Artists

Alger Ji-Liang 梁家傑 (he/him)

Alger Ji-Liang 梁家傑 is an emerging interdisciplinary artist based in Vancouver, BC on the unceded stolen territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam peoples. He situates the body as the centre of research and uses photographic and filmmaking practices to speak on identity, memory, and space. Recently, he has been exploring mental health, processes of grief, and queer diaspora identity through video, performance, movement, and sound. Alger recently completed his BA in visual arts and Asian Canadian and Asian migration studies at the University of British Columbia.

Isabelle Kirouac

Isabelle Kirouac is an interdisciplinary choreographer, movement artist and educator born in Quebec, on the traditional territories of the Abenaki, and currently living in Vancouver, on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations. She uses movement as a tool to investigate the poetics of the senses, and to process questions raised in her everyday life. Informed by her extensive studies in dance improvisation, somatic practices, and contemporary circus, her movement research has recently focused on expanding the possibilities of stilts in performance, and explored the intersection between art and ecology through movement practice, immersive performance, and community engaged projects. Isabelle has been collaborating with Still Moon Arts Society since 2009. She directed the dance film Constellations, which premiered at the Renfrew Ravine Moon Festival and was presented by Capsule (National Arts Centre) and Tai Kwun’s Off Stage, On Screen (Hong Kong). In collaboration with mycologist and artist Willoughby Arevalo, she facilitates the Art & Fungi Project as a resident artist at the Kitsilano Community Centre (Artists in Communities), in various Renfrew-Collingwood parks in collaboration with the Collingwood Neighbourhood House (Walking the Mycelial Web), and at Mountainside Secondary (North Van Arts). Isabelle has performed extensively across Canada, the USA, Mexico, Colombia and Europe. She performed in the work of Julie Lebel/Foolish Operations, Emmalena Fredriksson, Arash Khakpour, Emmanuel Jouthe/Danse Carpe Diem (Montreal), Theatre Junction (Calgary), Body Research (USA), The Carpetbag Brigade Physical Theatre (USA), Nemcatacoa Teatro (Colombia) and others. Isabelle holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University.

Balkan Shmalkan

Balkan Shmalkan is East Vancouver’s sweet dance party orchestra; think global music with local attitude. Their funky brass dance beats are rooted in the living aural traditions of the Roma and Klezmorim of Eastern Europe and blended with a mixture of pop, funk, and jazz. Members of the group sing in 6 languages including Serbian, Romani, and Italian.

The group is a colourful, vibrant, and celebrative group of brass, drums, and vocals best enjoyed up close and personal. They are exceptionally versatile and mobile, playing on and off stage with nothing more than the power of their lungs and a few horns.

Formed in 2015, Balkan Shmalkan is the brainchild of a group of musicians with a long history of collaboration in traditional South Serbian Trubaci music. This project is a way of blending that music with other vibrant traditions and bringing it to the general population of BC

Balkan Shmalkan: Brassy dance beats for all occasions.

The band is currently working on their first studio album, which is to be released in the spring of 2020.

Bukola

Recently hailed by CBC as one of the top 10 soulful female artists in the 2020 CBC Searchlight competition, Bukola is a 19-year-old musician who blends the sounds of contemporary R&B and Jazz music to create her own soulful sound. She’s been deeply influenced by artists such as India Arie, Daniel Caesar and H.E.R. She’s been pursuing her dreams of becoming a professional musician since she was 9 years old and has only been building momentum ever since. The grand prize winner of the Nimbus School of Recording Arts x Juno Host Committee provincial Battle of the Bands competition, Bukola has since performed at the JUNO pre-show Let’s Hear it! Live, was interviewed by CBC, Metro Vancouver, and has become a very much sought-after young artist by music professionals and fans alike. Metro News describes her as “the confident up-beat, young woman [who] plays guitar and sings with a simultaneous mastery and innocence”. When listing her inspirations, the article goes on to say that “like them, Bukola is an artist with something to say”. Bukola has recently been working with Grammy Award-winning producer, Chin Injeti, and Juno award-winning producer Ben Kaplan on her debut EP which is set for release in early 2021.

Georgia Couver

Georgia Couver is a Vancouver-born, Chinese-Canadian artist, who specializes in portraiture, music composition, and string performance. Couver recently began in landscape photography during the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 and still continues. Her collection of artworks often explore components of the Asian Diaspora, musical sexuality, queer disability, mental health issues, Asian mythology and the mediums of burlesque, as part of her unique way in storytelling. Her musical collections of compositions include a range of neoclassical string electronica, as well as her first musical burlesque production with Strange Seduction in September 2019 and first horror short film the Purgamentum. One day she aspires to travel to the UK for her studies at Goldsmith University in the near future.

HOT WATER TRIO

Hot Water Trio is is an acoustic jazz band sourcing inspiration from traditional New Orleans jazz music such as composers Duke Ellington and Jellyroll Morton.

Moonstone

Moonstone is a national Indigenous womxn hand drum group sharing their medicine of song and drum within the Vancouver area. The womxn of this drum group represent the nations of Musqueam & Nanaimo, Anishinaabe/ Saulteaux, Nehiyaw, with visitor singers from Squamish & others. Moonstone’s singers are all community-minded urban Indigenous womxn reclaiming space through song in buildings, parks, and other public spaces.

Singers: Kelly White, Dakota Anderberg, Rayanna Seymour, Vanessa Chatelaine, Casey Desjarlais, Jade Banshee-Brass, Claire Akiwenzie, Summer Tyance 

Tsatsu Stalqayu (Coastal Wolf Pack)

Tsatsu Stalqayu (Coastal Wolf Pack) are a traditional Salish song-and-dance group consisting of over 50 members, both male and female, ranging in age from one to 60.

Candice Roberts

Candice Roberts is 5th generation settler and artist based on the ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

She brings her passion for interweaving artistic disciplines such as physical theatre, music, mask, puppetry, clown and dance to create stories that explore the humour, the heartbreak, the trials and the tribulations of being a human in this world.

Cultivating anti-oppresive and intersectional understandings are important in Candice’s artistic research of creativity, decolonization and the connections between self expression, mental health and community.

She has toured all over North American, including New York and New Orleans with her award winning solo shows- LARRY, and IDEAS BOBERT.