The November Connections//Collisions Cabaret is co-curated in partnership with re:Create | Philip Hackborn. Mile Zero Dance + re:Create present… Connections//Collisions x Madness and other Ghost Stories!

Dates: November 14 & 15
Time: 7:30 PM
Tickets: $20 MZD Members/ $25 General Admission
Location: MILE ZERO DANCE | 9931 78 Ave NW
Saturday Nov. 15 is ASL interpreted

Connections//Collisions x Madness and other Ghost Stories features:

performers curated by Philip Hackborn
Mx. Jackson
Rebecca Bissonnette
Rebecca John

performers curated by Josh Languedoc
Catherine Owen | One Hundred Days of Summer Weather over Three Years from a Five Year Garden Diary.
Jullianna Oke | Put Me In Your Place
Claudia Kulay | The Hubble Space Telescope Dance
Musician | Allison Balcetis

Madness and other Ghost Stories is an ongoing series of storytelling circles. Prioritizing care and community in equal measure with creativity, this story-swap brings together artists of all disciplines and backgrounds to share tales of what haunts us in our hearts and minds. 

This project is an exploration in mad-art creation; making art with and about madness in new ways to be more responsible, liberatory, and generative.The two central pillars of the work so far are to avoid diagnostic language where best appropriate, and to treat what is usually viewed as “limitation” as the point of creative generation itself. Previous iterations have featured dramatic monologues, verse in both classical and contemporary language, flash fiction, and music. This edition will feature primarily movement artists to envision new spins for this growing series.

ABOUT re:CREATE

re:Create is a performance art production company situated in amiskwaciwâskahikan, Treaty 6. Previously focused on the Clown and Mask process, the company has shifted interest to poetry, storytelling, and devised theatre.

re:Create comes first from a place of play, exploration, and process oriented work. Making, then re-making, then responding to what has been made- all with a sense of joyous curiosity.

Creation, recreation, re:Creation. Revealing + revelling. Processes in which the asking of questions and exploring of multiple possible answers is more important than discovering something “definitive.”

ABOUT THE PERFORMANCES

Rebecca John presents I’m Just a Small Monster…

An exploration of the brain/gut connection.

Snapshots and musings of the ways madness and the digestive system are intertwined and how this cycle feeds on itself, influenced by toilet paper, movies, monsters, hoarding, and my own lived body/mind experience.

For the small monsters inside us all.

Jullianna Oke presents Put Me in Your Place

Put Me in Your Place is a dialogue of self identity and otherness through both movement and projection – building a second body through video, composed of how we are perceived to those around us. While the movement piece is only “one” choreography, can be projected as “two” images in real time; one being how someone sees themselves, and the second being this “otherness” of how we are perceived – slightly different than the original and not quite there, but with fragments of the original. Essentially, Put Me in Your Place is a real-time duet between myself and my “otherness”.

Credits:
Movement and Projections by Jullianna Oke
Sound by Sapphire Haze

Allison Balcetis is a saxophonist living in Edmonton, Alberta in Treaty 6 Territory. As a musician she is drawn to sounds that grab the audience with visceral force or nudge them to lean in deeper, catching ethereal textures. Allison will play the intermission and post-show music!

Please note the Cabaret Content Warnings:

Themes of madness / mental health
Nudity
Adult language
Themes of grief as it relates to bodily existentialism and late-stage capitalism

Featuring

Philip Hackborn

Philip Hackborn (they/them/any), is a performance artist, actor, and poet situated in amiskwaciwâskahikan, colonially known as Edmonton. They exist and make art at the intersections of race, gender identity, and madness. Over the years, they have assisted theatre productions in abandoned warehouses, improvised live with the players of escape rooms as voice-over animatronic characters, and discreetly threaded theatrical ritual under the surface of most of their work. Select performance credits: FEED (MZD, Zero Lab #3), Hamlet in Isolation (Thou Art Here), Krampus: a Christmas Escape Adventure (Canscare), Devour Content Here (Cowgirl Opera). Select writing credits: Madness and other Ghost Stories (re:Create, Found Fest), The Shadow and the Fool (re:Create, Next Fest), Fragmented Journeys and Liminal (Skirtsafire, Expanse Festival, Alberta Circus Arts Festival).
Photo credit | Marc Chalifoux

