BLOOM 2024
WELCOME
to
BLOOM
2024
Choreographer + Performer:
BILLY MARCHENSKI
Adjectives:
Milku, buttery, grassy
Tea:
Floating Scent Iron Buddha
Wine:
D'Arenberg Money Spider Roussanne McLaren Vale, Australia
Photo: Winonah Estrañero
Choreographer:
MARIO MATIAS
Performer:
Juan Ainslie
Adjectives:
Disillusioned, hopeless, hopeful
Tea:
Wuyi Red Tunic Oolong
Wine:
Finca Cuarta Mencia Ribera Sacra, Spain
Based in the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations (Vancouver, Canada), Mario Matias is a Queer, Filipino-Indigenous (Igorot), choreographer, movement artist, and dance educator. Mario has trained in a wide array of styles including Hip-Hop, Punking, Afro and Commercial Choreography. He started his formal dance journey in 2008 with PraiseTEAM Studio in Surrey, BC. With the desire to further his vocabulary within the dance world, he co-founded Epiphany Dance Crew and Epiphany Workshops just a year after starting his formal training. In 2012 Mario joined Studio 604 in Burnaby, BC and a year later he brought Epiphany to the studio where it became a competitive dance company. He led the company to compete at many local and national competitions; such as World of Dance Vancouver and The Canadian Hip-Hop Championships. In 2015, Mario travelled and lived in Auckland, New Zealand, where he trained with various street dance companies and studios. Later moving to Auckland in 2017, he was mentored by Sunny Sun, a former member of The Royal Family Dance Crew. He also lived in Melbourne, Australia, where he trained under Gina Micheal, one of Australia’s leading choreographers. Mario has also travelled to Los Angeles, San Francisco (USA), Toronto (Ontario), and Calgary (Alberta) for training. Mario graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Leadership and a Minor in Communications from Trinity Western University. In 2018/2019 he co-founded Agape; TWU’s first competitive dance team. He led the team to compete at The Academy collegiate dance competition in Toronto—Agape was the first collegiate-based street dance team from western Canada to compete in Ontario’s established university competition circuit. Later that year, Mario was hired by the university to lead the Spartans Dance Program. He was the director of the program from 2019 to 2020. In 2021, Mario joined Afrobeats Van, under Isaac (Izo) Gasangwa where he trained heavily in Afro dance styles. In 2023, Mario returned to New Zealand to continue learning from notable choreographers and instructors from the Auckland dance community.
@ibaloi.wanderer
Photo: Jae Woo Kang
Choreographer
ALEXA SOLVEIG MARDON
Collaborator + Performer
Shahir Krishnaswamy
Collaborator + Performer
Rhyan McCorkindale
Collaborator + Costume Designer
Jae Woo Kang
Text
Alexa, Rhye and Shahir
Additional Support
Reid Jackson, Anna Wang-Albini, Erika Mitsuhashi, and CHIPS Collective.
Adjectives:
Ancient, heavenly, babylike
Tea:
Organic Mao Jian
Wine:
Tiberio Trebbiano D'Abruzzo Abruzzo, Italy: fresh light white wine with citrusy, pear, rosemary
Alexa Solveig Mardon is an artist co-creating and seeking spaces for imperfect ritual, queer fantastical myth-making, and multi-sensorial solidarity across difference. Alexa’s work takes many forms including stage performance, poetry, biodynamic craniosacral therapy, movement classes for frontline support workers with Rianne Svelnis, and dreamwork + prophecy practices. As a queer settler artist living in collapse times, Alexa’s work and life are invested in the creation and sustenance of webs of support, enoughness and transformation with collaborators, neighbours and more than human entities. Alexa’s work has been presented nationally by Western Front, The Dance Centre, OFFTA (Montreal,) Boombox Vancouver, PS: We are All Here (Toronto), Kinetic Studios (Halifax), Surrey Art Gallery, and VIVO Media Arts Centre. They are one half of the creation duo Mardon + Mitsuhashi, and are enfolded into the multidisciplinary collective/chosen family/gay cult CHIPS Collective (Cloven Hooves in Perpetual Sorcery).
@movement_study
Photo: Jon-Christian Ashby
