ABATTOIR COMPANY AND COLLABORATORS BIOS

ALLEN KAEJA - Choreographer / Director
A Gemini nominated Director and Award winning Choreographer, Allen Kaeja entered the field of dance after 9 years of wrestling and Judo. He has been creating dance since 1982, and is Co-Artistic Director of Kaeja d'Dance with life partner Karen Kaeja. His works have been presented in festivals and venues around the world. Allen and Karen have performed a selection of their lifeDUETS at the Guggenheim Museum in Spain, at the Other Festival in India as well as Mexico, Portugal and across Canada. He is the recipient of many awards for his stage and film work, including a prestigious, UNESCO citation, Certificate of Distinction (American Dance Festival) and Best Performance in a Dance Film (Canada) among others. Allen is the co-founder of the CanAsian International Dance Festival and the fringe Festival of Independent Dance Artists (fFIDA). Allen has created two Holocaust trilogies that explore his father's life as a resistance fighter and survivor of the Holocaust. These choreographies were translated into films and currently reside in international libraries, galleries and educational institutions including the Jewish Museum in New York, the Museum of Modern Art and Yad Vashem in Israel. In 2006 Allen and Karen were invited to screen some of their films and speak at the Tel Aviv Video Dance Festival. Soulpepper Theatre Company (Toronto) has commissioned a new creation from Allen in collaboration with Albert Shultz (Director) and David Buchbinder (composer) adapting Between Two Worlds (based on the Yiddish story The Dybbuk) as a Dance/Theatre/Music production. He is also working on a new film, Between Seams, for Bravo!FACT.

KAREN KAEJA - Choreographer / Dancer
Karen Kaeja is Co-Artistic Director of Kaeja d'Dance with Allen Kaeja and Co-Founder/Director of Toronto's Festival of Interactive Physics (FIP). Karen is a highly regarded influence in the Canadian dance scene as a performer for stage and film, and as a dance educator. Karen won the 2005 Paul D. Fleck Award for artistic excellence, noted as one of Canada's most innovative artists. As well, she received the Moving Pictures Award for Best Performance, is included in the Canadian Who's Who Encyclopedia and has received numerous other grants and awards. Karen's choreography "paints portraits with moving bodies" (Toronto Star) and her dancing is noted as "gorgeous liquid athleticism" (eye magazine). She has originated roles for Kaeja d'Dance, Jody Oberfelder (NYC), Randy Glynn Dance Project, Holly Small, Kathleen Rea, Rebecca Todd, Jane Mappin, Eryn Trudell, Marie-Josée Chartier, Claudia Moore and Maxine Heppner, among others. Distinguished as a "champion of contact dance" and featured in NOW Magazine's top 10 dance artists, Karen is well known as "one of Toronto's top Improvisers" (Toronto Life). She is on the faculty at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre, and has taught at Canada's National Ballet School, Ryerson and York Universities, and internationally. Karen and Allen are featured in the Freedom documentary series on Bravo! that showcases Canadian dance companies.

JASON SHERMAN - Writer
Critically acclaimed playwright Jason Sherman's plays include An Acre of Time; It's All True; Patience; Reading Hebron; The Retreat; and Three in the Back, Two in the Head. He has received Canada's Governor General's Literary Award for Drama (and been nominated three other times) and the Chalmers Canadian Play Award (twice, along with three other nominations). His adaptations of The Cherry Orchard (After the Orchard) and The Brothers Karamazov were seen last year at the National Arts Centre and Stratford Festival, respectively. Jason Sherman has written a number of radio dramas for CBC, including National Affairs and several episodes of the television series ReGenesis. Dubbed the enfant terrible of the Canadian stage, his work is uncompromising, challenging, and driven by an unerring sense of dialogue and theatricality. His plays, always political to some degree, encompass characters rarely seen in today's drama, characters who face the tough questions, the big issues, and the difficult journeys many dramatists shy from. In the words of the late Canadian theatrical legend, Urjo Kareda, "The theatrical vitality of Jason Sherman's plays starts from the sheer size of his central characters: the size of their desires, the size of their imagination, the size of their intelligence."

FIDES KRUCKER - New Opera / Performer
Fides Krucker specializes in contemporary vocal repertoire. After training at the Banff Centre in the mid-eighties she performed the Berio Folk Songs extensively throughout Europe and the Middle East with such orchestras as the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris, Il Maggio Musicale in Florence and the Opera de Lyon. Krucker is known for her performances of Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer's works including Ariadne in Requiems for the Party Girl for which she received a Dora nomination. She has sung in Britain, Canada, Belgium, Holland and Israel. She has also premiered new operas by several dozen composers both at home and abroad and is particularly interested in bringing extended vocal techniques into the development of new work. Fides is a founding member of and producer for the interdisciplinary female collective URGE. Their fourth collectively created show, Trousseau / True Nature, premiered at Calgary's High Performance Rodeo, was remounted at Toronto's Factory Theatre and was nominated for two Dora awards. She is currently headed to Rome where she will begin work on the creation of arias for her character Olympias in Maurizio Squillante's new opera Alexander, which will tour in Italy during the fall of 2007.

