Justine A. Chambers

See Justine’s collaboration on Idealverein at The Western Front January 22-24. Speaking with and writing about choreographer Justine Chambers, definitions feel inadequate. Like the genre-bending nature of PuSh, the work of this celebrated Vancouver artist […]

Before it mutates into choreography, dance is relation: body to body, body to time – to what lingers. Justine A. Chambers approaches dance as an embodied archive that refuses closure and fixed origins. It is a means of capturing stories in motion and carrying histories that were never written down and futures that are not yet legible.

A handful of masked visitors mill about Morrow’s bright, open studio space in downtown Vancouver to mark the launch of Peter Dickinson’s My Vancouver Dance History: Story, Movement, Community, a new book about dance in the city. The book launch and artist salon — featuring Ziyian Kwan, who runs Morrow as a pop-up venue for her company, Dumb Instrument Dance...

SB  The morning after I exert, after leaving the ground, my body is screaming. I get carried away in the dancing of it — the push and the push and the repetitive action and the momentum.

Justine A. Chambers and Laurie Young see choreography in everything. Both are deeply interested in the daily movements that make up the choreographies of our...

Rooted in friendship and alliance, One hundred more (2019) by Justine A. Chambers and Laurie Young is a dance performance portraying gestures of resistance. The work considers the ways in which power structures are inscribed in the body and in quotidian life. Through iterative gestures that point to both the personal and the sociopolitical, the artists generate a choreographic language that embodies physical strategies of political resistance and refusal. Join Chambers and Young in conversation as they reflect on this co-authored piece. Together, they convene to discuss the role of choreography as a relational tool and the value of collaboration within their respective individual practices. This event is generously supported by our Public Programs Partner Chubb. English transcription available here: http://www.oakvillegalleries.com/site/static/redactoruploads/Conversation_with_Justine_A._Chambers__Laurie_Young.pdf

