EDAM Presents
Choreographic Series 2026
November 04, 06, 07, 11, 13, 14 at 7PM
Jeanette Kotowich
Rebecca Margolick
Raïna von Waldenburg
Welcome to EDAM – Experimental Dance and Music. We are delighted to have you with us for our November 2027 Choreographic Series. Running under various names since 1989, and formalizing in 1994, this series is EDAM’s core presentation platform. Each season, we invite guest choreographers to create and present new work alongside EDAM’s own. The Choreographic Series is always a highlight of our season, a time to deepen our craft, hold big questions, engage in artistic exchange, and get to be with you, our audience!
This series is our first since the passing of EDAM’s founder and visionary, Peter Bingham, earlier this year. His spirit, love, mentorship, and devotion to experimental performance and Contact Improvisation remain woven into everything we do in this room.
During the final eight years of his career, Peter worked closely with the EDAM Ensemble developing and refining his scored improvisations. With ten to thirty years of study under Peter, the performers share a rare compositional intuition, grounded in virtuosic physicality, spatial sensitivity, and deep trust. Working with Guest Director Raïna von Waldenburg marks an exciting first for the Ensemble. As Peter’s creative confidant and dramaturg, Raïna holds an intimate understanding of our way of working, while bringing decades of her own artistic practice. Her deep care and gentle stretching of our edges have been a powerful and inspiring gift in this tender time of transition.
This fall, we have had the pleasure of also hosting Jeanette Kotowich, Rebecca Margolick and their collaborators in residency. We are moved by the artists’ compelling choreographic voices, and are grateful for the vulnerability they bring to their processes in sharing these newly conceived works with us.
Although each of the pieces you will witness this evening were developed independently, thematic echoes and connections have naturally emerged between them. In this six-show run, the pieces have the space to evolve alongside each other. Across these two weeks, we look forward to breathing life into these new works, and we carry Peter’s memory close as we honour his legacy and dance into this new chapter together.
Thank you for being here.
Enjoy the performance!
- Olivia, Sierra, and Jarin
_Inner Work_
by Jeanette Kotowich
_Inner Work_ explores being present to the task of being whole, fractured, and part of something bigger than ourselves—resting in the liminal space between the selves we have outgrown and a skin not yet fully inhabited.
“Being is becoming, and becoming is being.”
Created and performed by Jeanette Kotowich and Brady Ciel Marks
Special thanks to Olivia Shaffer and Sierra Megas for all that you hold, and to supporting artists: Lisa Mariko Gelley, Kate Franklin, Michelle Olson, Donna Redlick, Sharai Mustatia for your continued dedication.
GUEST CHOREOGRAPHER
Originally from Treaty 4 territory Saskatchewan, JEANETTE KOTOWICH creates work that reflects Nêhiyaw/Métis cosmology within the context of contemporary dance, Indigenous performance, and Indigenous futurism. She fuses intercultural collaboration, sovereignty-centered practices and embodied research methodologies to explore concepts of emergence, relationship to the natural/spirit world, and Ancestral knowledge. Her practice is intergenerational and vocational; it’s a living and lived experience. Jeanette has self-presented and been programmed at theatres and festivals across Turtle Island and internationally.
COLLABORATOR
BRADY CIEL MARKS is a sound artist and educator. Brady is concerned with our technological entanglement, and creates media configurations that express a middle way between technological fetishism and dystopian fantasies. She works with technology, against technological thinking and for marginalized voices using sound, light and body. Brady holds a M.Sc. in Interactive Arts from Simon Fraser University (SFU) and has recently been teaching at Emily Carr University of Art+Design in the New Media Sound Art area. She has long hosted the Soundscape Show on Vancouver’s Co-op Radio. Brady was born in the shadow of Table Mountain, Cape Town, South Africa. She makes her home the unstable, unsurrendered lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples and thrives on queer party dance floors. She will move back and forth if asked.
Photo by Doug McKinney
a version of
by Rebecca Margolick
a version of explores the idea of aftermath, and the time immediately following a major event. At a transitional moment, the artist moves through thoughts and emotions that return, shift, and contradict one another rather than following a linear path. She observes herself from both within and without, attempting to bring order to something that is constantly changing.
