Sessional Instructors & Lecturers
Aram Bajakian
Term Lecturer: Music & Sound
E: aram_bajakian@sfu.ca
The music of guitarist and composer Aram Bajakian music has been called “a masterpiece” (fRoots), “shape-shifting” (FreeJazzCollective), and “sometimes delicate, sometimes punishing” (Chicago Reader). As a guitarist, “the virtuosic jack of all trades” (Village Voice) has toured extensively with Lou Reed, Madeleine Peyroux, John Zorn and Diana Krall. From 2018-2021, Bajakian served as the New Music Curator at Western Front in Vancouver, one of Canada’s leading artist-run centers for contemporary art and new music. Bajakian received his Bachelor of Music degree (Summa Cum Laude) from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he studied with Dr. Yusef Lateef. He holds a Master of Arts Degree in Music Education from Teachers College, Columbia University and Master of Music degree in Music Composition from the University of British Columbia. He is currently a PhD student at the University of British Columbia, where his advisor is Dr. Nathan Hesselink. His research focuses on contemporary and historic Armenian communities.
Dorothy Barenscott
Sessional Instructor: Art, Performance & Cinema Studies
E: dorothy_barenscott@sfu.ca
Dorothy Barenscott is an art historian whose research relates to the interplay between urban space and emerging technology and media forms in the articulation of a range of identities. She completed her Ph.D. in Art History, Visual Art, and Theory at the University of British Columbia. Barenscott’s recent publications include "Learning from Las Vegas Redux: Steve Wynn and the New Business of Art” appearing in Spatial Transgressions in the Arts (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022) and “Trumpism, NFTs, and the Cultural Politics of 21st Century Kitsch” appearing in the edited collection Interrogating the Visual Culture of Trumpism (eds. Natalie Phillips and Grant Hamming, Routledge, 2024). Barenscott is co-editor of Canadian Culinary Imaginations (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020), an interdisciplinary collection that explores how Canadian writers, artists, academics, cooks, performers, and gallery curators are inspired and challenged by the topic of food and her essays have appeared in journals such as Postmodern Culture Journal, Invisible Culture, History and Memory, and Mediascape. Outside of her academic research, Barenscott acts as an art consultant for ArtRow and Openwork Art Advisory and leads interdisciplinary university student groups on field schools to global art cities and art events such as Documenta and the Venice Biennale.
Dave Biddle
Sessional Instructor: Visual Art
E: dbiddle@sfu.ca
Dave Biddle (being me) is an artist and theorist (being conspiracy theorist) who works sometimes with video, music, installation, and text (being that I’m an intersection of various sense organs), and always with performance (being that those sense organs constitute a “body”). His research (being self-organizing so not really "his") constellates various theoretical frameworks such as evolutionary biology, systems theory and cybernetics, communication studies, non-human anthropology, and philosophy of mind. Dave Biddle (still being me) lives in Vancouver (being the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Sel̓íl̓witulh Nations) where he continues to consider the lilies (being being).
Nicole Rose Bond
Sessional Instructor: Dance
E: nbond@sfu.ca
Nicole Rose Bond began her formal training at York University, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts-Dance cum laude in 2005. Since that time, Nicole has felt privileged to perform works by many esteemed choreographers including Peggy Baker, Patricia Beatty, Tom Brouillette, Susan Cash, Bill Coleman, David Earle, Danny Grossman, Ryan Graham Hinds, Christopher House, James Kudelka, Learie McNicholl, Andrea Nann, Yvonne Ng, John Oswald, Peter Quanz, Peter Randazzo and Andrea Spaziani. She is currently a company member with Peggy Baker Dance Projects as well as a freelance artist.
As a teacher, Nicole has had the pleasure of working as a course director in Graham Technique and Contemporary Dance at York University, The National Ballet School, Arts Umbrella and Modus Operandi and has taught dance classes and workshops within the Toronto District School Board. As part of outreach initiatives through Toronto Dance Theatre, The National Ballet of Canada’s YOU Dance Program and Peggy Baker Dance Projects, Nicole has taught in Toronto, Dryden, Vancouver, Moncton and Whitehorse. Nicole has also served on the Toronto Arts Council Advisory Panel and as a member of the Dance Collection Danse ‘Encore: Hall of Fame’ Committee.
