Join our workshop on collective creation and ensemble building! In this session, we’ll explore the framework of how a new work unfolds, recognizing that each creation has its own unique voice.

Throughout the workshop, we’ll delve into various aspects of the collective creation process, including:

1. Cultivating Tolerance for the Birthing Process: Develop a tolerance for the uncertainty, chaos and moments of challenge inherent in the creative process, and learn strategies for navigating through it
2. Building Trust in Your Imagination: Discover techniques to trust your imagination and input that we are all making this up and that’s the fun of it!
3. Redefining Success: Beautiful work is personal, it’s vulnerable and how do we measure success outside of a commercial lens? We will be sharing our alternative ways to measure success in the collective creation process beyond traditional metrics.

*Masks are encouraged but optional. 

About Your Lab Instructor

Kijo Gatama
Hi! Kijo Gatama. I’m an emerging multidisciplinary performance-maker, delving into playwriting, movement, acting, artistic producing, and directing. My artistic journey is driven by a passion for exploring afro-queer identity and the intricate interplay of gender, race, ethnicity, and the diverse lived experiences of people from equity-seeking groups.

Currently, I proudly serve as the Outreach coordinator for Azimuth Theatre and Program coordinator for YEP with Fringe theatre. I am the co-artistic Director of Here, for: Fear Collectives, a hybrid film/theatre company dedicated to pushing boundaries and challenging norms. In my work as a playwright, I delve into Folklore and Queer Afro-Canadian experiences, with notable pieces such as “Hyena’s Trail” at rEvolver Festival (2022) and “Mango of The Dead” at A Thousand Faces Festival (2022). Noteworthy premieres include “Hyena’s Trail” at Nextfest (June 2023) and “A Tale of Two Bundles” as part of Thou Art Here’s Immersive Program in 2023. As a mover I like to ask myself how each ensemble builds a new process and share the excitement that no process is the same.

Amber Borotsik
Amber is an Amiskwaciwâskahikan based creator and performer keenly interested in the intersection between contemporary dance and theatre practices. Amber has performed in both theatre and dance across Canada, the United States and in Japan; and has received three Sterling Awards as well as the TELUS Courage to Innovate award at the Mayor’s Evening for the Arts. Together with Murray Utas she founded Azimuth Theatre’s Expanse Festival and served as Festival Director for its first six years. As a creator she focuses mainly on interdisciplinary performance (Scythe, The Moon at Midnight, No Guesses Found) and collaborates often with Jesse Gervais and Aaron Macri. Her work has been presented across Canada at Neighbourhood Dance Works (St. John’s), Studio 303 and Centre de Création O Vertigo (Montreal), Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers (Winnipeg), New Dance Horizons (Regina), The Fluid Festival (Calgary), as well as various places and spaces here in Amiskwaciwâskahikan including The Brian Webb Dance Company and Mile Zero Dance. Amber had a kick ass time dancing with Max Hanic in Edmonton Opera’s Stabat Mater, choreographed by Susannah Hood/directed by Jennifer Tarver; and in KO Dance Project’s electric, alchemical and unruly Black Rainbow. Last summer she traveled to South Africa join a brilliant team of artists beginning work on The Genital Posturing of Vervet Monkeys by Matthew MacKenzie and next month she heads to St. John’s NL to continue working on a collaboratively created adaptation of Oderin by Newfoundland poet Agnes Walsh.