Caroline Shaw

Caroline Shaw is a New York-based musician—vocalist, violinist, composer, and producer—who performs in solo and collaborative projects. She was the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013 for Partita for 8 Voices, written for the Grammy-winning Roomful of Teeth, of which she is a member. Recent commissions include new works for Renée Fleming with Inon Barnatan, Dawn Upshaw with Sō Percussion and Gil Kalish, Seattle Symphony, Anne Sofie von Otter with Philharmonia Baroque, the LA Philharmonic, Juilliard 415, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s with John Lithgow, the Dover Quartet, TENET, The Crossing, the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, the Calidore Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, the Baltimore Symphony, and Roomful of Teeth with A Far Cry. Caroline’s film scores include Erica Fae’s To Keep the Light and Josephine Decker’s Madeline’s Madeline as well as the upcoming short 8th Year of the Emergency by Maureen Towey. She has produced for Kanye West (The Life of Pablo; Ye) and Nas (NASIR), and has contributed to records by The National, and by Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry. Once she got to sing in three part harmony with Sara Bareilles and Ben Folds at the Kennedy Center, and that was pretty much the bees’ knees and elbows. Caroline has studied at Rice, Yale, and Princeton, currently teaches at NYU, and is a Creative Associate at the Juilliard School. She has held residencies at Dumbarton Oaks, the Banff Centre, Music on Main, and the Vail Dance Festival. Caroline loves the color yellow, otters, Beethoven opus 74, Mozart opera, Kinhaven, the smell of rosemary, and the sound of a janky mandolin.

Photo: Dayna Szyndrowski

Vanessa Goodman

Vanessa Goodman respectfully acknowledges that she lives, works and creates on the ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples including the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations. She holds a BFA from Simon Fraser University and is the artistic director of Action at a Distance Dance Society. Vanessa is attracted to art that has a weight and meaning beyond the purely aesthetic and uses her choreography as an opportunity to explore the human condition. She has received several awards and honours, including: The Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award (2013); The Yulanda M. Faris Scholarship (2017/18); The Chrystal Dance Prize (2019); The Schultz Endowment from Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (2019); and the "Space to Fail" program (2019/20) in New Zealand, Australia and Vancouver.

Vanessa's work has been presented in Vancouver by DanceHouse, SFU Woodwards, The Belkin Gallery, The Firehall Arts Centre, The Dance Centre, The Chutzpah! Festival and The Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. Presentations further afield include the Fluid Festival (Calgary), Kinetic Studio (Halifax), The Dance Made in Canada Festival (Toronto), On the Boards (Seattle), Risk/Reward Festival (Portland), Offset Dance Fest (Brooklyn) and The Bienal Internacional de Dança Do Ceará (Brazil).

Vanessa has been artist-in-residence at Cutivamos Cultura/BioFriction (Portugal), The Dance Centre, Dance Victoria, Harbourfront Centre, The Shadbolt Centre and The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, where she was also on faculty. Most recently Vanessa presented work and was a facilitator for Trinity Laban’s 2020 Co-Lab Project (London). Commissions include Springboard Dansé Montréal, the plastic orchid factory (with Ame Henderson), Votive Dance, Lamon Dance, Modus Operandi and The SFU rep class.

This season's collaborations include new works with artists Scott Morgan (Loscil); Caroline Shaw (premiering January 2021); and Simona Deaconescu (Romania). 

Photo: Dayna Szyndrowski