Meet the Co-Choreographers
AT THE EPICENTRE OF INTERNATIONAL CREATION/PRODUCTION The Impossible Has Already Happened you will find two dance artists, Clair O’Neil (New Zealand) and Jennifer Mascall (Canada), working in close collaboration. The Canadian Premiere and Western Canadian tour injects O’Neil into the performing ensemble.
JENNIFER MASCALL
(she/her/hers/they/them/theirs)
Jennifer Mascall Photo Credit Yukiko Onley
Canadian choreographer, teacher, improviser, mentor, and advocate for the art form.
Mascall, a first-generation settler of Norman/Celt descent, is a ceaseless investigator and an unquenchable source of ideas. She and her over 200 works have received many awards and continue to challenge dancers and audiences. As a committed dance innovator, practitioner, educator, mentor, and advocate, she encourages new generations of artists through collaboration, creation, choreographic residencies, intensives, and dialogue.
Jennifer Mascall’s somatic movement inquiry is informed by studies with two American master teachers Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and Linda Putnam.
MascallDance has flourished since 1982 http://www.mascalldance.ca. Prior to !982 Mascall had an international career as a solo improvisor. She co-founded the collectives EDAM, GRID, and TIDE. Early interests were written dances, which developed into Dial A Dance phone in dance orders and Footnotes, an anthology containing the written notes of 60 choreographers. She has received the Canada 125 Confederation Commemorative Medal, the Clifford E. Lee Choreographic Award, the Jacqueline Lemieux Prize, a Dora Mavor Moore Award, a Jessie Richardson Award, the Ann O’Connor Award, International Woman’s Day Award, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival Best Performers Award (The Brutal Telling), the F.A.N.S. Distinguished Artist Award, and an Isadora for outstanding contribution to dance in B.C.
CLAIRE O’NEIL
Claire O’Neil Photo Credit: Ruthie Stoeffels
New Zealand Choreographer, Artistic Director, Movement Educator
For over 20 years, Claire has been an international performer, choreographer and dance educator. She lived in Belgium for a decade and worked with some of Europe's most prestigious contemporary dance companies. In 2016 she achieved a Masters in Dance with first-class honours from the University of Auckland. Claire has researched, experienced and integrated various forms of contemporary dance and related physical practice, movement systems, social philosophy and somatic inquiries such as Laban, Axis Syllabus, Feldenkrais, Body Weather, Body Mind Centering, yoga, Contact Improvisation and Hanna Somatics.
As the Artistic Director of Fidget Collective, she has created, collaborated, and presented over 35 performances. Her performance works have won awards (Tempo Festival 2008 'Best Choreography from an Established Choreographer' for MTYland; Wellington Fringe Festival 'Best Dance Production 2015' for Just Between Us, and has received several grants and scholarships furthering her investigations in the field of contemporary dance.
Claire features in Sue Healy's award-winning dance documentary "Virtuosi' (2012). She is currently doing teacher training in Somatic Movement Education in the tradition of Thomas Hanna, whilst researching sustainability in the arts, artist well-being and contemporary dance ecologies for her practice-led PhD study with the University of Auckland.