Guest Artists

Contemporary Technique with
Laurence Lemieux

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2025
9:15 AM - 10:30 AM
$20 a class

Class Description:
Compagnie de la Citadelle Artistic Director, Laurence Lemieux, will offer a contemporary technique class that will provide an opportunity for participants to experience both new and familiar ways of moving.
The class will start with a simple warm-up and eventually end with more complex choreographic dance combinations. Informed by her various training practices, Laurence’s class will provide opportunities to explore floor work, travelling work, adage and jumps.
Dancers are encouraged to self-reference movement as they nurture their mind-body connection and sensory awareness in a supportive environment.

Instructor Bio:
As artistic director of Citadel + Compagnie for nearly two decades, Laurence Lemieux has established herself as a leader within Toronto’s dance community. Her multi-faceted experience as a dancer, choreographer, teacher and presenter has guided the company’s mandate of community outreach and engagement and given rise to C+C’s distinctive artistic voice.

Born in Québec City, Lemieux studied dance at L’École Supérieure de Danse du Québec, and at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. Her performance career began when she joined Toronto Dance Theatre in 1986, dancing for founders David Earle, Peter Randazzo and Patricia Beatty, and later for Christopher House. A member of the company for 8 years, Lemieux’s 1998 performance in House’s Cryptoversa earned her the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best Performance in Dance.
Over the course of her career, Lemieux has danced for some of Canada’s most prominent choreographers, including William Douglas, Margie Gillis, James Kudelka, Benoît Lachambre, Sylvain Émard, and Jean-Pierre Perreault. Since presenting her first choreography in 1983, Lemieux has created over thirty original works, drawing deeply on personal experiences that resonate strongly with audiences and presenters alike.

As an educator, Lemieux has taught at many respected institutions including Ryerson University, York University, Concordia University, the University of Quebec in Montreal, l’École Supérieure de Ballet Contemporain and Canada’s National Ballet School. Lemieux uses her cumulative artistic experience to inform her programming choices for the company’s multiple presentation series, showcasing the work of diverse talent from emerging, marginalized and established choreographers.

In 2012, Lemieux created the Citadel Dance Program and brought high quality, accessible dance classes to children and youth living in Toronto’s Regent Park. She is a passionate advocate for the arts and is President of the board of Daniel Leveillé Danse in Montreal.
Lemieux’s satisfaction as an artist comes from sharing her passion and talent with dance audiences and students, and as a deeply engaged and active member of the dance community.

Movement Practice and Practice Share with
Alex Elliott (open to all)

Thursday, April 24th, 2025
9:15 AM - 10:30 AM
$20 a class

Class Description:
From Alex: "Our time together will begin with a check in that I learned from Bee Palomina: In relationship to...How are you feeling? What do you need? What can you offer? We sit in a circle and begin by sharing about our practices, our challenges, our goals. As with everything I offer, this is a proposal, nothing is mandatory. After practicing this check in for five years, I find it creates safer and braver spaces. From there we move into my Movement Practice which is a collage of practices I have gathered throughout my twenty year career. Most recently I have been inspired by Alejandro Ronceria. He reminded me about stillness, my breath, and finding out who I am and where I come from. Finally, my electronic dance music playlist will get us moving and sweating! I can't wait to spend time with you."

Instructor Bio:
After performing her work in New York, Alex Elliott and Hurricane Sandy came face to face. Physically demanding and emotionally charged, her work made it back to her hometown of Winnipeg and beyond. Her dances have been presented in New York, Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, and Halifax. Alex thanks Tedd Robinson for his ecstasy charged commission Logarian Rhapsody. She is the Artistic Director of her own company Alexandra Elliott Dance, as well as Art Holm, a multidisciplinary performance series in Winnipeg, and the Executive Director of Young Lungs Dance Exchange.

Qi Gong & Sound Healing Qi Gong with Davida Monk

Qi Gong with Davida Monk
Days: Thursday - Sunday
Dates: January 23, 24, 25, 26, 2025
Time: 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Cost: $18 a class

Class Description:
Qi Gong is an ancient Chinese practice that increases vitality and reduces stress. Qi Gong integrates and harmonizes the body, emotions, and mind: empowering the imagination, increasing creative potential, lifting the heart and vitalizing the body. These classes will impart the experience of recognizing, sensing, cultivating and circulating energy. The material and the approach are based on Master Lee Holden’s Qi Gong techniques. Classes are one hour in duration, including physical warmups and Qi Gong flow movement patterns and ending with a short meditation.

Sound Healing Qi Gong with Davida Monk
Days: Friday - Sunday
Dates: January 24, 25, 26, 2025
Time: 11:15 AM - 12:30 PM
Cost: $20 a class

Class Description:
These classes will introduce students to the ancient Qi Gong practice of sound healing. Sound Healing is known to have many profound positive effects, physically, emotionally and mentally. Participants will learn sound, movement, and visualization patterns that are said to purge and tonify the five organ systems.

*Note: It is recommended that students interested in Sound Healing Qi Gong also take the general Qi Gong class at 10 am.

Instructor Biography:
Davida Monk, Dance Artist
Davida Monk began her professional career in 1985 with Le Groupe de la Place Royale of Ottawa, and was instrumental in the development of Canada’s first professional contemporary dance laboratory for choreographic development, Le Groupe Dance Lab. Monk’s works have been presented across Canada and in Europe.

In her current project Songs Without Words she has created 20 distinct solos which are available for viewing, complete with collaborator comments, studio notes and artists responses at www.m-body.ca. In addition to performing these works, Monk is in the process of giving them to other emerging and mature dance artists for their own performance repertoires. The next phases of Songs Without Words will also include productions of reimagined combinations of the SWW body of work.

Monk has taught dance technique, creative process and choreography in a wide variety of contexts and has danced for and collaborated with many Canadian choreographers and artists of other disciplines. She became a Certified Holden Qi Gong Instructor in 2023. The recipient of awards for choreographic development and touring from the University of Calgary, Calgary Arts Development, and Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Banff Centre, Monk directed Calgary’s Dancers’ Studio West, an organization dedicated to the development of choreographers from 2008 – 2018. Monk is Associate Professor Emerita (University of Calgary), and Artistic Director of M-Body, dedicated to the development of her own works, since 2004.

Body Intelligence and the joy of moving with Tony Chong

Days: Tuesday, Wednesday
Dates: January 28, 29, 2025
Times: 9:15 AM - 10:30 AM
Cost: $20 a class

Class Description:
Starting off with a kinetic and athletic warm-up which involves a full integration and application of the natural forces of the body from the ground up. Understanding how each human body is unique in function and recalling how the world of children and animals are driven to move, the class explores the lost art of movement and physical play. Tapping into the natural intelligence of the body, the class leads into movement phrases along with group improvisations. Through guided exploration, we will create organic movement for our bodies.

Instructor Biography:
Tony Chong is a choreographer, dancer, performer, photographer and creative director. He has an eclectic and curious appetite for many forms of creativity, leading him to work in dance, circus, theatre, new media technology, film, cooking, and photography. Tony has received the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseils des Arts et des Lettres du Québec for his creative pursuits and works.
Tony toured with Cirque du Soleil as the Artistic Assistant Director on the show Totem from 2017 to the end of January 2018. From 2012 to 2016, He is one of the Artistic Directors/Rehearsal directors on tour with La Compagnie Marie Chouinard. From 2005–2008, Tony was the Co-Artistic Director of Le Groupe Dance Lab in Ottawa, Ontario.

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