Carolina Bergonzoni
Sessional Instructor: Art, Performance & Cinema Studies
Carolina Bergonzoni (she/her) is a dance artist, scholar, and educator.
Originally from Italy, she moved to Vancouver, on unceded Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil- Waututh), and xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) territories, in 2014. Her practices span between dancing, writing, and teaching from the body. She is the Artistic Associate of All Bodies Dance Project.
She holds a BA and MA in Philosophy, an MA in Comparative Media Arts, and a Ph.D. in Education from Simon Fraser University where her research focused on inclusive dance pedagogies. In 2011, she graduated as Dance Educator and Community Engagement Facilitator and, since then, she has been working on building communities of movers and thinkers with people from 0 to 99+ years old. Her choreographic work has been presented at festivals in Canada and Europe, including Vancouver Fringe Festival, Dance in Vancouver, Dancing on The Edge, BC Buds, Vines Arts Festival, and The Dance Centre.
She is passionate about the impact of teaching from the body, and cannot wait to see more educators and movers learn about their body and from their bodies!
Justine A. Chambers
Term Lecturer: Dance + Theatre Performance
Justine A. Chambers is an artist living and working on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her movement based practice considers how choreography can be an empathic practice rooted in collaborative creation, close observation, and the body as a site of a cumulative embodied archive. Privileging what is felt over what is seen, she works with dances ‘that are already there’ – the social choreographies present in the everyday. Her choreographic projects have been presented at Nanaimo Art Gallery, Artspeak, Hong Kong Arts Festival, Art Museum at University of Toronto, Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford College, Agora de la Danse, Festival of New Dance, Mile Zero Dance Society, Dancing on the Edge, Canada Dance Festival, Dance in Vancouver, The Western Front and the Vancouver Art Gallery. She is Max Tyler-Hite’s mother.
Janet Danielson
Sessional Instructor: Music
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.
Emmalena Fredriksson
Term Lecturer: Dance
E: emmalena_fredriksson@sfu.ca
Emmalena Fredriksson is a contemporary dance artist living and working in Vancouver, Canada, as a guest on the ancestral unceded lands of the Coast Salish peoples.
Her practice is defined by choreography as a relational practice in the expanded fields of dance, often collaborating with artists of other disciplines, creating choreographic experiences and dance for social events, film, galleries and performance.
Born in Sweden, she received her training at Balettakademien in Umeå and at SEAD in Austria. Emmalena has presented choreographic work, performed and taught internationally with Daghdha Dance Company (IE), Canaldanse (FR), Malta University (MT), Pact Zollverein (DE), and Falmouth University (UK) among others.
Based in Vancouver since 2013 her work has been presented in Dancing on the Edge, The Dance Centre's Discover Dance Series, Dance in Vancouver's Choreography Walk (curated by Justine A. Chambers), Dance Days (Victoria) and at the Audain Gallery. Commissioned by the National Film Board, she co-created Tidal Traces – a VR 360 dance film together with Nancy Lee in 2017. The film has to date had over 35 international screenings.
Emmalena holds an MFA degree from Simon Fraser University and she regularly teaches at Modus Operandi, Training Society of Vancouver, Harbour Dance Centre and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.
Alana Gerecke
Sessional Instructor: Dance
Alana Gerecke (PhD, Simon Fraser University, 2016) is a settler scholar and dance artist based in Vancouver, on the unceded traditional territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh nations. Her academic and artistic research practices cohere around embodied assembly. Gerecke holds a PhD from Simon Fraser University, where she pursued dissertation research on the urban spatial politics of site-based dance. She has taught at Simon Fraser University, the University of the Fraser Valley, and other institutions, and she recently completed a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship at York University (2016-19).
Gerecke continues to create, perform and publish widely – most recently in Performance Matters Journal, Canadian Theatre Research and The Futures of Dance Studies. She is the mama of two objectively adorable small humans.