Show notes below:   Talking Shit with Tara Cheyenne is a Tara Cheyenne Performance Production www.taracheyenne.com Instagram: @TaraCheyenneTCP  /  FB: Tara Cheyenne Performance Podcast produced, edited and music by Marc Stewart www.marcstewartmusic.com    © 2020 Tara Cheyenne Performance   Subscribe/follow share through Podbean and Google Podcasts and Apple Podcasts/iTunes and Spotify   Donate! To keep this podcast ad-free please go to:  https://www.canadahelps.org/en/dn/13386   Show Notes and links:   Justine A. Chambers is a dance artist living and working on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her movement based practice considers how choreography can be an empathic practice rooted in collaborative creation, close observation, and the body as a site of a cumulative embodied archive. Privileging what is felt over what is seen, she works with dances that are already there –the social choreographies present in the everyday. She is Max Tyler-Hite’s mother.   Longer bio: The anchors of Justine A. Chambers movement based practice are found in collaborative creation, close observation, and the idea of choreography as living archive. She is concerned with a choreography of the everyday; with the unintentional dances, as she describes them “that are already there.” Her recent choreographic projects include: and then also this, One hundred more, tailfeather, for all of us, it could have been like this, ten thousand times and one hundred more,  Family Dinner, Family Dinner: The Lexicon, Semi-precious: the faceting of a gemstone only appears complete and critical; Enters and Exits and COPY. Chambers’ work has been hosted at: Contemporary Art Gallery Vancouver, Nanaimo Art Gallery, Art Museum at University of Toronto, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Mile Zero Dance Society, Festival of New Dance, Agora de la danse, Canada Dance Festival, Dance in Vancouver, Dance Saskatchewan, Dancing on the Edge Festival, New Dance Horizons, The Roundhouse Community Arts Centre, Vancouver Art Gallery and the Western Front. Chambers is a founding member of project bk, artist in residence at artist run centre 221A (2017), a selected artist for the  Visiting Dance Artist Program at the National Arts Centre(2019-2020), recipient of the Lola Award in 2018, one of three choreographer’s in the Yulanda Faris Choreographer’s Program (2017-2018), associate artist and artist in residence to The Dance Centre (2015-2017), Justine has collaborated on projects with: Digital video artist Josh Hite: COPY: a movement based installation, Incoming, Green Boot Print (The Roundhouse Community Arts Centre, Code Lab and 350.org), Choreography Walk (2015: Vancouver, 2019: Hong Kong, 2019: Vancouver). Choreographer and dancer Laurie Young: One hundred more Visual artist Natalie Purschwitz and sound artist Anju Singh: Co-facilitation of Trackings and Trappings – Summer Institute at Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art Sound artist Elisa Ferrari: EMF Movement Studies.  Dance Artist Alexa Solveig Mardon and scholar Peter Dickinson: Our Present Dance Histories Visual artist Evann Siebens:  Homemade Again. Dance artist Claudia Fancello: Light Was The Night: Night Shifting. Musician Ben Brown:  We’re Making a Band Visual Artist Brendan Fernandes: The Working Move (The Western Front, The Stedelijk Museum) Contemporary Gamelan Composer Michael Tenzer: Sphinx (Tour of Bali 2013) Visual artist Jen Weih: Stack of Moves (Wrong Waves Festival 2013) Visual artists Marilou Lemmens and Richard Ibghy: Is there anything at all left to do be done at all (Trinity Square Video) Dance artist Deanna Peters: One + the Other (The Cultch and New Dance Horizons) From 20212-2018, Chambers, Sadira Rodrigues and battery opera’s Su Feh Lee co-facilitated the monthly forum The Talking Thinking Dancing Body; a conversation about aesthetics, context and artistic processes. As a dancer, she has worked with a number of choreographers both nationally and abroad. Including: ame henderson, sasha ivanochko, battery opera, adelheid dance projects, Company 605, Tara Cheyenne Performance, Oded Graf and Yossi Berg, Wen Wei Dance, Mascall Dance. Chambers teaches contemporary dance technique at Arts Umbrella, Working Class, Toronto Community Love-In, Modus Operandi Training Program and Ballet BC. Justine is currently engaged as an artistic monitor for the work of Mardon + Mitsuhashi, and Amanda Acorn. Chambers is Max Tyler-Hite’s mother.See More from Justine Chambers   The workouts mentioned by Justine: doyogawithme.com   Seven Minute Work Out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6etLKswjq8&t=9s -      One Hundred More  JUSTINE A. CHAMBERS + LAURIE YOUNG https://agoradanse.com/en/event/one-hundred-more/   Article on “crisis schooling” mentioned by Tara:   https://www.heatheranneworld.com/post/homeschooling-is-not-the-same-as-crisis-schooling-advice-during-coronavirus-covid-19-shut-downs   Link to Justine’s Family Dinner:   https://justineachambers.com/family-dinner-the-lexicon/       About Tara: Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg is an award winning creator, performer, choreographer, director and writer. Artistic Director of Tara Cheyenne Performance, she is renowned as a trailblazer in interdisciplinary performance and as a mighty performer "who defies categorization on any level"(The Georgia Straight). Tara is celebrated nationally and internationally for her unique and dynamic hybrid of dance, comedy and theatre. The string of celebrated full-length solo shows to her credit includes bANGER, Goggles, Porno Death Cult, and I can’t remember the word for I can’t remember, and she partners regularly on multidisciplinary collaborations, commissions and boundary-bending ensemble creations. When she isn’t creating innovative movement for theatre, Tara performs around the world- highlights include DanceBase/Edinburgh, South Bank Centre/London, On the Boards/Seattle USA, and High Performance Rodeo/Calgary. Recent works include The Body Project (premiering 2020/21 season) The River with dance artist Miriam Colvin and artist and activist Molly Wickham (premiering 2021 in Wet'suwet'en Territory), empty.swimming.pool with Italian dance/performance artist Silvia Gribaudi, (Castiglioncello, Bassano, Victoria, B.C. and Vancouver, B.C.), how to be (Vancouver, B.C.) , and I can’t remember the word for I can’t remember (currently touring). Tara lives on the unceded and traditional territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), səlil̓wətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation)/East Vancouver with her partner composer Marc Stewart. © 2020 Tara Cheyenne Performance

