Shion Skye Carter (she/they) is a dance artist originally from Tajimi, Japan, who lives and dedicates time to her artistic practice in Vancouver, Canada as a guest on the unceded, ancestral lands of the Coast Salish peoples. Through choreography hybridized with heritage artforms that interact with digital and sculptural objects, Shion’s work looks inward to the facets of her intersectional identity as a lens to process the world around her. As co-founder of olive theory, an interdisciplinary duo with musician Stefan Nazarevich, she collaborates to experiment at the intersection between embodied performance, installation art, and live sound. Shion has worked with artists such as Vanessa Goodman (Action at a Distance), Wen Wei Dance, and Ziyian Kwan (Dumb Instrument Dance), and has performed her own work across Canada, including presentations at The Dance Centre (Vancouver), Tangente (Montréal), Kinetic Studio (Halifax), and Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto). She holds a BFA from Simon Fraser University, and is the 2022 recipient of the Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award.
Mayumi Lashbrook (she/her) is a Japanese Canadian settler in Tkaronto who seeks to expose, challenge, and rectify systems of oppression by creating innovative, introspective and inclusive dance theatre. She sees embodiment as at the crux of world making, providing alternatives to unconscious thought, consumerism and oppression. She strives to increase connection, visibility and diversity in the Canadian arts landscape through on and off stage initiatives. Her primary practices span performance, choreography, education, creative production and Artistic Direction. Mayumi is the Co-Artistic Director of Hamilton based Aeris Körper, a Co-Artistic Associate of CanAsian Dance, mentee of Denise Fujiwara of Fujiwara Dance Inventions, and practitioner of Dreamwalker Dance’s Conscious Bodies methodology. Mayumi contributes as a creative voice through both choreography and production of healthy ecologies for dance to be made in. Her different roles are all-encompassing and overlapping. This enables her to approach projects and communities with knowledge, openness, and curiosity.
Hitoko Okada (she/they) is an interdisciplinary fibre artist,
storyteller, community arts organizer and curator currently living in
Hamilton, Ontario. Okada has publicly presented washi-based installation
work, curatorial work, performed live stories and developed and delivered
community-engaged programs for more than 20 years in Vancouver, Toronto,
Burlington and Hamilton. They have continued to develop her textile craft
practice through workshops and artist residencies at the Haystack School of
Craft in Deer Isle, Maine, USA ; Kawashima School of Textiles in Kyoto,
Japan, and the Banff Centre of the Arts, Alberta, Canada. She is a
recipient of the Hamilton City Arts Award for Established Artist in Craft;
a core member of the Hamilton Seven Storytelling Collective, and a member
of the Burlington Handweavers and Spinners Guild. They are currently
developing a research-based body of work exploring the history and
ancestral knowledge of cultural heritage crafts of Japanese indigo,
kakishibu dye and shifu weaving, supported by the Ontario Arts Council and
the Canada Council of the Arts. Okada is a co-founder and steering
committee member of the Art Installers Alliance, a grassroots organization
leading change in the arts sector to empower and resource precariously
employed art installers and technicians.
return home
return home
Threading Echoes is a performance project, currently in the research and
creation phase. The film iteration of the work was created by Shion Skye
Carter, Mayumi Lashbrook, and Hitoko Okada: three Japanese Canadian artists
coming together from Vancouver, Toronto, Hamilton. Threading Echoes reaches
back in time to the Japanese cultural heritage craft of shifu / 紙布 - a
cloth woven from kami-ito / 紙糸 which is made from washi paper / 和紙.
Community, belonging and connecting to ancestral knowledge is what is woven
into the cloth of this collaboration through movement and visual
storytelling. In a consumption driven world, Threading Echoes is a reminder
to release our hyper-stimulated nervous systems and drop into embodied
communal relationship. Videography is by Henry Mak, music by Stefan
Nazarevich, and website design and development by Kasra Jamshidi.
We created this film as guests in Tkaronto, on land that is Michi Saagig
Nishnawbe territory, colonially known as Toronto. Tkaronto is covered by
Treaty 13 between the Mississaugas of the Credit and the British Crown, and
has also been occupied by other Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee and Wendat
confederacies. We are grateful to be reconnecting to cultural heritage
craft, and recognize the history of Indigenous peoples being denied their
culture for centuries.
This project was created through the AGO x RBC Emerging Artists Program at
the Art Gallery of Ontario. We also wish to thank Canada Council for the
Arts and Ontario Arts Council for additional support towards this project,
NEXT: New Dance in Development residency for past support, as well as all
of the artists who have contributed to this work: Katie Cassady, Hina
Nishioka, Wakana Shimamura, Prince Shima, and Sabrina Sachiko Niebler.
