Exquisite Pressure x All Bodies Dance Project
March 14–15, 2025
7:30pm, 7pm doors
$15, No one turned away for lack of $
WHAT LAB 1814 Pandora Street
tickets online or at the door
All Bodies Dance Project and What Lab are very excited to welcome you to back to Exquisite Pressure! ExP allows artists to try something new, to share their works in progress in front of an audience, gather feedback, and put their investigations to the test. It’s a night to experience new work in beautiful, brave, and vulnerable early stages.
ExP x All Bodies Dance features the work of:
Bianca Kodato + Danielle Morrison
Krystal Tsai
Sarah Hin Ching U
Curated and hosted by All Bodies Dance Project.
Questions? Email us at studio@whatlab.ca
Accessibility Info
What Lab is located at 1814 Pandora Street. There is no dedicated parking, only street parking. The venue is located on the second floor up one flight of stairs, but there is a ground level accessible entrance through the back of the building. Seating is typically informal, and will include some combination of chairs, floor seating, couches, and cushions. There is one single-occupancy, gender-inclusive washroom. The washroom is not big enough for larger style wheelchairs to completely turn around in while the door is open. We are a trans-inclusive space.
1 + 1 = 1
By Bianca Kodato and Danielle Morrison
This performance explores how bodies relate and navigate. Through the use of exaggerated and unusual objects, the performance welcomes the audience to disrupt the usual ways they experience their bodies and relate to one another.
Created and performed by Bianca Kodato and Danielle Morrison
Another Glass of Wine Away
By Krystal Tsai
Where is home? What is home? What makes it home? The dissonant experience we share with those living here and there; disorientating words with unsettled bodies; the place of our origin – a distorted place in space and in hearts.
Created and performed by Krystal Tsai (choreographer, performer), Max Hanic (collaborator, performer), & Czarina Agustines (collaborator, production & lighting designer)
Next Station (working title)
By Sarah Hin Ching U
Through movement, conversations and humour, Next Station (working title), examines public transportation as a shared social experience. This piece delves into the dynamics of communal spaces, the structures that govern them, society’s fixation on productivity, and the underlying reflections of class divisions.
Created and performed by Sarah Hin Ching U (choreographer, performer), Kevin Li (performer), & Lamont (performer)
about the artists
Bianca Kodato
Bianca Kodato is an interdisciplinary designer using design as a tool for social innovation. Through playful and participatory approaches, she advocates for a future that prioritizes agency and support between individuals, communities and the environment. She is interested in the exchange that happens between physical spaces and living beings, seeing place and the personal connections developed with them as critical influences to how we exist and behave in and with the world.
Danielle Morrison
Danielle Morrison is an interdisciplinary designer with a background in dance. She explores how the human body interacts with materials and others, often through functional wearables or speculative designs. Interested in inclusive and social work, her practice sits in a playful and participatory space as a way to invite connection and collaboration.
Krystal Tsai
Krystal Tsai is an emerging dance artist born and raised in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. And now based in Vancouver, BC, Canada. She is engaged in world-building art, site-specific movement work and explores interactive relations within her performance. Krystal often plays with different ways to transform stories related to her cultural background; bodily sensations and day to day conversation through her creations. She also places interest heavily on real-time composition and contact improvisation. Alongside her creative practice, Krystal continuously builds her experience in figure modelling, stage production management, and art administration.
photo credit Yarrow (@stillsby.yarrow)
Max Hanic
Max Hanic (he/him) is an Amiskwaciwâskahikan raised artist who graduated with distinction from the University of Alberta Fine Arts Acting program and La Faktoria Choreographic Centre in Pamplona, Spain.
Credits: Kneeture’s Gift choreographed by himself and presented by Mile Zero, Éphémère Firefly Theatre and Circus, Space and Spectra, a residency on improvisation with live musicians organized by Rumi Jeraj and Aidan Mcconell in collaboration with the Good Women Dance Collective; Mudweed a self choreographed work in collaboration with musical group Pigeon Breeders; Stabat Matter (Edmonton Opera) choreographed by Susanna Hood; Dead Centre of Town (Catch the Keys Productions); Nosotrxs choreographed by Daniel Abreu; W.E choreographed by Mingao Zhang; Kay in Boy Trouble (Amoris Projects, Fringe Spotlight Series 2023, Fringe Festival 2019) for which he received a Sterling Nomination and Mircea in In Camera (Found Fest 2019).
photo credit Nanc Price
Czarina Agustines
Czarina Agustines is a multi-disciplinary artist/performer/maker/designer who has a background in production and design for live theatre. Her personal art comes out of her in little portions, often exploring themes of home, motion, sensitivity, and connection. She enjoys finding and exploring these connections through meaningful collaboration.
Sarah Hin Ching U
Sarah Hin Ching U 余衍晴 (she/her) is a Chinese-Canadian dance artist and choreographer, whose training spans a wide range of styles, including contemporary, breaking, hip-hop, and ballet. She gravitates toward narratives of human desire, identity, and relationships, often drawing deeply from her personal experience. My work has been presented by Dancing on the Edge (Vancouver), National Arts Centre, Capsule: Video series (Ottawa), The Dance Centre (Vancouver), NewWorks (Vancouver), REvolver(Vancouver), DanceWorks (Toronto), Toes For Dance (Toronto), Skampede (Victoria), Free Flow Dance Theatre (Saskatoon), Good Women Dance(Edmonton) among others. In 2022, I received the Professional Performing Artist Award from British Columbia Arts Council and have recently received Professional Development award to train under bboy Savage Rock in the art of breaking.
Kevin Li
Best known for his hand choreography work on the American fantasy TV series The Magicians, dance artist Kevin “Shazam” Li’s dance journey began after moving from Hong Kong to Vancouver in 2009. He trained with hip hop company SOULdiers and focused on tutting and flow arts afterwards. In 2014, Kevin joined Modus Operandi, a Vancouver based contemporary dance training program. Since graduating, Kevin has choreographed for various projects such as Apple TV series SEE and theater production Sparkle Bunny: The Last Raver Dancing. He is a member of Earthen Bodies, a multidisciplinary art collective. He is currently working with New Works as artist/instructor and All Bodies Dance Project as facilitator/live translator. Kevin is passionate about uniting diverse dance forms, mediums and cultures while forging artistic connections within communities.
Lamont
Lamont (they/them) is an emerging contemporary mover and creator. They are a French native speaker from the stolen territory of the kanien’kehá ka nation, in tiohtià:ke / mooniyaang, currently based on the unceded traditional territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm nations. They are interested in queer non-linearity and community-oriented initiatives that approach art through a holistic lens and rethink the ways in which we connect to space, time and each other. For Lamont, although movement is not always visible a dance is constantly happening. Latest interests include w*acking, latin hustle, clown/drag, LSTW magazines and watering cans!
Lamont is in their fourth year of artistic development in Modus Operandi under the direction of Tiffany Tregarthen, Kate Franklin, David Raymond and Maiko Miyauchi. Their work has been presented in various venues and festivals in Montreal and Vancouver, including Festival Chronométrie, Material World 10.2.10, chalk it up!, Festival Errances, Festival Quartier Danses, Programmation À Part and Boombox. Through their creative platform self checkout, they work as a producer, facilitator and curator to bring together youth outreach and professional artistic activities within the queer/trans communities across Canada.
This presentation is funded in part by
