Discipline: dance

rayanne fawaz + chanel cheiban

Rayanne Fawaz and Chanel Cheiban are the recipients of the 25.26 CAM + MAI Joint Support Program.

Open to professional choreographers from culturally diverse backgrounds, the mentorship program offered annually by the Conseil des arts de Montréal and MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) aims to foster the development of dance artists living in the territory of Montreal and to support them in a process of research, creation, and production of work.

This joint support program offers the selected artist a package of mentorship and support, including a $5000-10,000 stipend and hours at the CAM and MAI rehearsal studios.

The artist is invited to carry out an artistic and technical residency in the MAI studios and to present in season 26.27.

Rayanne Fawaz is a choreographer, performer, and dance researcher from Lebanon, currently based between Montreal and Beirut. Trained in classical ballet in Beirut, she holds a Bachelor’s degree in Bioresource Engineering from McGill University. In 2024, she shifted towards professional dance, developing a practice that explores memory, migration, and the dance forms of the Levant, particularly dabke. She has participated in residencies in Beirut and Montreal. Her work approaches tradition as living matter, intertwining oral archives, everyday gestures, and community dances. Her interest in dabke stemmed from her studies of sustainable agricultural practices in Lebanon, where she rediscovered the repetitive everyday gestures in local dances, thereby questioning the movement’s origins.

Originally from Lebanon, Chanel Cheiban works as a choreographer and performer in a variety of artistic projects in Tio’tia:ke (Montreal). She holds a diploma in contemporary dance from Collège Montmorency, a CID-recognized certification from UNESCO in the BIGBANG training program, and is a graduate of the École de danse contemporaine de Montréal. Chanel also practices the art of the qanun, an Oriental stringed instrument from the zither family.

In January 2025, she will present her multidisciplinary work El kamar bi zaher at Tangente, which she choreographed and performs, as well as PLAYGROUND, co-created with Maude Laurin-Beaulieu in 2022. She also founded Wholeness Mouvement in 2020, a dance video project in collaboration with Étienne de Durocher, which allowed her to develop her skills as an artistic director, director, and self-taught video editor. Chanel Cheiban explores processes of cultural transmission, interactivity in dance, and the intersections between traditional practices and contemporary languages. She reflects on how to revive rituals and traditions while creating moments of collective unity and individual authenticity.

Buzur is a multidisciplinary project by Fawaz and Cheiban which unfolds through two complementary components: a documentary project and a choreographic creation. This collaboration aims to create a space for co-creation, memory and reinvention, and resistance, in connection with diasporic realities and current struggles, the ongoing genocide in the Middle East, and the colonial past.

 

eric leong

Vera Oh

Eric Leong (they/he) is a queer artist of Chinese-Bruneian descent who performs as Komodo. Their artistic journey began with over a decade of classical piano training through the Royal Conservatory of Music, later evolving into an autodidact dance practice spanning salsa, voguing, whacking, and burlesque. As the founder of Paifang, a queer cultural event series in Montreal’s Chinatown, their artistic practice is deeply rooted in community, exploring themes of intergenerational connection, queerness, and diasporic identity.

Queer Diasporic Movement: Blending Whacking & Chinese Folk Dance to Taiwanese Campus Folk Songs is a dance project that reimagines Taiwanese Campus Folk Songs (校園民歌) through the lenses of memory, queerness, and intergenerational connection. Bringing together Chinese-speaking seniors and queer diasporic youth, the work fuses Chinese Folk Dance with Whacking—a queer dance style born in 1970s Los Angeles—to create a vibrant dialogue between tradition and self-expression.
Originally written by Taiwanese university students during the martial law era, Campus Folk Songs blended poetic lyricism and folk-inspired melodies. They became deeply rooted in the Mandarin-speaking diaspora, carrying stories of love, longing, and migration across generations. For many Chinese Canadians, these songs embody a bridge to homeland and family memory.
This project aims to explore these nostalgic melodies via embodied storytelling through the intersection of the elegance and symbolism of Chinese Folk Dance and the expressive flair of Whacking. The envisioned result is a choreographic exploration of belonging, identity, and the possibility of new cultural futures—honouring ancestral aesthetics while amplifying queer diasporic voices that resonate across generations.

mithra (myth) rabel

Mithra (Myth) Rabel, a passionate performer, choreographer, and teacher of Haitian origin, has been enriching the Tiohtià:ke/Montréal dance scene for over 20 years. Her artistic journey began on the salsa scene, where she perfected her technique and distinguished herself among her peers. Her passion for movement led her to house dance, becoming a leading figure in the street dance community. For over a decade, she has set dance floors alight and passed on her passion through teaching, learning from the biggest names on the international scene to shape her art with grace and innovation.