Drawing on the exhaustion that life’s events instill in us, the work unfolds through a collage-like structure. a version of is a way to buy time when we are granted no time at all. It reflects society’s obsession with processing alongside an aversion to engaging with it—precisely because some things are too vast to be rationalized in such a short time.
Choreographer and Performer: Rebecca Margolick
Composer: Matthew Tomkinson
Dramaturgy: Lapo Sintoni
Additional outside eye: Livona Ellis
Acknowledgements: BC Movement Arts Society and Affabula Art Centre
GUEST CHOREOGRAPHER
REBECCA MARGOLICK’s work has been presented across thirteen countries, receiving international recognition and awards for her solo works. After fourteen years based in NYC, she returned to her hometown of Vancouver, B.C. Rebecca has been awarded numerous fellowships and residencies, including from the Banff Centre, Ailey’s New Directions Choreography Lab, The Dance Centre, La Galerie Chorégraphique, Centro de las Artes San Luis Potosí, Dance Deck, LABA NYC, and Derida Stage in Bulgaria, as part of Movement Research’s GPS Fund.
Her choreography has been commissioned by Oregon Ballet Theatre, La Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica, Arts Umbrella, LITVAK Dance, The Ailey School, Michiyaya, and NW Dance Project’s 2025 MOVE program.
In 2024, she premiered two duet co-creations, one in NYC with Tushrik Fredericks, and one in Vancouver with Livona Ellis. In 2025, she premiered her multidisciplinary co-creation with violinist Hannah Epperson at PS21: Chatham, NY.
Still a dedicated dancer alongside her choreographic and teaching career, she is currently dancing with Jason Martin/Entitey Danse. She recently performed in Sloth Canon, a co-production by Company 605 and T.H.E Dance Company. In 2024, she joined Andrea Peña & Artists for the creation of UAQUE and recently assisted her new creation on Balé da Cidade de São Paulo in Brazil.
Rebecca was a performer with Sidra Bell Dance New York from 2012-2016, and UNA Productions from 2015-2023. She graduated from New York University Tisch School of the Arts and trained at Arts Umbrella. Rebecca is an Artistic Advisor for BC Movement Arts Society bringing contemporary dance to the rural Vancouver North Island Region.
COLLABORATOR
MATTHEW TOMKINSON is a composer and sound designer for theatre, film, and contemporary dance. He holds a PhD in Theatre Studies from the University of British Columbia, where he studied sound within Deaf, Disability, and Mad arts. His debut audiovisual album as Mathoms, The Woe Trumpets, is out with Decaying Spheres, accompanied by a film presented at Sound Scene Festival (Washington) and Chapeltown Picture House (Manchester). His work has been exhibited internationally at festivals in Canada, the US, UK, Ireland, Austria, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Singapore, India, and Indonesia. Recent collaborators and commissions include Company 605, Ballet BC, Raven Spirit Dance, Théâtre la Seizième, Evann Siebens, Rebecca Margolick, Eric Cheung, Sophia Wolfe, and the All Bodies Dance Project. He lives in Vancouver on unceded Musqueam territiory.
ONE NOW AT A TIME
by Raïna von Waldenburg
Postcards to Peter B
Director: Raïna von Waldenburg
Performers: Anne Cooper, Francesca Frewer, Hayley Gawthrop, Arash Khakpour, Alex Mah, and Olivia Shaffer.
From Raïna: I would like to thank the EDAMites from the bottom of my heart for trusting me to collaborate with them during this very special moment of transition.
GUEST DIRECTOR
RAÏNA VON WALDENBURG, former full-time faculty at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, adjunct at SFU and UFV, currently teaches workshops in Grotowski-based physical performance. Raïna is a dramaturg, writer, director, and performer in Vancouver and the experimental downtown NYC theatre scene. She has been facilitating artists in the development of original performance material for thirty-five years. Since 2013 Raïna has been outside eye/dramaturg for Peter Bingham’s work in the Choreographic Series at EDAM. She is deeply honored by the invitation to direct this new work with Peter’s beloved company in the wake of his passing.