Elisa González
Term Lecturer: Film
Elisa Gonzalez is a Toronto-based filmmaker rooted in the fine arts. She holds an MFA in Documentary Media from Ryerson University and a BFA in Photography from Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design. Her work ranges from experimental documentary to video installation that has exhibited internationally. Elisa is a recipient of funding awards from Canada Council for the Arts and the National Film Board of Canada among others. Her recent work explores the inherent structures of power between technology, the environment and the individual through contemporary documentary form.
Martin Gotfrit
Course Supervisor: Music
Areas: Music (improvisation, performance, electro-acoustics), Film (soundtrack related), Theatre (sound design, music), New Media (Interactive systems, installations, theatre).
Often collaborates with other musicians as well as artists from other disciplines such as dance, theatre, film/video, new media and installation art. His work has been presented both locally and internationally. An avid improviser and multi-instrumentalist, he is active in several local music ensembles.
Born Montreal, Quebec. Resident of Vancouver since 1977. Married with two children.
BA Music and Film Joint Major, Concordia University 1974
MA Communications, McGill University 1977
Sustrisno Hartana
Term Lecturer: Music & Sound
Sutrisno Hartana, master of Javanese gamelan music, and shadow puppets, performs internationally throughout Asia, Europe, and North America in both traditional and contemporary works. Mr. Hartana attended the Indonesian Dance Conservatory in Java and received his BA in 1992 from the Indonesian Institute of the Arts (ISI) in Yogyakarta. In 2004, the King of Paku Alaman garnered him the title Mas Lurah Lebda Swara making him a court musician at the Royal Palace in Java. Mr. Hartana holds his MA in Ethnomusicology from the University of British Columbia and completed a PhD at the University of Victoria in the interdisciplinary program. He also directs and teaches gamelan with Victoria’s Busy Island Gamelan
Matt Horrigan
Sessional Instructor: Music & Sound
Matthew Horrigan is a researcher studying audiovisual production cultures, currently dissertating about the movie business of Hollywood North. Matt completed a B.Mus at McGill, an MFA at SFU, a few years as an independent sound artist, and some below-the-line work in the film & television industry. You can find Matt's writing in venues such as Sound Studies, Game Studies, and M/C Journal.
In leisure Matt enjoys observing insects and turtles, especially from a canoe.
Farshid Kazemi
Sessional Instructor: Film
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.
Sophia Laurio
Sessional Instructor: Dance
Sophia “SOSA” Laurio is a Filipina born and raised, interdisciplinary artist and a first-generation immigrant. Sophia embarked on her journey of becoming a full pledged performance artist by training for over a decade under the guidance of educators like Jeri Chien, Victor Tran, Kenny Mugisha (Now or Never Crew), Deni Kang (Black Mamba Crew), Mikhail Venom Moris (Dancehall Donz), Elite Force Crew (NYC), Mr. YouTube (NYC), PyroTechs (NYC) and University professor and Streetdance educator, Moncell Durden (NYC).
Sophia is well versed in freestyle dance, choreography and has won and judged battles across the lower mainland. In 2016, Sophia became a cast member of Vancouver’s first authentic Dancehall theatre production under the direction of Ketch di’ Vybz’ Mikhail Moris and Judy Madaraz. During this production, she was invited to become a member of Vancouver’s leading art and fashion collective ‘Immigrant Lessons’. Since then, Sophia has traveled and performed on international stages like RAW Artist Emerge Fashion Show in Los Angeles, California, the Bronx Academy of Arts & Dance in New York City and the Manila Fringe Festival in the Philippines.
Sophia currently trains in a plethora of styles outside of Street Dance such as contemporary, movement exploration, GAGA, theatre, acting and creative writing. Through her most recent work, Sophia explores her identity and the complexities of coexisting and being featured in prestige theatre and dance platforms like Dancing on the Edge, Vancouver Fringe Festival, Manila Fringe Festival, Daloy Dance Company, Co. ERASGA and Emily Carr University. This has ignited her to unravel her purpose as an artist, student, director and leader and to give back to her own community by founding a non-for-profit organization called “Barangay Project Society.” Focused on providing mentorship in art & dance education, free to BIPOC youth and emerging artists to inspire and help realizing their dreams.
