Léo Hit Coupal + Hanna Sybille Müller

Léo Hit Coupal is a multidisciplinary artist from Québec City, based in Montréal (Tiohtià:ke). With a strong interest in hip-hop culture and as a breakdancer, he developed a passion for spoken-word poetry during his teenage years. In 2017 and 2023, he represented Québec at the Poetry Slam World Cup in Paris. He works as a guest poet in schools and at various events. In 2021, he completed a bachelor’s degree in sociology. As a dancer, he has collaborated with several dance companies and continues to be active in the breaking scene with the collectives Stylz Corrupt and Qc Roc. His eclectic background informs his commitment to a wide range of artistic projects.

Rodrigo Alvarenga-Bonilla began dancing at the age of five with a Salvadoran folkloric dance troupe. He later took up hip hop, popping and breaking through youth centres and self-directed practice. He continued his training at Studio Party Time in Québec City, and joined PNT Dance Company and the group MARVL. A 2019 graduate of École de danse contemporaine de Montréal, Rodrigo continues to develop a personal style blending breakdance, contemporary dance, and acrobatics. He has collaborated with choreographers and contemporary dance companies such as Destins Croisés, We All Fall Down, Animals of Distinction, Sylvain Émard, Marie Béland, Catherine Gaudet, and Tentacle Tribe, as well as with Cirque du Soleil and Cirque Éloize.

A graduate of Canada’s National Theatre School in 2018, Gabriel-Antoine Roy explores multiple facets of his craft: dance, performance, on-camera acting, clowning, and mask work. This research has led him to collaborate with artists such as Nicolas Cantin, Peter James, Mélanie Pilon, Peter Schumann, Vladimir “7Starr”, Mélanie Demers, Stéphane Crête, Frédérick Gravel, and Jacques Poulin-Denis. Known for his strong creative vision, he is a performer and co-creator of Mains moites and On est pas des trous de cul. With Étienne Lou, he created La grande mascarade and performs in Je comprends, respect. On screen, he appears in several television series and feature films.

Pénélope Dulude-de Broin is a scenographer based in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal). Her practice treats the body as sculpture and the set as a breathing character within the work. She passionately explores colour, scale and texture to create moments of escape from the everyday. Her approach values instinct, pleasure, listening, and individual expression. In 2023, she completed her training in scenography at Canada’s National Theatre School. Since then, she has worked in theatre, performance, contemporary dance, circus, film, and live events. As a collaborator, she seeks to create transdisciplinary spaces for artistic exchange where practices intersect and enrich one another.

A performing artist, scenographer, and lighting designer, Tiffanie Boffa draws on her diverse skills to create living, sensitive spaces. Beginning her career in the world of dance, she incorporates this experience into her lighting designs. She collaborates with artists in dance, theatre, and multidisciplinary arts, including Guillermina Kerwin, Gabrielle Lessard, Jon Lachlan Stewart, Hanna Sybille Müller, Simon Renaud, La Tresse, Véronique Giasson, Marie Béland, 100Lux, the company We All Fall Down, and Sébastien Provencher.

After studying music and performing with the pop-rock band Élégie, Zachary Gilbert established himself as a sound designer and composer in independent music, film, and the performing arts. He has composed music for several short films presented at international festivals. In addition to performing weekly at Dépanneur Café as a piano-guitar duo, he recorded his first EP as a pianist. With the project Nulle part, he delves into the exploration of sound collage. His sensitivity, attentive listening and strong sense of rhythm shape his artistic identity and support his collaboration on a wide range of projects.

For several years, I have been navigating between my practices in dance and poetry. The project Nulle part prompted me to bring these practices together to address existential and ecological themes. After presenting two short pieces in 2023 and 2024, the current work represents the culmination of this creative project. While exploring an original approach in the performing arts, I strive to respect the essence of my practices and the communities in which I am involved. The meeting of aesthetics rooted in urban cultures, ecological references, and sociological reflections reflects both my diverse background and our eclectic times. At the crossroads of my interests, Nulle part was born from the desire to create a moment that is both reflective and engaging, between the intimate and the universal.

Hanna Sybille Müller is a choreographer and mother based in Tiohtiá:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal. Her work explores the intricate relationship between language and movement. Sybille is fascinated by both language’s and the body’s strange, magic and ordinary potencies. In her collaboration Polymorphic Microbe Bodies (2023) with Erin Robinsong, she has questioned what it means to collaborate with humans and non-humans. In her ongoing project The Choreographic Garden, she and her team are learning from plants to better understand what it means to think, move and exist in a vegetal way. Originally from Germany, Sybille studied dance at the Rotterdamse Dansacademie and received a diploma in media studies at the Berlin University of the Arts in 2012. Since 2021, Sybille is a member of the Continuum Mentoring Group, a group of artists dedicated to deepening their understanding of Continuum, an experiential somatic practice created in 1967 by Emilie Conrad and taught in Montréal by Linda Rabin.

Diego Gil (he/him) is an artist and philosopher exploring the life of aesthetic processes through the lens of process philosophy. Born in Buenos Aires, Diego lived and studied in Amsterdam (School for New Dance Development and DAS Choreography). He obtained his PhD from the Interdisciplinary Humanities program at Concordia University, where over the last ten years he has collaborated as a dramaturg and performer in the choreographic work of Maria Kefirova, Lília Mestre, Projet Alter Dogs, and Francois Bouvier. He has also worked intensively with the Sense Lab/3 Ecologies project, a research-creation laboratory at the intersection of philosophy and art.

