A graduate of Environmental Studies at UW, Tanya Williams is a context artist with a passion for dancing with systems… in community, on the land, and in the body. She has been facilitating, directing, creating, and performing for over 17 years, drawing on her experience in Forum, Playback, site-specific, environmental, and physical theatre, visual art, puppetry, movement and sound improvisation, choreography, modern dance, Aikido, Contact Improvisation, The Five Rythmns, Dynamic Structural Integration bodywork, Alexander Technique movement education, organic farming and intentional living. Her adventures find her creating environmental dance film on seashores and in canyons, creating collaborative community theatre in buses, mills, malls, alleyways, community centres, performing at the Toronto Fringe Fest of Independent Dance Artists, Contemporary Art Forum of Kitchener and Area, The Festival of Interactive Physics in Toronto, the Guelph Contemporary Dance Festival, and with The MT Space, and Flush Ink Productions. She is co-founder of the Ontario Region Contact Jam and The WARMER Project.
James Gordon is a well-known prolific song-writer, and, it is less known that he is an incredible improviser, and collaborator with musicians and dancers alike!
Based in Guelph, Ontario, he is known to many North Americans as the founder of Canada’s premier folk group TAMARACK. With this durable trio he toured every corner of the continent, recorded fourteen albums, and made countless television and radio appearances. He has become well-known for his original songs about Canada’s identity and heritage. He was a regular songwriting contributor to the CBC radio programmes “Ontario Morning” and “Basic Black”. He has also released numerous solo albums for adults and children, composed works for symphony orchestras, and written music for theatre, dance and film. His songs have been recorded by a number of other artists including The Cowboy Junkies, Melanie Doane, Hilary Spencer, Al Simmons, Ian Bell and James Keelaghan.
Todd Schiedel is also an incredible songwriter and improviser on cello, guitar and percussion. He teaches in the public school system by day and moonlights as a beekeeper.