"Tiohtià:ke/Montreal-based performer, maker and educator in both dance and music, Susanna Hood has devoted her career to synthesizing voice and movement within her dynamic practice, creating intimate, sensual and raw performances both in dance-theatre contexts as well as in the context of improvised music. Founder and former artistic director of interdisciplinary performance company hum dansoundart (2000-2013) her work has been marked by significant collaborations with musical artists Nilan Perera (improvisational duo dialogues; and choreographic musical works still, She's gone away, Shudder), John Oswald (Spinvolver), and Scott Thomson (as band member of The Rent (repertoire by Steve Lacy) and The Disguises; and as co-creator/performer of The Muted Note - songs and dances setting the poetry of P.K. Page).

Throughout her career as a creator, and particularly in the last decade, she has sought a total integration of the dance and music aspects of her practice, influenced by her internal, holistic experience of moving, sounding, and listening. Something she refers to as embodied music: the experience of movement as music and of sound/music as movement, where the two forms, in dialogue, remain simultaneously distinct and interchangeable, to create a listener/viewer experience that blurs the lines between what is heard and what is seen. In support of this interest, she pursued post-graduate research in the Research Studios at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels, Belgium (2015/2016) with the program's emphasis on synergistic relations between dance and music. Her most recent creations (Music Is, 2016, and Impossibly Happy, 2019) have been driven by her own musical compositions arranging voices, instruments and movement.

Recent projects include: the duo musical collaboration Tortues Vapeur, with Montreal turntablist, Martin Tétreault, mixing turntables, electronics, synthesizers, vocals and objects. (releasing their first disk on on DAME's Mikroclimat label in 2019); a duo with Belgian bassist, Peter Jacquemyn; and performances with the French trio Rrève Sélavy (Frédéric BBriet, double bass; Nicolas Pointard, drums; and Christophe Rocher, clarinettes). Unpacked, the first project with her trio with Toronto/Tkaronto musicians Tania Gill (piano) and Kayla Milmine (soprano saxophone), is a new arrangement and interpretation of the Packet suite by late American poet, Judith Malina and late American jazz composer, Steve Lacy. unPacked will be released as a recording in early 2024 on Quebec's DAME label..

Since 2004, Susanna has been teaching improvisation, composition, and voice and movement synthesis in various institutions and through independent workshops across Canada, internationally and online, including: The School of the Toronto Dance Theatre (ON, CAN), T.O. Love-In (ON, CAN), l'École de Danse Contemporaine de Montréal (QC, CAN), Studio 303 (QC, CAN), TransFormation (QC, CAN), L'École de Danse de Québec (QC, CAN), l'Artère (QC, CAN), Crimson Coast Dance Society (BC, CAN), Mascall Dance (BC, CAN) and E.D.E.N. Studios (Berlin, Germany).

Since 2013 Susanna has become a teacher trainer of Open Source Forms, a practice fluidly expanded from and combining the principles of the Skinner Releasing Technique with the varied and developing practices of its teachers. In July 2023 she will complete the inaugural two-year teacher training program in Emotionally Integrated Voice with her teacher of 20 years, Fides Krucker.

Awards include the 1998 K.M. Hunter Emerging Artists Award in Dance, 2006 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Performance in Dance, and the 2008 Canada Council Victor Martin Lynch-Staunton Award for Outstanding Achievement in the field of Dance.

Susanna is the co-director with Sarah Bild of La Poêle Studio in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, an art space dedicated to research, creation, education and informal presentation of dance, music and other related arts practices. An important and much-loved hub in the Montreal arts-scene, the studio celebrates it's 10th anniversary in 2023!"

"Toronto-based pianist and composer Tania Gill has spent over twenty years cultivating a singular but polymorphous musical approach. She has developed a distinctive improvisational language in jazz and improvised music, and has played in ensembles such as the Brodie West Quintet, Rebecca Hennessy's FOG, See Through Trio, and the Titillators. She has also performed and recorded alongside Anthony Braxton, Kenny Wheeler, Joe Morris, Jean Derome, and Nick Fraser. Her own group, the Tania Gill Quartet, comprises leading Canadian musicians Lina Allemano (trumpet), Rob Clutton (bass), and Nico Dann (drums). Their acclaimed disc Bolger Station (2010, Barnyard Records), was nominated for best debut album in the Village Voice jazz critics' poll and was included among the Globe and Mail's top ten albums of the year. The follow-up, Disappearing Curiosities, launches in March 2022.

Gill's unconventional versatility keeps her engaged in an eclectic array of styles. She was a member of Deep Dark United and the Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, and is a regular collaborator to vocalist Fides Krucker, and singer-songwriter Kyp Harness. She has also shared the stage with Steve Reich, Chris Whitely, Man Forever, Gord Downie, Mary Margaret O'Hara, the Weather Station, Hector del Curto, Margaret Atwood, and Charles Spearin's Happiness Project.

She is also supportive and dedicated educator and currently teaches at Humber College and University of Toronto, in addition to her roster of private students."

"Kayla Milmine loves the new and under-explored sonic possibilities that only the soprano saxophone can offer. Her unique approach has the edginess and brashness of Anthony Braxton and Roscoe Mitchell yet also a warmth and thoughtfulness reminiscent of Steve Lacy. In 2019, Milmine released a solo album called 'Straight Horn Magick; a mixture of field recordings and solo soprano saxophone improvisations. She plays regularly in trio form with pianist Bill Gilliam and percussionist Ambrose Pottie, and in duo form with guitarist/composer Brian Abbott in their band FASTER. In February 2019, she was invited to record with celebrated bassist, William Parker in a chamber-improv sextet in NY, where she often travels to study with mentor/collaborator, Sam Newsome. She is presently composing for her new project, the 'Kayla Milmine Quartet' with aforementioned Sam Newsome, and drummers Mark Ferber and Rachel Housle. She is co-founder of the Women From Space Festival in Toronto."