Nate Yaffe (he/him) is an experimental dance, theatre and video artist based in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal), who researches queer strategies to create relational choreographic structures, placing performance as a fundamentally social exchange. His tactile dances un-correct the self-censored body as a way to dismantle movement shame. He sees dance as practical, a tool to hold open a portal for neuro/corporal divergence so that we can touch metaphysical and spiritual dimensions. As co-artistic director of Le Radeau, Nate seeks community-centred alternatives for being a dance artist in face of the uncertain future of global capitalism and ecological collapse. His works Terrien and Because of the Mud foreground how art collaborations create community, as well as art objects.

Originally from Kisiskâciwan (Saskatchewan), Lauren Semeschuk (she/her) began her career in Ukrainian dance touring internationally with Pavlychenko Folklorique Ensemble. After a detour into accounting, she returned to dance, graduating from Toronto Metropolitan (formerly Ryerson) University in 2008. Her professional path has included projects with multiple choreographers, including compagnie Catherine Gaudet, José Navas/compagnie Flak, Louise Bédard Danse, compagnie Marie Chouinard,  Je suis Julio/Le Radeau (w/ Nate Yaffe & Dorian Nuskind-Oder), and Hanna Sybille Müller. Lauren is also a somatic bodyworker and movement educator, practising in the Tiohtià:ke area (Montréal) since 2017.

Damaris Baker (they/them) is a white, grey-haired person, neurodivergent, non-binary, and quite ordinary otherwise. They have led community choirs and experimental voice groups, created short films and radio shows, taught music and improvised soundscapes. Their performances include The Mermaid and the Robot, Epicenter Revolutions, and Infinite Parachute and the Grotesque. They are fascinated by octopuses, whale songs, slime molds, soil, mushrooms, and the radical possibilities of disability arts. They dream of a world of responsiveness, playfulness, grief and reparations: recreating new ways of entangling ourselves beyond police, prisons, and white supremacy. They have tinnitus and often get tired.

Andrew Forster (he/him) is a visual artist, writer and curator whose work includes installation, performance, video, collaborations, curated exhibitions, and other outcomes. Recent works: Mer Parguayenne, a building wrapped in language, a collaboration with poet Erín Moure based on the writing of Wilson Bueno (2017);  the video installation The Machine Stops, a fiction about the end of the world, recorded in Chandigarh, India (2019); No Bottom is an experimental document on the musical improvisation of violinist Malcolm Goldstein (screened at FIFA Montréal, 2023). A new series of objects and writing investigating the idea of nature, Waternature, began in 2022 with an exhibition in Montréal.

Mikki Bradshaw is a versatile black FtM non-binary transgender person of Caribbean and mixed descent, and has been a multidisciplinary performance artist for over 20 years in Canada. Currently, aside from their artistic and activist/advocacy work, he is relearning how to navigate through life after a workplace accident left them with only partial use of their left arm from the shoulder down. Highlights of his artistic career writing/producing music, singing solo and with various bands and for various shows since the age of 4; creating and implementing a “By youth. For youth” touring theatre company called Misconceptions; being part of a collective collaborative work called La Nef Vagale, and also part of the A Nos Protheses Collective.

Elise Legault aka Carmen Elise (she/her) is a textile artist using eco-responsible, repurposed materials and upcycling to create garments and installation work. She has worked with private clients as well as on creative collaborations, including Hanna Sybille Müller’s Polymorphic Microbe Bodies in 2023. Carmen Elise uses her background in studio arts, fashion and art history to rediscover treasures in the discarded. She resides in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal), unceded Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) territory.

Goldjian Charlo aka anne goldenberg (they/she/he) is a queer, psychodivergent artist who immigrated from France in 2004, and who nourishes roots and emotional ties on the island of Tio’tia:ke, colonially known as Montréal. As a curator, relational artist and feminist, transdisciplinary hacktivist, he likes to make visible, legible and malleable the processes of co-construction of wisdom and knowledge. Goldjian is particularly interested in the interdependencies between humans, ecologies, and technologies. Her work creates intimate spaces dedicated to mutual learning and the slowing down of processes. Co-founder of Femhack and Hackingwithcare, Goldjian embraces media and land art, installation, dance, and video. Her practice most often revolves around the facilitation of collaborative, collective and restorative practices. Goldjian cares for and practices connection to the self, to spaces of time, to other humans and to non-humans, questioning the conditions of connection, care and disconnection to activate this quality of presence.

Tiffanie Boffa (she/her) is a lighting designer, scenographer, and performer. She works to create sensorial and visual atmospheres informed by her background as a contemporary dancer. As a lighting designer, she collaborated with multiple artists in theatre, dance and the performing arts, like Gabrielle Lessard, Guillermina Kerwin, Jon Lachlan Stewart, Hanna Sybille Müller, Simon Renaud, La Tresse, Véronique Giasson, Marie Béland, 100Lux, the company We All Fall Down, and Sébastien Provencher.

We began with a duet by Lauren and Nate exploring symbiosis through the metaphor of lichen. Their movement oscillates between tension and tenderness: bodies resist, approach, suddenly sniff their butts before settling into moments of support and cradling. Damaris accompanies them using small natural objects — dried seedpods, wood, and occasional voice — composing subtle, atmospheric sound textures. As the duet continues, the studio opens into a garden. The audience is invited to walk along its perimeter and observe the plants while I share how the garden was created, reflect on the loss of our colleague Maria, and speak about how plants have shaped our understanding of grief. Horticulturalist Mylène then introduces two plant species in greater detail. During her talk, industrial bulk soil bags are installed in the studio, marking a shift in scale. Nate and Diego begin a second duet, unfolding more slowly, with unbound flow and shifting dynamics,  care and support entangled with use and strain, continually oscillating between these states.