In her classes, Sophia shares her experiences of navigating through the arts as a visible minority and specifically as a woman of colour. She pushes the Hip Hop mantra “Love, Peace, Unity and Having Fun”. With this, she aims to guide the next generation of young artists to grow and mould their voices to be the leaders of their communities.
Kelly Lycan
Sessional Instructor: Visual Art
Kelly Lycan is a photo-based artist who works and resides in Vancouver BC. Lycan’s work investigates the way objects and images are placed and displayed in the world and the cycle of value they go through. Re-purposing and re-contextualizing ordinary things is a consistent part of her practice. She researches the contrast between experience and reproduction translating this through sculpture and photography while referencing collections and methods of display found in museums, institutional gift shops, and department stores. Lycan reinterprets objects through strategies of exhibition, blurring the distinction between content and style, production and mass-consumption, and originals verses copies. These ideas create composites of vernacular collections, art history, contemporary art and design; paradigms collide revealing similarities, influences and failures. She employs photography and sculpture in order to engage them beyond medium specificity into a fluid quality of relations that alter their characteristics; the real becomes replica, representation becomes abstract, and image becomes object.
Lycan studied still photography at Ryerson Polytechnical University, Toronto; received her BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax; and holds an MFA from the University of California, Santa Barbra and Los Angeles. Her solo exhibitions include Club 29/Approximations Rasht 29, Ag Galerie (2018); More Than Nothing, Burrard Art Foundation, Vancouver, BC (2016); Little Glow, Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto, ON (2015-16); Underglow, Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver, BC (2014); Autobiography for No One, Simon Fraser University Gallery, Burnaby, BC (2014); Bronze Tinfoil Ball, OR Gallery, Vancouver, BC(2011); White Hot, Gallery TPW, Toronto, ON (2009); and Save Now, CSA Gallery, Vancouver, BC. (2008). Lycan was an active member of the artist collective Instant Coffee from 2005 to 2015 and together they have participated in frequent national and international exhibitions, including: Magic Hour, Nikkei Art Gallery, Burnaby, BC; Pink Noise, Kamloops Art Gallery, Kamloops, BC; Bunker Project, Incheon Art Gallery, Incheon, South Korea; Feeling So Much Yet Doing So Little, Western Front, Vancouver, BC; and Disco Fallout Shelter at Subvision Hamburg, Germany and Toronto Sculpture Garden. She is a 2016 recipient of Vancouver’s VIVA award.
Margarida Macieira
Sessional Instructor: Dance + Theatre Performance
Margarida is a freelance dance artist, Gaga teacher, and event producer working primarily in London (UK), Tel Aviv (Israel), Lisbon (Portugal) and Canada.
As a dance artist, Margarida has performed with companies such as Gil Kerer Dance, Jean Abreu Dance, James Cousins Company and Company Chameleon. Since March 2018, in partnership with Nicolas Ventura, Margarida is co-director and production manager of Addo Platform, developing dance workshops and regular classes in Vancouver, Toronto and Lisbon. Meanwhile, she is also creating her own work as a choreographer and collaborator and enjoys delving into multidisciplinary projects. Born in Lisbon, Portugal, she studied ballet, Graham technique, choreography and general Arts at Academia de Dança Contemporânea de Setúbal. In her last year of studies, she joined Quorum Ballet Company as an apprentice. In 2013, she moved to London to study at London Contemporary Dance School, graduating with a 1st BA (honors) in dance.
During 2018/2019, she undertook the Gaga Teacher Training program in Tel Aviv, Israel, supported by GDA Foundation in Portugal. The individualized program is under the artistic direction of Bosmat Nossan, Saar Harari, and Ohad Naharin.
Billy Marchenski
Sessional Instructor: Theatre Performance
Billy graduated from the School for the Contemporary Arts at SFU. He has been performing in Vancouver for over 20 years in Indie Theatre and Contemporary dance. Billy was the recipient of the Sydney J Risk prize for his show, slowpoke, inspired by a visit to the Chernobyl Exclusion zone in 2011. He is a member of the Butoh group “gigamal.”