Nicole’s repertoire with Peggy Baker Dance projects includes: Land|Body|Breath at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa in August of 2017; the premiere in Toronto of Who We Are In The Dark and subsequent performances in Montreal, Kingston, Ottawa, Whitehorse and Mexico in 2019 and The Netherlands in 2020, Her Body As Words in September of 2021; and Peggy Baker: A Gala Retrospective in Toronto in 2022.
Through her work as both a performer and a teacher, Nicole’s goal is to empower others to effect conscious change in the world whilst honouring those who have come before us. Nicole is beyond grateful that her vocation encompasses doing what she loves and is humbled by, and indebted to, the unique and beautiful arts community that she calls home.
Dustin Brons
Sessional Instructor: Visual Art
E: dwb6@sfu.ca
Artist, photographer, and teacher in unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) territory (Vancouver BC).
Education: Whitney ISP Studio Program (2019), MFA UC San Diego (2017), BFA UBC (2014).
Alexandra Caprara
Sessional Instructor: Performance Production & Design
E: alexandra_caprara@sfu.ca
Alexandra Caprara is a queer interdisciplinary artist and writer from Toronto, Ontario who has worked internationally as a director, designer, performer, and writer. She creates work using a design lead methodology within her perfomance making practice, which often centers themes of femininity, autonomy, somatics, and queerness. In particular, she believes in creating works that celebrate queer joy, that push the boundaries of design within perfomance, and lately, that involve many disco balls. Within her practice as a lighting and video designer, her methodology considers the interactivity between design technology and performers, utilizing design as an extension of the body and architectural space. With movement and physical theatre training in Viewpoints, Riverwork, and Lecoq, her work is highly physical and will often be devised through movement-based creation.
Alexandra has worked across Canada alongside companies such as Electric Company Theatre, Theatre Replacement, Vancouver City Opera, Canadian Stage, WorkMan Arts, Downstages, and Good Woman Dance. Internationally, her design work has been featured at The American School in Switzerland, and presented in the Prauge Quadrennial Technologies Symposium with her talk, "Making Strange: Creating Abstract Perceptions of the Body, Space, and Time, Using Light" (2024). Select credits include being the touring lighting designer for HOT DYKE PARTY; direction and design of "Ultra Violets" (IndieFest); video and lighting design for "Silent Howl" (Dancing on the Edge); the co-creation of "EVREN" (Edinburgh Fringe Festival); writing and perfomance in "A Hunger Artist" (Prague Quadrennial); director and writer of "You've Got To Be Kidney Me" (Edinburgh Fringe Festival); and the creation and curation of "ThreadBare," (2020 Rendezvous with Madness Festival). She holds a BFA from York University where she trained in devised theatre, direction, and design. Alexandra currently resides in Vancouver where she has recently completed her MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Simon Fraser University.
Joseph Clark
Sessional Instructor: Film
E: jec10@sfu.ca
Joseph Clark (PhD, Brown University) is an educator, filmmaker, researcher, and arts programmer. His research and teaching interests focus on archival and non-theatrical media, including newsreels, home movies, and sponsored film. He is the author of News Parade: The American Newsreel and the World as Spectacle (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) and the director of the short film Persistence & Loss (2021). He is a long-time member of the DOXA Documentary Film Festival Programming Committee and part of the organizing committee of the Vancouver Podcast Festival.
Sevrin Emnacen-Boyd
Sessional Instructor: Dance
E: semnacen@sfu.ca
Sevrin Emnacen-Boyd is a half-filipino b-boy and an enthusiast of all things rhythmic and expressive. Seeking to emulate the aberrant creativity emerging from the growing Vancouver street dance scene, Sevrin’s approach to dance is characterized by a rigorous attention to musical details and an embrace of movements uncommonly explored in breaking. He is an active member of the Vancouver street dance community, eager to play a role in building what is quickly becoming a prominent force in the local art scene. He has organized a number of youth-oriented street dance battles with the City of Surrey and has worked with various non-profit organizations that seek to support emerging Canadian dance artists. Sevrin has also participated in a wide range of international street dance competitions ranging from Amsterdam to Tokyo. He is an active member of the Now Or Never Crew, Scndrlz and Think Twice Japan
Photo credit: Shawn Kim
Emmalena Fredriksson
Sessional Instructor: 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.
Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg
Term Lecturer: Theatre & Performance
E: tara_cheyenne_friedenberg@sfu.ca
Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg works among the boxes labelled: actor, dancer, director, writer, choreographer, drag artist, educator, and is the Artistic Director of Tara Cheyenne Performance. Tara has created over a dozen full-length performance works, choreographed for experimental and large scale theatre companies, collaborated with international artists, made a show on a river with badass femme-creators and mothers, she ticked the MFA box last year, likes to hang out with her very cool teenager, and is currently squatting 140lbs.
Lisa Gelley
Sessional Instructor: Dance
E: lisa_gelley@sfu.ca
Lisa Mariko Gelley (she/her) is an artist working in dance and performance, often in interdisciplinary and intergenerational collaboration. She is a mixed-race settler of Japanese, French, and Polish descent, living, working, and learning on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Lisa is Artistic Co-Director of Company 605, an arts organization devising, producing and presenting new dance projects, and centering collaborative processes rooted in community. Together with Artistic Co-Director Josh Martin, they have co-created many works including Inheritor Recordings, Future Futures, Vital Few, Anthem, Loop,Lull, After We Glow, Looping, and lossy. Their works have been presented internationally, at venues and festivals including American Dance Festival (Durham, NC), New York City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival, PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, The Cultch, Usine-C and L'Agora de la Danse (Montréal), La Rotonde (Québec City), DanceWorks (Toronto), Live Art Dance (Halifax), The Banff Centre, On The Boards' NWNW and Bumbershoot Festival (Seattle), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), Festival PRISMA (Panama), Festival Parentesis (Costa Rica), Tempel Kulturzentrum and Regensburger TanzTage (Germany), and the Sydney Festival (Australia). Through their work, Company 605 has built bridges with artists and audiences across the country and Internationally, reaching outward to connect and situate itself within the context of a global dance dialogue. Some of Lisa's own recent works are centered around intergenerational intuition and ancestral memory, including MIDORI (EDAM Choreographic Series and The Polygon Gallery) Furusato, a film featuring a duet with her grandmother, Lily Yuriko Tamoto, and Paueru Mashup, a community-engaged work calling on traditional Japanese Folk dance and renowned exercise routines, commissioned by the Powell Street Festival. Lisa is the recipient of the 2015 Vancouver International Dance Festival Choreographic Award, and the co-recipient of the 2024 Lola Award. She is the mother of Loa Mayuri and Noemi Yuka.
Alaia Hamer
Sessional Instructor: Performance Production & Design
E:
Alaia Hamer is an theatre designer and artist located in Vancouver, BC.
Growing up with a creative family on coastal Pender Island, Alaia has experimented in art and craft as long as she can remember. She holds a degree in English Literature from UBC in 2012 and this interest in text and narrative storytelling has been a huge influence on her drive to pursue theatrical design. She returned to school to finish a B.F.A in Theatrical Design and Production in the spring of 2017 to bring these interests together. Theatre is the perfect opportunity to share a visual interpretation of a literary journey.
Sustrisno Hartana
Sessional Instructor: Music & Sound
E: sutrisno_hartana@sfu.ca
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
Kathleen Hepburn
Sessional Instructor: Film
E: khepburn@sfu.ca
Kathleen Hepburn is a writer/director based on the unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations. Her debut feature, NEVER STEADY, NEVER STILL, which Variety Magazine calls a "stoically broken hearted debut," premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017 and was awarded Best Canadian Film and Best Director by the Vancouver Film Critics Circle, as well as Special Jury Prize at the Dublin International Film Festival. It went on to be nominated for eight Canadian Screen Academy Awards including Best Picture. Her sophomore feature, THE BODY REMEMBERS WHEN THE WORLD BROKE OPEN (co-written and co-directed by Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers) premiered at Berlinale in 2019, was awarded the Grand Prix at the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, an honourable mention for Best Canadian Feature at TIFF '19, and the Toronto Film Critics Association Rogers Best Canadian Feature Prize. The film won 3 Canadian Screen Awards, including Achievement in Directing and Original Screenplay, and is currently streaming on NETFLIX in the US. Hepburn is currently in development on a youth-focused crime drama series with co-creator Elizabeth Cairns and Sphere Media Plus, as well as her next feature project THE NARROW EDGE with Experimental Forest Films. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing, and a BFA in Film Production from the Universities of Guelph and Simon Fraser respectively.
Aryo Khakpour
Sessional Instructor: Theatre & Performance
E: aryo_khakpour@sfu.ca
I am a multidisciplinary performer, director and dramaturg.