Mx. Jackson

Hailing from the east coast & drawing deep magic from their Sudanese roots, this artist is known for blurring the lines of gender through sensuality and movement. Their 2023 Nextfest debut captured audiences into their heady haze with original poetry and live shibari. They have gone on to perform across several cities, mystifying and mesmerising all those who lay eyes on them. Through themes of pride, liberation, and eroticism, they playfully dance across lines of burlesque, drag, and a myriad of other live performance styles. The enby showpony and #1 Hussy of Alberta's first and only all-Black drag and burlesque troupe Haus of Ebonii, they will have you bound in reverence, it's Mx. Jackson (If Ya Nasty)!

Rebecca Bissonnette

Rebecca Bissonnette is a Queer, Indigenous, Female artist that loves getting involved in adventures that allow her to tell a story. A sought after collaborator, she has created as an actor, dancer, singer, improviser, comedian, playwright, choreographer, songwriter, director, stage manager, producer, radio show host as well as an arts educator and administrator.

Rebecca has an Education degree with a minor in Educational Psychology, a Management Studies Diploma and close to 3 decades in the dance studio. She has been a part of creating with Mile Zero Dance, Leduc Drama Society, Foote In The Door Theatre, Walterdale Theatre, Workshop West Theatre, Die-Nasty Improv, Horizon Players, Nuova Vocal Arts, Sky’s The Limit Youth Theatre, Thou Art Here Theatre - as well as run her own dance company Shift Happens Dance, her own production company DEPTH Perception Productions and her own radio station Turn It Up Radio.

Rebecca is thrilled to be a part of this very special Connections & Collisions. Much love to Philip, Josh and MZD.

Rebecca John

Rebecca is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in amiskwaciy-wâskahikan. Trained in theatre performance, production design, performance art, and installation, they currently create at the intersections of dance, theatre, and performance art.

As a Mad, queer, non/binary, mixed-race Desi their work explores the liminal and non-monolithic body through movement and materiality. They have been dancing and creating with CRIPSiE, in the integrated/inclusive dance space, since 2015 and sometimes moonlight as an audio describer in the arts.

Rebecca loves movement through space and time, the colour orange, and their dog Marmalade!
Photo credit | Kaylee Bee Photography

Josh Languedoc

This series curated by Josh Languedoc! Originally called The Dirt Buffet Cabaret, this new cabaret is all about breathing new life into art and our current world. As we navigate a radically rapid changing landscape, art is the best way to respond to the world around us. Often, the body knows the truth. This new cabaret series, with alternating themes each time, showcases new and daring works by a variety of artists. Meant to be an incubation process for artists to explore themes of societal change and embodied empowerment, this cabaret will feature movement pieces, solo pieces, and cross-disciplinary explorations between artists.

Catherine Owen

Catherine Owen is a poet and the author of seventeen books in four genres. She has also created multimedia work for the Vagina Festival in New York, The Edmonton Poetry Festival, Skirts Afire and her own YouTube channel. A once-Vancouverite she now lives and runs the performance series 94th street Trobairitz from her 1905 home in Edmonton.

Jullianna Oke

Jullianna is an interdisciplinary dance artist of Japanese-Canadian descent, working in Vancouver as a settler on the unsurrendered lands of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She holds a BFA in Dance from SFU, with her recent works exploring themes of identity through movement, sound and media. Photo Credit | Vitantonio Spinelli

Claudia Kulay

Claudia Kulay (she/they) is a queer and francophone playwright, producer and multidisciplinary performance artist, based in Amiskwaciwaskahikan, colonially known as Edmonton, AB. At the center of their practice is a curiosity for cross-disciplinary collaboration and utilizing philosophies of surrealism and clown as driving forces for writing and creation.
Photo credit | Armand Bladon

Allison Balcetis

Allison Balcetis is a saxophonist living in Edmonton, Alberta in Treaty 6 Territory. As a musician she is drawn to sounds that grab the audience with visceral force or nudge them to lean in deeper, catching ethereal textures. In a world where isolation and loneliness are an epidemic, Allison prefers playing with others, performing both composed and improvised music. Photo Credit | Dhakshboo Photography