EDAM ENSEMBLE
ANNE COOPER is a dancer and teacher, dancing in EDAM/Peter Bingham's works both choreographed and improvised for 30 years. She is grateful to live & work here, on the unceded, ancestral lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, & Tsleil-Waututh Nations. She has danced for DSB/Chick Snipper, Lola Dance, Kinesis Somatheatro, Karen Jamieson Dance, Co. Erasga, Mascall Dance, Dansepartout (QC) among others. In the field of improvisation she has performed with Nancy Stark Smith in the U.S. in the Glimpse Performance Installations. With EDAM she improvised in Peter's work at dmic/fac Toronto, August '25 & in Olivia Shaffer's work for EDAM's Rewind & Renew, April '25. Anne teaches Contact Improvisation at EDAM & other locales, since 2000. With Love & Thanks, Peter, for all the dances, and to Raïna, the Ensemble, EDAM, and my family.
FRANCESCA FREWER is a contemporary dance artist and Feldenkrais® Practitioner whose artistic practice spans performing, creating, teaching, and producing. She loves to be inside the strangeness of the emergent moment of performance, whether that’s onstage, behind the scenes, or in the audience. She is one of the co-organizers of the DIY performance space, Boombox. She loves dancing with EDAM.
HAYLEY GAWTHROP is a creative, living, dancing and shaking cocktails on the unceded, ancestral territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil- Waututh Nations. Music and dance make Hayley feel more radically alive. Their passion for autonomy and interest in improvisation led them to explore Contact Improv under the tutelage of Peter Bingham in 2015. They have been dancing professionally with the EDAM ensemble since 2021 and teaching CI at EDAM since 2022.
ARASH KHAKPOUR (آرش خاکپور) is a Dancer, choreographer, facilitator and cultivator from Tehran, based on Coast Salish Territory (colonially known as Vancouver). Arash has 18 years of practice in movement and performance and has been a company member and part of the EDAM ensemble since 2017. Since 2012, he has continuously learned from Peter Bingham until the time he passed away in 2026. In 2018, he was mentored by Raïna von Waldenburg on presence, emotion and embodiment based on the Grotowski method. In 2023, he completed a mentorship project with Benoît Lachambre on perception and deepening his performance and facilitation practice. In 2025, Arash was one of nineteen participants in ‘The Mystery School of Choreography’ in Lisbon, directed by Meg Stuart and Ana Rocha.
ALEX MAH is an interdisciplinary performing artist, composer-musician, and CI practitioner. He composes mostly weirdo experimental music and sometimes sweet songs for dance and theatre. He is grateful to have worked with Peter Bingham since 2015 and was fortunate to be a jam musician for 300 dancers at contactfest Freiburg 2024, Europe’s largest CI festival. He is fond of folk music, loves a good cheesecake, and prefers taking things slowly.
LIGHTING DESIGNER
GILLIAN HANEMAYER (Lighting Designer) is an interdisciplinary artist based on the unceded and traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh first nations. She works primarily as a Lighting Designer and Technical Director in theatre and dance, but her other practices include installation work, writing, performing, and devising work across disciplines. Her recent lighting design credits include: Rosa (Ballet BC), Once (Ballet BC), Project Inizi (Cristina Bucci), Seesaw (Arts Umbrella), The Forests Wild (Arts Umbrella), Dead as a Dodo (Associate Lighting Design, Wakka Wakka Productions), BOLT (Jeanette Kotowich). Gillian holds a BFA from the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University.
EDAM CHOREOGRAPHIC SERIES 2026
Artistic Director
Olivia Shaffer
General Manager
Sierra Megas
Administrative & Communications Coordinator
Jarin Schexnider
Front of House
Maggie McGhee
Lighting Designer
Gillian Hanemeyer
Sound Technician
Alex Mah
Thank you to Western Front, our generous donors, and our wonderful volunteers.
The Choreographic Series is made possible with the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Province of British Columbia, the BC Arts Council and the City of Vancouver.
We, at EDAM, live, work and create on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and Səl̓ílwətaɬ Nations.