I hold a BFA in Theatre Performance from Simon Fraser University; and have been involved in multiple theatre, dance, video, and film productions in Vancouver. I cofounded The Biting School, which has been presented at The Firehall Arts Centre, The Dance Centre, Dance Days Victoria, Dancing on the Edge Festival, Dance in Vancouver, Vancouver International Dance Festival, PuSh International Festival, and Montreal Arts Interculturels.
In my work, I explore the dynamics of power, implications of ideologies, repetition of mythologies, and cultural adaptation. I am a feminist. I interrogate the patriarchy and its harmful effects on people. My practice is heavily physical and surrealistic; it deals with pain and pleasure; it is sex-positive; and it aims to queer the status quo. I was trained in devised practices of non-hierarchical collective creations. That is my favourite way of creating.
Angélica Pérez Anzures
Sessional Instructor: Film
E: aperezan@sfu.ca
Angélica Pérez Azures is a Cinematographer born and raised in Mexico City, now based in Vancouver.
Alex Tedlie-Stursberg
Sessional Instructor: Visual Art
E: alex_stursberg@sfu.ca
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.
Rianne Svelnis
Sessional Instructor: Dance
E: rsvelnis@sfu.ca
Rianne Svelnis is a queer dance artist and a settler of European descent living in colonially occupied so-called 'Vancouver', on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and sə̓lílwətaʔɬ territory. She is a graduate of Modus Operandi Contemporary Dance Training Program, and has continued her training with significant mentors such as Peter Bingham, Justine Chambers, Helen Walkley, Emmalena Fredriksson and Damián Criollo (Ecuador). Rianne has taught at Harbour Dance Centre, Training Society of Vancouver, All Bodies Dance Project, Polymer Dance, Echoing Frog and Espacio Expectante (Mexico). Rianne also co-facilitates Movement Classes for Support Workers with Alexa Solveig Mardon and All Bodies Dance classes at Carnegie Community Center with Lance Lim and Kevin Li.
Rianne has had the pleasure of performing in works by Ziyian Kwan (Dumb Instrument Dance), Justine Chambers, MACHiNOiSY, Emmalena Fredriksson, Olivia Davies, romham gallacher, Sasha Kleinplatz, Daisy Thompson, and Damián Criollo (Ecuador), among others. Rianne has also created choreographic work in collaboration with All Bodies Dance, Zahra Shahab, Kelly McInnes and Areli Moran (Mexico) and is co-creator of the digital archive waterfallfallingforeveragain with Andrea Cownden and Layla Marcelle.
Daisy Thompson
Term Lecturer: Dance
E: daisyt@sfu.ca
Daisy Thompson is an English settler living on the unceded territories of the Skwxwú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaɬ and xʷməθkwəy̓əm Nations, also known as Vancovuer. As a dance artist who performs, creates, educates, and writes, she seeks to extend ideas of the dancing body as a key site for the questioning of embodied power relations, and considers how the dancing body interrupts cycles of contemporary logics of control in relation to culture and identity.
After completing her dance training at the Laban Dance Centre in London, Daisy has had the fortune to work as dancer/performer with the Trisha Brown Dance Company (USA), Eva Karczag (Amsterdam), Emmalena Fredriksson (Sweden/Vancouver), Ugo Dehaes (Belgium), Lee, Su-Feh (Vancouver), Mascall Dance (Vancouver), and O’dela Arts (Vancouver), amongst more.
She has presented her own choreographic works internationally and locally, has worked as choreographer/movement coach for theatre including The Frank Theatre Company and Ruby Slippers Theatre, published several articles including the Performance Matters Journal and the Canadian Theatre Review, and regularly teaches in a variety of spaces in Vancouver, including Simon Fraser University, Training Society of Vancouver, WeDance and Polymer Dance. In 2013, she gained an MFA, and is currently a PhD student at Simon Fraser University under the excellent co-supervision of Dr. Peter Dickinson and Dr. Laura U. Marks.
Daisy is the proud mother of Obi and Sola.
Neil Wedman
Sessional Instructor: Visual Art
E: nwedman@sfu.ca
Neil Wedman was born in Vancouver, Canada in 1954. Making paintings stands at the core of thirty years of studio practice, but he has devoted almost equal attention to producing drawings and works on paper including print editions, book-works and photographs. He has also made a number of short films and musical recordings although not many of the latter.
He lives and works in Vancouver and is represented there by the Equinox Gallery.
Sessional Instructors & Lecturers
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