Vancouver Artists
Vancouver Moving Theatre & Heart of the City Festival Virtual Residency, November 2020
Beverly Dobrinsky
Beverly Dobrinsky is a Vancouver musician and storyteller who works both as a soloist and in many artistic collaborations. She is the founder of “Zeellia”, a Slavic Soul sextet performing E. European traditional music with a contemporary edge and musical director for the Barvinok Choir. She has been involved in several projects with Vancouver Moving Theatre, including “Bread and Salt, and the evolving “Big House” project.
Bob Baker
Bob Baker (Squamish Ancestral name is S7aplek, Hawaiian name is Lanakila) is co-founder and spokesperson for Spakwus Slolem (Eagle Song), the most reputable Dance Group of the Squamish Nation. Born and raised Squamish, Bob has been exercising his Culture through Singing, Dances, and various presentations, for over 35 years across Canada and in Taiwan, Hawaii, Japan, Switzerland, (Montreux Jazz Festival).
Khari Wendell McClelland
Khari Wendell McClelland is a diversely talented and ever-evolving artist, originally from Detroit. Khari’s songwriting crosses genres and generations, joyfully invoking the spirit of his ancestors who straddled the US-Canadian border in efforts to escape slavery and discrimination. His music draws from this rich history, integrating the rhythms and folklore of early African-Americans with contemporary sounds and stories of struggle.
Olivia C. Davies
Olivia C. Davies is an independent producer, consultant, and contemporary dance artist who creates across choreography, installation and community-engaged projects. Her work traverses boundaries and challenges social prejudice, conveying concepts and narratives with creations and conceptual platforms that open different ways to see and experience the world. She honours her mixed Anishinaabe, French-Canadian, Finnish and Welsh heritage in her work.
Renae Morriseau
Renae Morriseau is a Cree (nehiyaw iskwew ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐤ ᐃᐢᑫᐧᐤ) and Saulteaux woman (nahkawiskwêw ᓇᐦᑲᐃᐧᐢᑫᐧᐤ) from the Treaty 1 Territory. An actress, writer, producer and director in both television and theatre, she has honed her skills by collaborating with many individuals who have supported her in understanding artistic passion and focus, tempered with creative vulnerability in sharing community stories in a good way: miyopimatisowin ᒥᔪᐱᒪᑎᓱᐃᐧᐣ.
Rianne Svelnis
Rianne Svelnis is a dance artist whose practice includes creation, performance, teaching and facilitation in both professional and community settings. She is grateful for the mentorship she has received from DTES activists and organizers, starting 12 years ago as a front-line worker, and more recently through support work with members of the Carnegie Community Action Project.
Savannah Walling
Savannah Walling, born in Oklahoma, USA, is an immigrant to Canada and a twelfth generation descendent of refugees from Europe. A writer, researcher and theatre artist, Savannah trained in dance, mime and music. She is co-founder/artistic director of Vancouver Moving Theatre, with whom she’s toured interdisciplinary repertoire on four continents; created community-engaged productions for/with/and about Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Terry Hunter
Terry Hunter is Co-founder/Executive Director of Vancouver Moving Theatre and Co-founder/Artistic Producer of the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival. He has produced multiple innovative community-engaged productions that give voice to the residents of the Downtown Eastside. Of Scots and English ancestry, Terry has lived and worked in the Downtown Eastside for over forty years.
Creative Participants
Angela Kruger
Angela Kruger is a mixed Japanese-Canadian writer, scholar, and activist. She has worked in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) with a variety of social agencies, as a volunteer and research assistant. Her writing is an expression of her commitment to the Japanese Canadian and Downtown Eastside communities' fights for justice. Angela is working on a collection of short stories about community organizing and tenant power.
Gilles Cyrenne
Gilles Cyrenne has been coordinating Downtown Eastside Writers Collective for the last two years and is presently co-editing an anthology of writing from that time. He has participated in and worked for the Heart of the City festival for the last three years. He has published one poetry chapbook and is working on a second one.
Helen Volkow
Born in the south of France to a Russian father and a Ukrainian mother, Helen grew up in East Van. She's been a singer with the local United Ukrainian Canadians since 1990. As a stage and musical theatre actress, Helen has played “Yenta” three times for “Fiddler on the Roof”. She has participated in the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival since 2016.