Show notes below:   Talking Shit with Tara Cheyenne is a Tara Cheyenne Performance Production www.taracheyenne.com Instagram: @TaraCheyenneTCP  /  FB: Tara Cheyenne Performance Podcast produced, edited and music by Marc Stewart Music www.marcstewartmusic.com    © 2020 Tara Cheyenne Performance   Subscribe/follow share through Podbean and Google Podcasts and Apple Podcasts/iTunes and Spotify   Donate! To keep this podcast ad-free please go to:  https://www.canadahelps.org/en/dn/13386 Show Notes: NEW Encore Interview with Justine A Chambers, dance-artist/thinker/activator. I sit down again with the amazing Justine  A Chambers, 4 months into the pandemic and 5 weeks into the overdue (by centuries) awakening to the necessity for racial justice, to check in on how she is doing as my friend and as a black woman, what she is thinking about, and hear her many great ideas and razor sharp insight.    Links:   First interview with Justine A Chambers April 26th 2020 (Episode 13): https://taracheyenne.podbean.com/e/episode-13-interview-with-dance-artist-justine-a-chambers-creativity-in-the-time-of-covid-19/  Justine A. Chambers is a dance artist living and working on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her movement based practice considers how choreography can be an empathic practice rooted in collaborative creation, close observation, and the body as a site of a cumulative embodied archive. Privileging what is felt over what is seen, she works with dances that are already there –the social choreographies present in the everyday. She is Max Tyler-Hite’s mother.   Longer bio: The anchors of Justine A. Chambers movement based practice are found in collaborative creation, close observation, and the idea of choreography as living archive. She is concerned with a choreography of the everyday; with the unintentional dances, as she describes them “that are already there.” Her recent choreographic projects include: and then also this, One hundred more, tailfeather, for all of us, it could have been like this, ten thousand times and one hundred more,  Family Dinner, Family Dinner: The Lexicon, Semi-precious: the faceting of a gemstone only appears complete and critical; Enters and Exits and COPY. Chambers’ work has been hosted at: Contemporary Art Gallery Vancouver, Nanaimo Art Gallery, Art Museum at University of Toronto, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Mile Zero Dance Society, Festival of New Dance, Agora de la danse, Canada Dance Festival, Dance in Vancouver, Dance Saskatchewan, Dancing on the Edge Festival, New Dance Horizons, The Roundhouse Community Arts Centre, Vancouver Art Gallery and the Western Front. Chambers is a founding member of project bk, artist in residence at artist run centre 221A (2017), a selected artist for the  Visiting Dance Artist Program at the National Arts Centre(2019-2020), recipient of the Lola Award in 2018, one of three choreographer’s in the Yulanda Faris Choreographer’s Program (2017-2018), associate artist and artist in residence to The Dance Centre (2015-2017), Justine has collaborated on projects with: Digital video artist Josh Hite: COPY: a movement based installation, Incoming, Green Boot Print (The Roundhouse Community Arts Centre, Code Lab and 350.org), Choreography Walk (2015: Vancouver, 2019: Hong Kong, 2019: Vancouver). Choreographer and dancer Laurie Young: One hundred more Visual artist Natalie Purschwitz and sound artist Anju Singh: Co-facilitation of Trackings and Trappings – Summer Institute at Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art Sound artist Elisa Ferrari: EMF Movement Studies.  Dance Artist Alexa Solveig Mardon and scholar Peter Dickinson: Our Present Dance Histories Visual artist Evann Siebens:  Homemade Again. Dance artist Claudia Fancello: Light Was The Night: Night Shifting. Musician Ben Brown:  We’re Making a Band Visual Artist Brendan Fernandes: The Working Move (The Western Front, The Stedelijk Museum) Contemporary Gamelan Composer Michael Tenzer: Sphinx (Tour of Bali 2013) Visual artist Jen Weih: Stack of Moves (Wrong Waves Festival 2013) Visual artists Marilou Lemmens and Richard Ibghy: Is there anything at all left to do be done at all (Trinity Square Video) Dance artist Deanna Peters: One + the Other (The Cultch and New Dance Horizons) From 20212-2018, Chambers, Sadira Rodrigues and battery opera’s Su Feh Lee co-facilitated the monthly forum The Talking Thinking Dancing Body; a conversation about aesthetics, context and artistic processes. As a dancer, she has worked with a number of choreographers both nationally and abroad. Including: ame henderson, sasha ivanochko, battery opera, adelheid dance projects, Company 605, Tara Cheyenne Performance, Oded Graf and Yossi Berg, Wen Wei Dance, Mascall Dance. Chambers teaches contemporary dance technique at Arts Umbrella, Working Class, Toronto Community Love-In, Modus Operandi Training Program and Ballet BC. Justine is currently engaged as an artistic monitor for the work of Mardon + Mitsuhashi, and Amanda Acorn. Chambers is Max Tyler-Hite’s mother.See More from Justine Chambers   About Tara: Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg is an award winning creator, performer, choreographer, director and writer. Artistic Director of Tara Cheyenne Performance, she is renowned as a trailblazer in interdisciplinary performance and as a mighty performer "who defies categorization on any level"(The Georgia Straight). Tara is celebrated nationally and internationally for her unique and dynamic hybrid of dance, comedy and theatre. The string of celebrated full-length solo shows to her credit includes bANGER, Goggles, Porno Death Cult, and I can’t remember the word for I can’t remember, and she partners regularly on multidisciplinary collaborations, commissions and boundary-bending ensemble creations. When she isn’t creating innovative movement for theatre, Tara performs around the world- highlights include DanceBase/Edinburgh, South Bank Centre/London, On the Boards/Seattle USA, and High Performance Rodeo/Calgary. Recent works include The Body Project (premiering 2020/21 season) The River with dance artist Miriam Colvin and artist and activist Molly Wickham (premiering 2021 in Wet'suwet'en Territory), empty.swimming.pool with Italian dance/performance artist Silvia Gribaudi, (Castiglioncello, Bassano, Victoria, B.C. and Vancouver, B.C.), how to be (Vancouver, B.C.) , and I can’t remember the word for I can’t remember (currently touring). Tara lives on the unceded and traditional territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), səlil̓wətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation)/East Vancouver with her partner composer Marc Stewart.

