Irma Villafuerte is a Dora nominated dance artist and educator based in Tkarón:to from Nahuat Territory Kuskatan, post-colonial El Salvador. She is the co-founder of CinnaMoon Collective which premiered the Dora nominated “Surrendered Spirits” in May 2024. She was a finalist for the Emerging Artist award with the Toronto Arts Foundation in 2021. She’s been part of festivals such as Night Shift 2020 Presented by the Citadel & Compaigne, Fall for Dance North’s Open Studio, The Rhubarb Festival, DanceWeekend Ontario, Aluna Theatre’s Panamerican Routes Festival, Panamania’15, 12th Bienal de la Habana, Vanguardia Dance Projects, and internationaly in the Caribbean, Latin American and the USA. Performing works by Kaha:wi Dance Theatre, Jaberi Dance Theatre, Kaeja d’Dance, Victoria Mata Productions, Teatro Linea de Sombra, Aria Evans, and Alejandro Ronceria. Her passion for social justice is the driving force for creation in Irma’s choreographic and performance work.

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Margarita Soria (they/them) is a Tkarón:to/Toronto-based dance artist, who is finally learning how to skateboard. They have Andinx and Irish/Slovakian settler roots. They are learning to speak Quechua Chanka, South Bolivian Quechua, as well as the Norte Potosí variety, which their family speaks. Their work explores themes of escaping time and dance as a “memory projector”. As a visual artist, they use impulse and distortion to build a playground where ancestral memory and desire can meet. They have completed residencies in Whitehorse, YT (the Heart of Riverdale) and in Oaxaca, Mexico (Pocoapoco).

 

Nickeshia Garrick is a settler on the stolen land of Tkaronto and has performed on this land for over 25 years. They are unapologetically a Black, Queer Artist, who believes in the healing power of breath through raw emotion and movement. Nickeshia has had the honour of training with Sean McLeod (New York) to achieve her certification in Sean McLeod’s Reinforced Motor Function Technique®, RMF®. Her extensive dance training includes Bakari E. Lindsay, Arsenio Andrade, Rob Kitsos, Peter Bingham, and Christopher House. Nickeshia has received the privilege of performing in pieces by TDT, Tara Butler, Kaeja d’ Dance, Serge Bennathan, James Kudelka, Ballet Jorgen, and the Newton Moraes Dance Theatre. Nickeshia is a Dora Mavor Moore, winning and multi-nominated artist who holds a BFA in Dance from Simon Fraser University and is a Co-Founder of CinnaMoon Collective which premiered the Dora nominated Surrendered Spirits in May 2024.

 

Jessica Zepeda is a de-indigenized performance artist from Tkaronto (Treaty13) with roots from Kuskatan, post-colonial El Salvador and focuses on collaborations with Salvadoran artists. Jessica has produced/starred in the short film Sinvergüenzilla in First Kiss (Official Selection: 31st Inside Out LGBTQ Film Festival) and starred in the short film Saturday Fuego Diablo (Official Selection: Sivar en Cortos 2022), both Directed by Anita Abbasi. Currently, Jessica is working on a piece called mi historia que no es única (working title), synthesizing recorded audio of their father’s story of defying borders and blending his retelling with movement and fiction.

 

Victoria Mata is a Venezuelan-Canadian settler in Tkarón:to. Poly-lingual choreographer, dance artist and activist with a background in expressive arts therapy. Mata’s career was first sculpted by pedagogic, self-directed training, which proceeded with training under internationally renowned choreographers. Mata’s sensibility to

inclusion and border stories is due to her eclectic upbringing in three continents before the age of fifteen. 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 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 core and tangible mode of sustaining and transforming the paradigms of oppressive tropes to populate a sphere of discourse, play, exploration, and possibility.