Her project “Speakeasy” is a profound introspection inspired by house dance, harmoniously fusing dance, music, and poetry. In this work, I question body memory and its role in shaping the future. I invite the audience to plunge with me into the essence of existence and artistic expression, offering a captivating and emotional experience. The first stage of this project, lasting 10 minutes, was presented at Tangente’s Soirées 100lux last March. It was received with great enthusiasm and left the audience wanting more.

catch step

Catch Step is the recipient of the CAM+MAI Joint Support 24.25.

Catch Step is a semi-recently formed group (2022) of artists: Anais Chloé Gilles/RISE, Delande “Junior” Dorsaint/Djüngle, and Victoria Mackenzie/VicVersa. They are a group that represent multiple interests and experiences in the street dance scene. Collectively they are well-respected dancers within the Break, Hip-Hop, House, and Ballroom scenes. Following their performance of Never Not Moving, their win at the Montreal Hip Hop Games, and performance at the International Hip Hop Games in Lille, France, Catch Step was invited to perform a full-length show at Theatre La Chapelle for their 2024/2025 season.

For their upcoming full-length work entitled “Catch Step HYA remix feat. Lunice” Catch Step will work with guest choreographer Handy Yacinthe/HYA and compser Lunice. This project supports the interests of various artists from the haitian diaspora as performers and creators. The dance practices of the artists involved are anchored in afro-descent dance forms, particularly from street dance cultures.

manon scialfa + alice jackson

Manon Scialfa is a BIPOC dancer, poet and artist who moved to Montréal in 2021. She started her dance training in Modern, Neoclassical, and Contemporary techniques at the New Orleans Ballet Association (NOBA). Due to her exposure to a broad range of artistic processes and repertoires, her style is defined by fusion and versatility, especially influenced by working with Ron K. Brown/EVIDENCE’s afro-contemporary style and an initiation in afro-cuban dance with Rebecca Bliss. She continued her dance education in Montréal, where she joined the École de danse contemporaine de Montréal cohort of 2021-2024. Her art reflects her multicultural identity, love of sharing stories, and belief in radical happiness amid the social and political climates we live in.

Alice Jackson is a Hispanic-American multidisciplinary artist based in Montreal. She trained in Jazz, Tap, Ballet, Modern and Theatre at the Performing Arts Factory in Maryland. She was exposed from a young age to jazz music, film, and history, which inspired her bold, expressive style and developed her rhythmic sensibility. In 2014, she moved to Montreal and received mentorship in Popping from Bibiman, training in House under Dazl – masters in their crafts – and competing in street dance battles. She continues to develop her versatility, always acknowledging the creators and founders of the art that inspires her, and a commitment to artistic integrity through proper education and guidance.

Fourth Culture is a natural extension of their teamwork, wherein Manon brings creative storytelling vision and Alice pushes physical and technical expression. Bonded though similar dance styles, performance experience, and cultural backgrounds, they share a curiosity and appreciation for dance history and the contributions of black culture to art. Witnessing and supporting each other, their mission is to study Vernacular Jazz, Swing, House, and Dramaturgy in order to develop a creative signature which crosses boundaries of contemporary dance, social dance, and storytelling with deep historical understanding and socio-political consciousness.

charles gao

When I (Charles Gao) moved to Montreal in 2018, my goal became to develop my method for creating more narrative-based work from my perspective as a breaker. The idea was to use the artistic tools I had developed in my years as a breaker in tandem with the theatrical tools I was studying, to discover my form of Hip Hop theatre. 

In 2019, I started working on what would eventually become “Welcome to the Digital Desert”. In 2020 during the pandemic, I staged an impromptu outdoor version of the play, where I cast Johnny Abilach – an actor as well as fellow street dancer. We’ve stayed in touch since, often dancing and exchanging together. His dedication to his practice as a popper as well as an actor mirrors my practice as a b-boy and playwright, where both disciplines feed each other. This has given us our common artistic language when working together.

Photo credit: Vickie Grondin

cai glover

Cai Glover is the recipient of the CAM+MAI Joint Support Fellowship 2023-2024.


This work will investigate our expressions of movement as they are tasked with turning the complicit actions of spacial language, the mastery of gesture, into the trance of a dancing body. The research will see us manipulate language to pass from the literal to the abstract and back again. What does the word “identity” look like in my signed hand? And now what does it look like in my dancing body? Is there somewhere in between where I might recognize an identity that feels authentic?  Here we apply the science of discerning the way one body makes another body feel as we reorient the subject and object to be in a constant relation devoid of the violence of identity marking that removes the “other”. The creation is here situated in the politics of disability and in passing through the creative act, procures an aesthetics of disability. A decentering of a body that is itself already off-centre. 

Bio: 

In an ever-going discovery and study of dance, Cai Glover has been training, performing and creating in the art form for over 25 years. From 2012 to 2022 Cai was working as a dance interpreter and choreographer for Cas Public and has been a part of 8 creations for the company. Most recently Cai has been developing his expression in poetry and a language of movement putting the dancing body to task in a search of an embodied expression of poetics through the transposition of language into movement under the name of his company, A Fichu Turning. 

