PAST PRESENTATIONS
on the nature of...
by Amber Downie-Back
Presented March 28 + 29, 2025
Dance Victoria Studios (2750 Quadra St. #111)
Co-Presented with Dance Victoria
"on the nature of…" is an interdisciplinary performance and installation piece that explores the intricate relationship between memory, nostalgia, past selves, and the act of letting go of once-imagined futures. This interdisciplinary work intertwines movement, projection, and sound to create an immersive experience that invites audiences to reflect on their own journeys through time.
Three performers serve as “memory caretakers” who navigate the intimate act of holding memories. They investigate how memories evolve alongside changes in our lives, exploring how memory lives in our bodies, symbolic objects, places, sounds, and images. Through planned interactions, the performers invite audiences to make inter- and intrapersonal connections through the exploration and sharing of memories.
Acknowledgements
Presented with the support of the Victoria Foundation, CRD Arts & Culture Support Service, and Province of BC. Dance Victoria acknowledges the support of the BC Arts Council.
About Dance Victoria & Impulse Theatre
Dance Victoria brings the World’s Best Dance to the Royal Theatre and supports the development of new dance for the international stage from its studios in Quadra Village. As a non-profit charitable society, Dance Victoria operates with the mission to promote the appreciation of dance by developing and presenting diverse local, Canadian, and international artists, and by engaging the community in the celebration of dance.
Impulse Theatre creates and presents contemporary interdisciplinary theatre and dance performance. They are the producers of Peek Fest and Peek Show, as well have created over 20 new works of performance.
Amber Downie-Back
Creator & Performer: installation, movement, video
Amber Downie-Back (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and creates on the unceded territories of the lək̓ wəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ Peoples. Working with movement, projection, and other installation media, Amber is interested in integrating their curiosities through collaborative and process-focused contexts. Investigating the strange yet familiar places found at the edges of things and the spaces between, Amber is intrigued by ecosystems of both the surreal and everyday.
Amber’s lived experience with chronic illness propels them to generate intimate, interactive experiences that reflect the crip rhythms they prioritize while creating. Downie-Back’s multimedia artworks explore myriad combinations of what can and will be, challenging the perceived boundaries between process/product, and performer/audience.
Amber has a BFA in Contemporary Dance from Concordia University and has performed professionally at Festival TransAmeriques, and with Impulse Theatre as part of UpintheAir Theatre’s fourth installment of The Array, among others. She has exhibited original creations at Toronto Harbourfront Centre as a featured performer for the Annual Healthy Dancer Canada Conference, and with Method Dance Society, the PIDC Project, and more.
Angus Steele-Gaffney
Creator & Performer: installation, sound, video
Angus Steele-Gaffney (he/him) is an interdisciplinary artist, performer, and sound designer working in myriad media, ranging from recycled object assemblages to bespoke audiovisual software programs. Angus' work prizes play and interactivity using chance encounters, unexpected interfaces, and interactions between sound, touch, and movement. He is interested in exploring: relationships between organic and synthetic materials, forces of commodification and data-fication at work in the physical world, and the construction of personal and social mythologies.
Angus studied music and English literature at Concordia University. He has composed, performed, and recorded music for small bands, large ensembles, and a host of dance and theatre creators. Collaborators include: the Count Ferrara Band, Bradyworks, Murphy Movement, Impulse Theatre, and Constance Cooke, among others. Angus works as an arts administrator, workshop leader, and performance photographer, and develops bespoke open-source music and graphics software. He is a founding member of interdisciplinary events platform KALYX Collective and a board member at the fifty fifty arts collective.
Angus is grateful to live and work on unceded Lək̓ʷəŋən territory, home to the Songhees and Esquimalt nations (also known as Victoria, BC).
Emily van der Waals
Creator & Performer: installation, movement
Emilie van der Waals currently resides in the Netherlands, but was born and raised on the Caribbean island of Sint Maarten. As a contemporary dancer and artist, their work is inspired by memory, specifically nostalgia triggers. Collaboration is at the heart of Emilie’s practice and she continues to explore projects involving live musicians, projections, fellow dancers, and installations. Van der Waals’s sight-specific works centre structural improvisation, somatically-informed and conceptually driven.
Emilie studied Contemporary Dance at Concordia University. Her immersive performance work, “I Remember How the Flowers Sound” was exhibited in Montreal/tiohtià:ke (2019) and investigated themes of nostalgia using curated scent throughout the performance. Emilie was featured in Nina van der Zouwen’s short film “When The Snow Melts” at Zingende en Beelden Festival (2021), and was a soloist at Festival Antigone (2023). Van der Waals works frequently with long-term collaborator, Julia Warren, saxophonic wizard & musician of many forms, performing various shows in venues throughout the Netherlands and Belgium. Their latest performance, “Cretaceous Era Sea Shanties”, took place among the bones of the Mosasaurus at the Natural History Museum of Maastricht.
How to Build a Fire
by Kerri Flannigan
Presented: August 3 + 4 2024 / 7:30pm
Intrepid Studio (2-1609 Blanshard St)
Co-presented with UVic Legacy Art Galleries
How To Build a Fire is a performance accompanied by projections, sound and live-narration. Connections to nature, changing climates and wildfire are explored through the relationship between Kerri, the performer, and their father Mike, a fire scientist. This performance asks questions about what kind of relationships we should have with each other, with fire, and with the land around us.
Kerri Flannigan (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist, performer, and educator currently based on Lkwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ Territories (Victoria, BC), who experiments with methods of research and storytelling through installation, video, and performance. With a background as an experimental animator and zine-maker, Flannigan is interested in investigating different ways of creating and performing narratives, working to create a framework through which the personal is critically connected to a wider sphere of context.
Acknowledgements
Presented with the support of the CRD Arts & Culture Support Service, BC Arts Council and Province of BC.
Sponsors include Westcoast Academy of Performing Arts and Braem Accountancy Ltd.
About Legacy & Impulse
Impulse Theatre creates and presents contemporary interdisciplinary theatre and dance performance. They are the producers of Peek Fest and Peek Show, as well have created over 20 new works of performance.
University of Victoria Legacy Art Galleries (Legacy) is the university’s art museum, responsible for the accessibility and stewardship of an art collection. Legacy activates the collection for research, teaching and learning for students, faculty and the general public through exhibitions, campus displays, publications, web-projects, public programs and events—on-site and through digital resources.