Will Meadows
Sessional Instructor: Film
Senior Post Production Instructor at Vancouver Film School. Lead Audio Designer for 4 years with a professional website design team. Chief Engineer for 7 years in a commercial studio. Focus on creative sound manipulation with specific attention to quality. Experience with surround formats and mastering; music and sound design.
Kathleen Mullen
Sessional Instructor: Film | Skoden Indigenous Film Festival
Kathleen Mullen has contributed to the programming, planning, and execution of film and art festivals for 18+ years. She has programmed films for Toronto International Film Festival, Hot Docs, Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival, Planet in Focus, Provincetown International Film Festival, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and many other festivals internationally.
Currently she is the Festival Director of Seattle Queer Film Festival overseeing the programming and operations of the annual festival and a mentor and festival consultant for two 4th year film students at Simon Fraser University who are starting up Skoden Indigenous Film Festival. In addition, Kathleen is working with the Whistler Film Festival, Vancouver Latin American Film Festival, and most recently with the Vancouver Queer Arts Festival. She runs her own consulting company, Letter K Media, which supports filmmakers, festivals, and arts organizations with programming, arts administration, and story consulting.
Kathleen Mullen has written and directed the short films Button OUT!, you wash my skin with sunshine, Sleep Lines, and Still Life with Butterfly. Her award-winning mid-length documentary Breathtaking screened internationally and won the Audience Award at the Canadian Labour International Film Festival.
Kathleen has a Master of Arts from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada and a Master of Fine Arts in Film Production from York University in Toronto, Canada.
Kimberly Phillips
Sessional Instructor: Art, Performance & Cinema Studies
With a Ph.D. in Art History, Visual Art & Theory from the University of British Columbia, Kimberly Phillips is a committed arts leader, educator and writer of Welsh-Irish settler ancestry, based on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm, Skwxwú7mesh and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh peoples. For the past 15 years, in her roles as gallery director, curator and teacher, she has worked to amplify the voices of under-acknowledged artists and practitioners, to ethically vision and build organizational capacity, and to create meaningful and unexpected ways for contemporary artists and their publics to find one another. Formerly the Director/Curator at Access Gallery (2013-2017) and the Curator at the Contemporary Art Gallery (2017-2020), she is the Director of SFU Galleries.
Brendan Prost
Sessional Instructor: Film
In the last decade, Brendan Prost has been quietly emerging as one of the most prolific young filmmakers in Canada, with an impassioned and eclectic body of work that includes four features and a dozen shorts. His character-driven work is characterized by powerful performances, a uniquely earnest spirit, and a thematic interest in alienation, longing, and vulnerability.
Brendan’s films have screened at major international and Oscar-qualifying film festivals like the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Nashville Film Festival, Rhode Island International Film Festival, Vancouver International Film Festival, Ashland Independent Film Festival, Indie Memphis, Inside Out - Toronto LGBT Film Festival, and Telefilm Canada’s Not Short on Talent Program at Cannes. And, been broadcast on networks like CBC and Hulu.
Brendan graduated with distinction from Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts, is an alumni of the Directors’ Lab at the Canadian Film Centre, recently completed his Master of Fine Arts in Film and Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia.
When not creating his own work, Brendan teaches and mentors young directors at several film schools and colleges.
Carr Sappier
Sessional Instructor: Film | Skoden Indigenous Film Festival
Carr Sappier (Wolastoqew) is a two-spirited multi-genre filmmaker from Neqotkuk who just returned home from Vancouver after receiving a BFA in film at Simon Fraser University. Their passion for filmmaking stems from an aspiration to decolonize the screen, and to offer an alternative and non-binary perspective of Wolastoqew storytelling. Blending and morphing different genre styles and film mediums provides them with methods to express their two-spirited and Wolastoqew identity. While still a student in the film area at SFU's School for the Contemporary Arts, they co-founded the Skoden Indigenous Film Festival in 2019 with fellow SCA student Grace Mathisen.
