an ensemble work researching the relationship between collective movement patterns, light, colour, and interactive soft sculptures to architect, refract, and transform space and time. Expressing the vitality of community connection that challenges the consumption-driven, individualist system we are embedded in, this performance takes an abstract approach to explore how a community can work together to respond to change, adapt, and continue moving forward.
The image begins with a rhythmic ensemble, a conjoined globular form; each body a cog in a machine, unaware of their dependence on one another. They’ve moved this way for years; the light is just now illuminating this static machine. One cog breaks out, shattering the cluster. In its ruin, each piece gains sentience.
in the wake of a sleeping machine opens 7pm on Thursday, September 4th at Morrow, 910 Richards Street, Suite 204. Tickets, showtimes, more information about the venue can be found here:
Choreography
Shion Skye Carter
Performers
Kaya Tsurumi, danielle Mackenzie Long, Shana Wolfe, Kayla DeVos
Lighting Design
Andie Lloyd
Original music
Sapphire Haze
Outside eye
Erika Mitsuhashi
Apprentice
Liz Kiss
Props
studio molo
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Shion Skye Carter (she/they) is a dance artist originally from Gifu, Japan, based in Vancouver, Canada on the unceded, traditional lands of the Coast Salish peoples. Through hybridizing choreography with heritage art forms like calligraphy, altering physical spaces using materiality, and creating movement with a sensitive intensity, Shion’s artistic practice investigates identity and reflects on the complex human experience. Recent presentations include b12 free radicals (Berlin), Tangente (Montréal), Live Art Dance (Halifax), Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), and L’AiR Arts Atelier 11 (Paris). They’ve performed with companies including Action at a Distance (Vanessa Goodman), Furious Grace Dance Theatre (Anya Saugstad), Wen Wei Dance, plastic orchid factory, and Odd Meridian Arts (Ziyian Kwan). Shion holds a BFA in Dance from SFU, and is the recipient of the Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award (2021) and the Chrystal Dance Prize (2023).
danielle Mackenzie Long (they/them) seeks to use new media and film to liberate gender non-conforming dance artists to create work that surpasses gendered bodies through various means of visual presentation and audience access. Their creative practice has been nurtured through engagements with artists and organizations such as Action at a Distance/Vanessa Goodman, Shion Skye Carter, self checkout/Lamont, FORM, New Works, Company 605, and Toronto Dance Theatre among others. danielle holds gratitude and appreciation to work on and be held by the stolen and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.
Kaya Tsurumi (she/her) is a freelance dancer, dance filmmaker, and choreographer. She has danced in projects across Vancouver, New York, and Japan, collaborating with Sidra Bell Dance New York, Ziyian Kwan/Odd Meridian Arts, and Conan Amok, among others. Her choreography has been presented at Boombox and at dance film festivals across Canada, including F-O-R-M’s commissioned film program. Kaya received her formative training from Arts Umbrella and Modus Operandi.
Kayla DeVos (she/they) is a human being made of approximately 7 octillion (7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) atoms residing on the ancestral land of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh territories (Vancouver, BC). Kayla organizes their atoms to laugh, grieve, drink decaf coffee, rest, create dance, hike, and imagine new futures to resource artists and their relationships to material resources through bookkeeping and somatic financial education. My practices are deeply influenced by phenomenology, and its reflection of an indigenous worldview that confirms our inseparability from the world around us; I find myself in the Other.
Shana 愛 Wolfe (she/her) is a Japanese-Canadian freelance dance artist based on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. She has collaborated with local companies including Company 605, OURO Collective, Dance Novella and Inverso Productions, as well as independent artists such as Cindy Mochizuki, Raven Grenier, Shion Skye Carter and Anya Saugstad. Thanks to these amazing artists, she’s had the privilege to perform in festivals both locally and internationally. Shana is also currently pursuing Kinesiology at Langara College.
Presented in partnership with Odd Meridian Society and Powell Street Festival Society, thanks to generous support from the Canada Arts Presentation Fund, administered by the Department of Canadian Heritage.
