ballet

Jennifer Lundrigan began her explorations in dance with Judy Knee and Marie Cragg in St. John's, Newfoundland at just two years old. She began her training in ballet but quickly started tasting more genres of dance such as modern, jazz and tap which gave way to an immense passion for movement. At the age of fifteen Jennifer began working with young children in a variety of settings. Jennifer enjoyed working at a daycare, working in summer camps, being a private childcare provider, and assisting dance classes at her studio. Jennifer learned that she could combine her passion for dance and her love of children and their healthy development, and she moved to Toronto to study modern and West African dance at York University. Jennifer has worked in Toronto teaching recreational creative movement, ballet, modern hip hop and jazz, and she focuses on providing low cost, nurturing dance classes to less advantaged children of the community. She has also taught hip-hop for the continuing education program at George Brown College and Seneca College. Jennifer has moved back to her home province of Newfoundland, and hopes to utilize her knowledge of dance and her enthusiasm for healthy child development to create an accessible, low cost dance experience for people of all ages and economic backgrounds.

Mel trained in ballet at the Legat Ballet School and musical theatre at London Studio Centre both in England. She also has a BA (Hons) in Dance and Culture from the University of Surrey, England in addition to an Award of the University of Surrey (Dist) in Arts Administration and Management. She is an experienced dance and arts administrator and manager, having worked for organizations such as Siobhan Davies Dance Company and the Council for Dance Education and Training in London, England as well as fulfilling a wide array of freelance dance and arts contracts.

From 1991 to 2010, Mel was Artistic Director and Choreographer for a musical theatre company producing, most recently, full length musicals including Rent, Jesus Christ Superstar, Chess and My Fair Lady. Her experience as a choreographer spans a period of 25 years and she has worked with a wide range of age groups from young children right through to seniors. Mel is able to draw on her experience in a broad variety of dance genres such as ballet, contemporary, jazz, Broadway, Kathak and African in her choreographic work and she enjoys fusing aspects of these styles together to create work that is clearly marked with her own creative stamp.

She has a breadth of experience choreographing and staging full length musicals in addition to creating compilation style shows with songs from hit musicals that have been commissioned as fundraising events by several organizations. Mel strongly believes in utilizing the power of dance and the arts to reach out to and unite people from all types of backgrounds and to address challenging topics. In 2009, she simultaneously directed and choreographed the musical Rent whilst managing a campaign to raise public awareness of HIV and AIDS in a fairly conservative area of South East England, in addition to raising funds for a local HIV and AIDS charity.

As a performer, Mel has played a range of leading female roles such as Polly Baker in Crazy For You, Florence in Chess, Eliza in My Fair Lady, Mrs Lovett in Sweeney Todd and Maureen in Rent in addition to appearing in numerous shows as both a dancer and lead vocalist.

In addition to teaching show material and reconstructions of original choreography to company members, Mel has enjoyed devising and delivering musical theatre and dance workshops in a range of community settings.

As a newcomer to Newfoundland, Mel is very much looking forward to becoming immersed in the cultural life of the province and would urge anyone interested in working with her as Administrator, Choreographer or Performer to get in touch!

Candice Pike is a dance practitioner, teacher, researcher, and advocate based in Corner Brook, Newfoundland. She is currently the Festival Manager for Gros Morne Summer Music.
Candice has taught ballet, jazz, modern dance, and dance fitness for nine years in Corner Brook, NL and Toronto, ON and is independently pursuing a community-based dance research project. Passionate about fostering an appreciation for dance in young people, she recently redesigned Grenfell Campus' children's dance camps to include performance training, somatic education, and movement exploration as well as formal technique training. Also, she is involved in Learning Through the Arts in the Western School District where she teaches math and social studies to grade three students through dance.
Candice has MA in Dance from York University. Her studies there focused on the intersections of recreational ballet, gender, and community building through feminist research and she is excited to explore these ideas in rural Newfoundland.

Kristin Harris Walsh is a dance scholar and writer (PhD Folklore, Memorial and MA Dance, York) with training in step dance (Irish and Newfoundland) and ballet. She has written and presented extensively on dance topics in both academic and popular publications, primarily related to vernacular dance as a means of cultural expression and negotiation. She is currently researching and writing a book on dance schools in Newfoundland and Labrador, and next summer will embark on further research on the links between Irish and Newfoundland step dance. Kristin is active on dance boards, including DanceNL, Society for Canadian Dance Studies Advisory board, and the Dance Current Editorial Advisory board. She is currently Adjunct Professor and Project Coordinator at the MMaP Research Centre, School of Music, Memorial University of Newfoundland.