Janet Danielson

Sessional Instructor: Music & Sound

E: jrd@sfu.ca

Janet Danielson is a composer whose works have been performed in England, the U.S., and Canada by ensembles ranging from the Vancouver Chinese Instrument Ensemble to the Vancouver Symphony and CBC Radio Orchestras. Her recent commissioned works include an opera, The Marvelous History of Mariken of Nimmigen, commissioned by Music in the Morning; The Occupation, a song collaboration with poet Robert Bringhurst, for baritone, marimba and viol da gamba; and In the Very Highest Place, a setting Wu Li’s poetry for chorus and the Orchid Ensemble (marimba, zheng, erhu) premiered November 2007. Her realization of Verbum Caro, a 17th-century Canadian Ursuline carol, was premiered in Rome at Christmas 2007, and a string quartet for the Royal Society of Canada Symposium on War and Peace in November 2008. She has taught courses related to music theory, analysis, music and culture, and composition at Simon Fraser University and at Regent College, and has authored a text, Basic Organization of Music. Her articles have been published in Musicworks and in the Proceedings of the Asia-Pacific Composers’ League. Danielson is former Associate Artistic Director of Vancouver New Music and ChairAssociation of Canadian Women Composers, and has served on the Executive Council of the Canadian League of Composers. Current commissions include a work for string orchestra and erhu for Vancouver Pro Musica, for whom she is 2010 Composer-in-Residence, and a cello sonata for the 2010 Vancouver Music/Grail conference. She is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre.

Farshid Kazemi

Sessional Instructor: Film

E: farshid_kazemi@sfu.ca

Farshid Kazemi is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the School for the Contemporary Arts, Simon Fraser University. His research interests combine an interdisciplinary and theoretical approach to Film and Media Studies/Film Theory, Iranian Studies, and Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. He holds a Ph.D. in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Edinburgh, with a thesis on Iranian cinema and second wave psychoanalytic film theory titled: The Interpreter of Desires: Iranian Cinema and Psychoanalysis. He has published several articles and book chapters on Iranian cinema, psychoanalytic film theory/feminist film theory in journals such as Camera Obscura. His book on the film A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night will be published by Auteur/Columbia University Press in 2020.

Photo: Micah Henry

Anya Saugstad

Sessional Instructor: Dance

E: asaugsta@sfu.ca

Anya Allegra Saugstad is an emerging dancer and choreographer based in Vancouver BC, on the unceeded territory of the Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh' (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səlílwətaʔ/ Selilwitulh (Ssleil-Waututh), and xwməθkwəyə̓ m (Musqueum) First Nations.

Anya trained at ArtsUmbrella, and holds a BFA in Dance from Simon Fraser University. She also trained at The San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, and in Gaga technique in San Francisco, Israel, and New York. Anya has toured with Action at a Distance with Vanessa Goodman through the USA, Canada, and Germany performing “Graveyards and Gardens” and “Core/Us” (2021-2023).

Anya Saugstad is the Artistic Director of a non profit dance organization called Furious Grace Dance Theatre.

Furious Grace / Anya Saugstad creates live, digital, and site adaptive performance works that foster space for emerging female and non binary artists to tell their stories through movement. Anya is interested in creating vigorous and highly physical movement to express stories that encompass strength, yearning, and urgency. She uses dance to access the wild animal states of being alive, and encourages her collaborators to show rawness and vulnerability as femme presenting bodies in performance. Anya’s site specific work Ocean Roaring, and Moss Body Breathes are inspired by nature, and she creates work that moves others to engage with the earth. These works both question human beings' impact on mother nature, and tell stories about the climate crisis we face.

Furious Grace Dance Theatre's core group of collaborators include female emerging artists Cindy Kao, Daria Mikhaylyuk, Eowynn Enquist, Nasiv Sall, Sabine Raskin, Sophia Saugstad, Shana Wolfe, and Shion Skye Carter. Anya also works closely with Stefan Nazarevich who creates original compositions for many of her works and Vista Point Studios, and MPC to create short films centered around dance on screen.

Anya has been a guest choreographer and created works for LamonDance, ArtsUmbrella, Simon Fraser University, Method Dance Company, and Coastal City Ballet, and upcoming Ballet Edmonton. Anya’s work has been presented through The Dance Deck (Belle Spirale), The Scotiabank Dance Center, Crimson Coast Dance, The Hearth, Dancing on the Edge Festival, The Rotary Center for the Arts, F-O-R-M film Festival, The San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, and Vines Art Festival. Anya has toured her work across BC and to Montreal Quebec. Anya Saugstad is the recipient of the Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award for 2023/24.

www.anyasaugstad.com