Studio Salon: Spring 2025
Studio Salon Series: Spring 2025
Our Studio Salon Series returns, featuring works-in-progress by three local artists.
March 29, 2025 @ 5:00PM
What Lab
1814 Pandora St
Vancouver BC, V5L 1M5
Our Studio Salon Series returns, featuring works in progress by three local artists. This event will be live at What Lab (#202-1814 Pandora St, Vancouver) on Saturday March 29, 2025 @ 5 PM. In-person audience capacity is limited to 40 people.
We will also be holding our Annual General Meeting on Saturday, March 29th before the showcase!
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Rachel Helten (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist, dancer, choreographer and teacher based on the unceded lands of the Coast Salish peoples, including the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō (Stolo), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Holding a BFA in Dance from SFU, Rachel embraces interdisciplinary methods, deep listening, and collaboration, valuing vulnerability as a catalyst for transformation and liberation. Her work, which bridges the material and ethereal realms, has been presented locally and internationally. She is the artistic director of soma anima arts (evolving from Kinesis Dance Somatheatro). Rachel honours the healing power of art to foster a more compassionate and interconnected world.
Photo credit: Em Welz
www.rachelhelten.com / IG: @rachelhelten
https://kinesisdance.org/ / IG: kinesisdancesomatheatro/
FB: KDsomatheatro
About the work:
Gentle Glory is a solo work-in-progress by Rachel Helten that explores gentleness and empathy as pathways to liberation. Drawing from her personal experience navigating mental health challenges, Rachel examines how a deep connection to self, mother earth, and the wisdom of animism fosters healing and strength in an often violent world. The piece advocates for emotional intelligence as essential for greater awareness, celebrating vulnerability as a courageous act of alchemical transformation. It also reflects on how proximity can humanize or dehumanize, emphasizing the need to lean in and honour the sensitivity, sentience, and humanity of all through care.
Yuha Tomita was born in Kanazawa, in Japan and studied and danced in the United States from the age of 15. She came to Vancouver in 2018 to join the Arts Umbrella’s Post-secondary graduate program. After graduating she joined Lamondance Company located in North Vancouver for a year. In 2022, she decided to continue learning with Modus Operandi where she graduated in June, 2024. Yuha is currently a freelance artist in Vancouver, and has participated in projects with various artists such as Dance//Novella, Co. ERASGA, Cristina Bucci, and Maiko Miyauchi, and also she is a one of the faculty member at Arts Umbrella.
photo credit: Kaili Che
IG: @yuhatomita
About the work:
Exploring the idea of ugly and beauty to see where it goes and also to create a platform to heal myself from my life experience through this creation. Using this opportunity to practice integrating my Japanese identity into the dance as well.
Yvonne Chartrand is a contemporary choreographer and dancer as well as a national award-winning master Métis jigger. In 2000, she co-founded V’ni Dansi (“come and dance” in Mitchif) where she continues to act as Artistic Director. Yvonne’s Métis dance work was passed to her through many Métis Elders and she is dedicated to preserving traditional Métis dance in Canada. V'ni Dansi's Métis dance group is called the Louis Riel Métis Dancers. Her contemporary works are always informed by her Métis identity. Yvonne is a winner of the 2011 Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award from the Canada Council for the Arts.
photo credit: DisAppear (by Luciana D'Anunciação)
About the work:
DisAppear is a new choreography co-created by Yvonne Chartrand, Sophie Dow and Madelaine McCallum. In its first phase of development, for Matriarchs Uprising 2024 the trio explored elements of strength, healing and the sentimental clown within the tragedy and grief. An honouring for the MMIWG2S, the missing and murdered women, girls and 2SLGBTQ+ people from the Michif/Métis relation. In this series, Yvonne continues the piece's evolution through solo research.
We regret to inform you that Yvonne will not be able to participate at this time due to personal matters. Thank you.
///
ACCESSIBILITY
What Lab is wheelchair accessible by a set of doors leading from the alley between Pandora St. And Franklin Ave. The front entrance has a flight of stairs.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you for your continued donation and support that helps Co.ERASGA’s annual arts programming and provides economic support to all participating artists.
We humbly acknowledge that most of Co. ERASGA's work, including the Studio Salon Series, takes place on the traditional and unceded lands of the Coast Salish people including the Squamish (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw), Tsleil-Waututh (səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ) and Musqueam (xʷməθkʷəy̓əm) Nations, the original stewards and caretakers of these lands.
Our Studio Salon Series is a recurring series featuring local artists sharing works-in-progress with the community in an informal setting.
These events are free to the public in an effort to create more communication between artists and the community while their works are still in development. After short excerpts are shown, the featured artists engage in conversation with the audience around the topics presented in the work, creation, and development.