Photo credit: Sasha Onyshenko

gabriela jovian-mazon

As a child, Gabriela Jovian-Mazon started with Mexican folklore dance in her hometown town Mississauga, Ontario and competed in jazz, ballet and musical theatre dance. When she moved to Montréal to study, she discovered street dance and transitioned towards hip-hop, house, and break and now specializes in whacking. Fascinated by the different dance styles, she trained on her own to pursue a dance career after completing her Bachelor’s in Civil Engineering. She has since performed for commercials, music videos, theatre, musicals and festivals. She also loves the battle scene and was a finalist at the 2021 Creative Boost battle at Place des Arts.

Her work as a choreographer is characterized as quirky, theatrical and funky and is proof of her diversified training. In 2020, Gabriela choreographed for MOON an outdoor digital art installation for the city of Montreal. She also completed #dailygabyj, where she created 365 dance videos between 30 – 60 seconds. In 2021, she presented her first short dance video ‘Playtime’ for Bouge d’Ici and co-choreographed ‘Seul.e.s Ensemble: Club Edition’ as part of the Montreal Fringe Festival.

In her work, she explores mental health and the representation of self with the use of space and objects through characters, humour, storytelling and the dance style whacking. Gabriela is an original, versatile and theatrical emerging artist, and she is excited to continue discovering the world of creation.

INNOCENCE

Innocence is a whacking dance short film project, inspired by board games and ‘murder mystery’ films. It aims to highlight the story-telling, drama and individuality of the characters of Whacking, a late 1960s club-culture style inspired by the Golden Age of Hollywood, cartoons and disco music.  

My research explores character interaction and narration through whacking and creating a live game, where dancers and audience members follow rules to find out who is ‘the culprit’. As in a game of chess, each character has their way of moving, and their mannerisms, actions, poses and whacks. There’s tension, drama and a bit of humour.

In 2022, in collaboration with up to 7 dancers, I created a 2-minute dance video, presented a 3-minute piece at Articien and a 15-minute piece at the Art-fullness Whacking Festival on this same theme. Through Alliance, Innocence will benefit from mentorships in vernacular jazz, mime and filmmaking techniques to enrich my whacking and choreographic practice for this project. This support provides access to the desired level of skill and artistry to bring this film to life. 

Credit photo: David Jouary

mara dupas

Mara Dupas is the recipient of the CAM+MAI Joint Support Fellowship 2023-2024.

Mara Dupas is a queer multidisciplinary artist of Martinican descent. He relocated to Montreal with his family at a young age, where he took up dance training. Mara perfected his classical ballet and contemporary dance techniques, first at the Académie du Ballet Métropolitain, then at the École de danse contemporaine de Montréal (2019-2022). Concurrently, he began learning urban dancing and Haitian folk dances by following workshops. Mara collaborates as a performer with Louise Bédard (choreographic research), Charlie Prince (states of body produced by an emergency) as well as Rhodnie Désir (Symphonie de coeurs).

His choreographic works, which explore the themes of métissage, the Afro-descendant body and Caribbean culture, have been presented in Montreal at Danses Buissonnières (Tangente Danse), the Vue sur la Relève Festival and the OFFTA. His personal writing practice has resulted in the publication of several texts, notably by Éditions Bruno Doucey (Poésie en liberté, 2018), in Zinc magazine (2022) and in the Moveo dance magazine (2023).

Photo credit: Bianka Pierre

melinda yeoh

Melinda is the recipient of the 100LUX+MAI Joint Support Fellowship 2023-2024. Melinda will take part of the annual 2023-2024 Les Soirées 100Lux programming.

Born in Singapore, and growing up in the prairies of Calgary, Alberta, Melinda “Melofunk” Yeoh has trained in Locking for 12 years. A member of the LockUnity collective and Ingenious Lockers crew, she fell in love with Locking when she went to the Elite Locking Camp in Las Vegas in 2011. There, she had the opportunity to learn from pioneers and first-generation Lockers such as Scoo B Doo, Damita Jo, and Fluky Luke who were present in the scene when it was created in the late 60s/ early 70s. From then on, she returned to Calgary and tried to grow the local Locking scene little by little through performances, classes, and sessions. In 2014, she moved to Montreal to train with LockUnity and grow as a Locker, and since then, she’s competed in various Locking jams locally and internationally such as Bust A Move, Under Pressure, Unlock The Funk, Vancouver Street Dance Festival, Lock City, and KOD. In addition to competing, she taught Locking classes in Montreal, and choreographed and performed in Locking performances in jams and on stages like 100Lux Festival and Breakin’ Convention.

Melinda seeks to consistently develop and find ways to grow her Locking expression and artistry by training in other dance styles such as Tap Dance and Lindy Hop while at the same time continuing to train with the LockUnity collective.

Tangente thanks the Caisse Desjardins de la Culture and the SAQ, two great heroines who faithfully contribute to the success of Tangente’s activities.

Photo credit: Melika Delz