Henry Wong
Henry Wong is a Chinese-Canadian, born on Tsimshian Territory and growing up on Haida Gwaii. He likes all kinds of movement including T’ai Ch’i and Yoga, and has been a community dancer in Vancouver since taking his first dance classes in his forties. He has danced with the Roundhouse Community Dancers and performed in works by Donna Redlick, Karen Jamieson and Olivia C. Davies, and with Kokoro Dance's of Butoh on the Beach.
Phoenix Winter
Phoenix Winter's psych file says she is well-travelled. She has been a founding member of the MPD Writing Collective, Ottawa; the FireWriters, DTES and the Downtown Eastside Writing Collective. She has read at Carnegie, the Vancouver Public Library and the Vancouver Art Gallery. Her son lives far away but close to heart.
Rosanne Gervais
Rosanne’s a curious, quirky, queen-sized queer/2 Spirit Metis, thriver, multimedia artist, activist, singer, settler with invisible (dis)abilities and cis privilege. She/Her/They enjoys eclectic art, music, stories of failures, setbacks, hurts and recovery. Loves Warrior-defenders who’ve galvanized movements, risking failure, rising after inexorably falling.
“Nothing about me without me”.
Stephen Lytton
Stephen is a member of the Nicomen Indian Band within the Nlaka’pamux First Nation. He lives with a disability (cerebral palsy), and is a survivor of St. George’s Indian Residential School. An accomplished actor, writer and advocate, Stephen has presented across Canada, with his story featured in short films, and is a veteran of many community-engaged productions in the Downtown Eastside.
Tarene Thomas
Tarene Thomas is a Nehiyaw, Gitxsan, Tahltan, and Haisla Writer from the Treaty 6 Territory and the North West Coast along the Skeena river. She is currently working on her MFA at UBC writing her debut novel. Tarene is interested in shifting and disrupting colonialism through her work while simultaneously bridging together communities through art and harm reduction. Tarene writes poetry, fiction, and the occasional academic paper.
Vikki Marie
Rev. Dr. Victoria (vikki) Marie is co-founder of the Vancouver Catholic Worker and priest/pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Tonantzin Community. Her work includes the report, “United in Play (2004)”, on the original Heart of the City DTES Community Play, and the book Transforming Addiction (Scholars’ Press, 2014).
Cole Vandale
Cole Vandale is a Mètis filmmaker/actor born in the Invermere, BC. He attended the Company of Rogues actors studio, and landed roles on the Television show “Hell on Wheels” and the feature film “The Revenant”. Cole is artist-in-residence at Skwachays Lodge in Vancouver, pursuing his career as an actor and developing a television series “Starlight”, the continuation of his Sundance Ignite Fellowship finalist film.
Guest Speakers
Dalannah Gail Bowen
Dalannah Gail Bowen 74-year-old Dalannah Gail Bowen has been making music since 1966. Today, she sings blues/jazz and gospel. Her musical career started in an all-female band “the Feminine Touch”. Her repertoire ranges from standard and contemporary blues to jazz standards to musical theatre and concert tours. She was honoured by the City of Vancouver with a proclamation designating December 11 as Dalannah Gail Bowen Day for her community work and her music.
Diane Roberts
Diane Robertsis a PhD candidate in Interdisciplinary Studies at Concordia University, a 2019 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Scholar and a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship award holder. She is the founder and lead facilitator of the Arrivals Legacy Project. The roots of storytelling and multi-disciplinary art forms (mixing of ritual song, dance, storytelling, live art and theatre) drive her arts practice as a director, dramaturg and cultural animator.
Rosemary Georgeson
Rosemary Georgeson (Coast Salish and Sahtu Dene) was born and raised in the commercial fishing industry. Since leaving the industry, she has worked as a storyteller, playwright and filmmaker. Her stories are deeply rooted in her family history on Galiano Island. She has been recognized for her work with the award-winning play and CBC radio documentary Women in Fish. In 2014 she was the Storyteller in Residence at the Vancouver Public Library (2014).