Gurp Sian
Sessional Instructor: Dance
I am a Dancer, Musician, TV/Radio Host, Actor/Producer and the Executive Director of South Asian Arts Society. I’ve had the opportunity to participate in over a dozen international Bhangra competitions as a Bhangra dancer and play the Dhol drum at the JUNO Awards with Russell Peters and during the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. I continue to teach Bhangra & Dhol to adults and children at my own studio and at festivals, schools and universities across BC. In September 2010, my business partner Raakhi Sinha and I taught North America’s first ever University accredited Bhangra dance class at Simon Fraser University.
My organization, South Asian Arts Society, also produces theatre and comedy dance dramas. In 2009, The Georgia Straight voted ‘Bollywood Wedding’ as the “Best Outdoor Interactive Theatre Event” of the year.
Aside from performing arts, I co-host a popular TV show called “Punjabi Vibes“, which addresses pressing issues in the South Asian community via comedy sketches. I am also a Radio Host/Producer and Punjabi Music Director at Spice Radio. Monday – Friday from 5-7pm, I co-host a live sports talk show called “Gopi & the Gora” with my co-host Eddy (aka The Big E). Tune in!
My latest endeavour is a global percussion group called Sticks n’ Skins.
Stefan Smulovitz
Sessional Instructor: Music & Sound
From Vancouver to Los Angeles, New York to Quebec City, award-winning composer, collaborator, violist and laptop artist Stefan Smulovitz has created more than 50 live scores for films and performed with many of today's leading improvisors including Fred Frith, Evan Parker and Uri Caine. Stefan has been commissioned by the Vancouver Symphony, the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival and numerous instrumental and vocal ensembles. His collaborative creations have been developed for theatre, dance, art installations, and DVD-ROMs, and his game-changing software -- Kenaxis -- is used by musicians around the world.
MFA - Simon Fraser University
Alex Tedlie-Stursberg
Sessional Instructor: Visual Art
Alex Tedlie-Stursberg is a multidisciplinary artist and educator working across various mediums with a key focus on sculpture and installation. His work has been exhibited in galleries across North America and Europe; recent exhibitions include, Mass Residue, with Field Contemporary, Vancouver, BC, (2019) and Utopos, with Deluge Contemporary Art, Victoria, BC (2020). This year he was awarded a Digital Originals grant by the Canada Council for the Arts and presented Atmospheric Supply; an online exhibition of activated sculptures (2020). In the past Stursberg has been employed as a Sessional Instructor with SFU Contemporary Arts and the Langara College Visual Arts Program.
In 2021, he will be unveiling public artworks for Ballard Fine Art and will be presenting work at Keep in Touch Gallery, Seoul, Korea, TRAPP Projects, Vancouver, BC, and Plumb Gallery, Toronto, ON.
Sessional Instructors & Lecturers
Teaching Assistants / Tutor Markers
- CA 104: Kittie Cooper, Jason Kennedy, Matthew Toffoletto
- CA 118: Lauren Crazy Bull
- CA 131: Matthew Horrigan
- CA 135: Ghazal Majidi, Daisy Thompson, Matthew Toffoletto
- CA 137B: Lauraine Mak, Elizabeth Oakley
- CA 140: Yuxiao (Juliet) Li
- CA 142: Shauna-Kaye Brown, Edward Sembatya
- CA 144: Simon Overstall
- CA 146: Jami Reimer
- CA 149: Roman Dubrule, Mena El Shazly, Niloufar Samadi, Shervin Zarkalam
- CA 161: Taryn Walker
- CA 171: salome nieto
- CA 246/446: Jami Reimer
- CA 261: Cody Tolmie
- CA 265/365: Douglas Watt
- CA 269/369: Douglas Watt
- CA 285: Irfan Brkovic
- CA 319W: Casey Wei
- CA 357W: Dale MacDonald
- CA 359: Torien Cafferata
- CA 361: Cody Tolmie
- CA 375: Alexandra Caprara
- CA 386: Christophe Devos
- CA 450: Kevin Jesuino
- CA 461: Taryn Walker
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