EDGARDO MORENO - Composer
Edgardo Moreno studied music at the Royal Conservatory of Music and York University. He has traveled to Chile, Trinidad, Puerto Rico and Venezuela to study local musical traditions. He is experimenting and composing with the complex folk music of Latino America, both Native and African. He has worked with choreographers Allen Kaeja, Karen Kaeja, Livia Daza-Paris, Alejandro Ronceria, Norma Araiza. He has been commissioned to compose music for dance in Venezuela, Mexico, Sweden, England and USA. He has written scores for films by Allen Kaeja: Witnessed, Sarah, Zummel (nominated for best score in a short film by Festival of Film and Technology, New York City 2003), Resistance, 1939, Old Country, Departure, as well as documentaries and dramas: El Contrato, Gummi, Headhunter, and Happy Birthday. He has also worked creating music for the television travel show Exploring Horizons for three seasons. He has received a nomination for the Louis Applebaum Composer's Award for emergent film composer. He lives and plays in Toronto.

SUSAN LEE - Company Dancer
Susan Lee is Toronto based dance artist who has originated roles in a multitude of dance works by artists including Kaeja d'Dance (company member since 1997), Holly Small, Maxine Heppner, Peter Chin, and Bill James. She has performed across Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia. Susan, known for her athletically fluid dance style and evocative stage presence, has held a long interest in improvisation a creative tool and as a means of expression. Susan has created a number of works in the last 10 years that have explored her interest in the integration of music making and dance, text and movement, and improvisation as a performance art. Her most recent work Threshold, a collaboration with guitarist Aidan Baker, was presented at the Distillery Jazz Festival in Toronto and at the Square Zero Independent Dance Festival. Susan has also been co-Artistic Director of Series 8:08, an organization focused on the creative development of dance artists, since 1995.

TIMOTHY SPRONK - Company Dancer
Tim Spronk is a graduate of York University. He has performed throughout the world as a dancer with many artists such as Newton Moraes, Jackie Latendress, Nicole Fougere and in competitive ballroom (he is the 2001 North American Champion of Dancesport Theater Arts). Tim performs regularly as a founding member of the Chimera project, directed by Malgorzata Nowacka. He also works as a personal trainer.

TANYA CROWDER - Company Dancer
Tanya Crowder is an independent dancer, choreographer, and producer working in Toronto. As a dancer/interpreter she has worked with Betty Colon, Julia Aplin, Denise Duric, Eryn Dace Trudell, Rebecca Hope Terry, Allison Rees-Cummings, Viv Moore, Claudia Moore, Lin Snelling, Kate Alton and Darcy Callison. Tanya worked with Newton Moraes Dance Theatre as a dancer and rehearsal director for over four years. With NMDT, Tanya originated roles in several dance works that premiered in Toronto and toured to Montreal and Germany. As of 2002, Tanya began working with Karen and Allen Kaeja of Kaeja d'Dance on various projects for both choreographers and is currently a company member. Tanya is a choreographer in her own right and she has presented several of her own works in Toronto and Ottawa to critical acclaim. Tanya is the founder of the production umbrella EDGEdanceworks, a member and cofounder of INERTIA dance, and the Program Coordinator for Series 8:08's Choreographic Performance Workshop. Tanya is always lending her services to the dance community and currently serves on the Board of Directors for CADA and DUO.

ROBERT HALLEY - Company Dancer
Robert Halley has worked with choreographers across North America including: David Earle, Yasmina Ramzy, Mitzi Adams, Linda Haberman, Richard Stafford, Fred Benjamin, Anabel Ho, Wen-Wei Wang, Judith Marcuse and Tito Abela. He recently performed for Dance Break Showcasing the Next Generation of Broadway Choreographers in New York. Robert toured across the United States as a Company member with AILEY II, the second company of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, where he performed at venues including The Radio City Music Hall, The Apollo Theatre in New York and The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

RYAN LEE - Company Dancer
Ryan is a recent graduate of Ryerson University's BFA Dance Program, where he worked with choreographers including Nadia Potts, Karen Duplisea, Vicki St. Denys, Robert Glumbek, Allen Kaeja, Stellio Calagias and Jennifer Swan. He has performed at Dance Ontario Weekend (William Yong), Under the Mink at Buddies in Bad Times, fFIDA (Daryl Hoskins) and Series 808 (Megan McNeil).

AARON WILLIS - Company Member / Actor
A graduate of George Brown Theatre School and the University of Alberta, Aaron's selected theatre credits include Piotr in The Russian Play (Harbourfront Centre); Lyle in Wrecked (Roseneath Theatre) for which he was nominated for a 2006 Dora award in the Outstanding Performance category; Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare in the Rough); Willie in Well (Tarragon Theatre) and Tot in The Piper (Necessary Angel / Factory Theatre). Aaron and his wife Julie Tepperman run a theatre-appreciation program for adults at the Narayever Synagogue in Toronto.

ROELOF PETER (RON) SNIPPE - Lighting Designer
Roelof Peter Snippe began his professional lighting design career with Toronto Workshop Production under the direction of George Luscombe. He has enjoyed a long working relationship with Toronto Dance Theatre creating designs for over 150 works in the repertoire. His many other credits include original designs for the National Ballet of Canada, Danny Grossman Dance Company, Dancemakers, Ottawa Ballet, Theatre Beyond Words and independent choreographers including Denise Fujiwara, Tedd Robinson, Santee Smith and Claudia Moore.