Learn more about the artists and contributors participating in the Toronto Biennial of Art

Welcome back to The Dance Centre Podcast. This month, for our 50th episode, Claire welcomes back dance artist, educator and choreographer Justine A. Chambers...

In this episode of The Dance Centre Podcast, Claire is joined by re...

Sept 12, 2020: The last of my MVDH salon conversations is with the inestimable Justine A. Chambers. With a smoky haze blanketing the city, we decided to embrace all we've learned about sheltering in place over the past six months, connecting from our homes via Zoom.

00:10 Land Acknowledgement 1:46 Overview of conversation 2:55 Introduction of Sally Frater 4:45 Introduction of Justine A. Chambers and Farihah Aliyah Shah, preview of Spotlight section 6:35 Conversation between Sally, Justine, and Farihah 55:06 Q&A moderated by Yaniya Lee 1:01:25 Closing Remarks On October 15, 2020,  artists Justine A. Chambers and Farihah Aliyah Shah joined writer and curator Sally Frater for a live, in-depth public conversation about their practices and perspectives. This event was held in conjunction with the launch of Canadian Art’s Fall 2020 issue, Chroma, which surveys the aesthetic practices and legacies of Black art production in Canada and beyond. For Chroma, Frater curated and wrote the “Spotlight” section, which gathered a group of artists whose work addresses collaboration, inheritance and collective memory and included Chambers and Shah.  This video recording of their conversation explores how shared themes of labour, consumption, the body, representation and community emerge in their respective practices, while mapping the points of convergence and divergence between them. Justine A. Chambers is a dance artist living and working on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. Her movement-based practice considers how choreography can be an empathic practice rooted in collaborative creation, close observation and the body as a site of a cumulative, embodied archive. Privileging what is felt over what is seen, she works with dances that are already there—the social choreographies present in the everyday. She is Max Tyler-Hite’s mother. Sally Frater has curated exhibitions for institutions such as Or Gallery; the Luminato Festival; the Ulrich Museum of Art; the McColl Center for Art and Innovation; the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at the University of Toronto; Project Row Houses; and Centre[3] for Artistic and Social Practice. Her writing has appeared in FUSE magazine, X-TRA, Artforum, and Art21. She is currently the curator of contemporary art at the Art Gallery of Guelph. Farihah Aliyah Shah is a contemporary lens-based artist originally from Edmonton and now based in Bradford, ON. She holds a BHRM from York University and a BFA in photography with a minor in integrated media from OCAD University. Her practice explores issues of racial identity, land and collective memory. She is a member of Gallery 44 and Women Photograph, and has exhibited internationally in North America, Asia and Europe.

April 7, 2021 Via Zoom Vancouver, Canada - New York, USA https://front.bc.ca/events/in-conversation-autumn-knight-and-justine-a-chambers-with-pablo-de-ocampo/

Thursday, January 28, 2021 A special virtual performance by Justine A. Chambers, in collaboration with fourth-year students of Ryerson University’s dance…

This is "Justine A. Chambers — The Brutal Joy" by David Tomas on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

This is "Justine A. Chambers The Brutal Joy - Research 1" by David Tomas on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

This is "Justine A. Chambers The Brutal Joy - Research 2" by David Tomas on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.