Get the family together: it’s time for a dance party!
Get ready to jump onto the dance floor! DJ Rise Ashen is in charge of the soundtrack!
Bilingual ● For all ages (under adult supervision) ● Free
Guest dancers: Josée Bourgeois, Vanessa Lovell, Bboy Effect, Alea de Castro and Tangent
Video director: Jean-François Dubé
Produced by BIG BANG Festival (National Arts Centre)
Rise Ashen has devoted his life to the study of sound and movement. From his early years as a B-Boy in Montreal in the 80s to his studies at Fanshawe College (North America's Oldest Recording School) and the Banff Centre for the Arts, his focus has been on applying hi-fi knowhow to global dance music. His record collection spans the four corners of the world with club music of all tempos as his primary focus. As a DJ, he blends it all in a worldy mash and is always the sweaty and dynamic life of the party. He has played in clubs and festivals across the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia. His study of Yoga has led him to combine his musical journey with his Yogi journey and he has been DJing extensively for yoga classes, festivals and events since 2012.
With his partner Tangent, he founded Capital Sessions Community House Dance Practices in 2010 to share the couple’s love for house dance music and culture.
His first album with Algonquin singer Flying Down Thunder received a Juno nomination in 2012, and the duo’s second album received a Native American Music Awards nomination in 2014. Since 2015 he has been collaborating with Silla, the Nunavut-based Inuit throat-singing ensemble, with whom he was long-listed for the Polaris Prize in 2016, nominated for a Juno Award in 2017 and for a Juno in 2019 as well as winning the Stingray award at Mundial in 2019 and Inuit Group of the Year and Artistic Video of the year at the SSSIMAs in 2021.
He believes music and dance are essential to human culture and that united, artists can lead humanity towards a more enlightened way of living. He aspires to embody the wise words of Fela Kuti: "when the higher forces give you the gift of musicianship… it must be well used for the good of humanity"
Born in Ottawa, Josée Bourgeois is an Algonquin First Nations from Pikwakanagan, ON. She is an accomplished dancer, actor and model, who began her training as a gymnast and contemporary dancer. At the age of 16, she was signed to the Ford International modelling agency and began a lengthy journey as one of Canada’s only First Nations high fashion models. It was during her teenage years that she learned about her father’s Algonquin heritage. Her father was a Sixties Scoop baby adopted into an Irish family, and her grandmother was a residential school survivor from the Ottawa Valley area. At 23, she made the commitment to become emersed in her culture. Using skills she had developed as a contemporary dancer to connect with others, she self-trained to become a pow wow dancer specializing in “fancy shawl.”
Over the past 12 years, she has travelled the Eastern Pow wow Trail as a Fancy Shawl and Jingle dress dancer, making roots with her son Little Thunder, creating a positive impact through dance arts on her ancestral Algonquin territory and through collaborations with artist like DJ Shub, DJ Classic Roots, and DJ Rise Ashen. She has studied with the multidisciplinary Australian-based Indigenous artist Victoria Hunt at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, has performed in the National Arts Centre’s Wild West Show- Gabriel Dumont Story, and as Kina Nimiwag (Contemporary pow wow dance troupe) in the opening act for the Backstreet Boys at Ottawa’s Bluesfest 2019. A generous leader with a strong vision for change, she has employed her dance skills in a variety of environments and institutions to facilitate healing journeys for others. She is committed to reclaiming space as an Algonquin Artist all over Turtle Island and across the world.
Josée’s residency as a Visiting Dance Artist with NAC Dance will be an opportunity for her to work towards realizing her first mid-scale production entitled The Sickness. You can read more about Josée and her project in this interview.
Dancer and designer Tangent has been performing and teaching dance since the nineties. She got hooked on the underground sounds of house and breaks in the first wave of Rave culture and never looked back. As founding member of the all-woman B-Girl Crew DECYPHER CRU (2000-2010), co-director of the house dance collective Capital Sessions (2008-present)and resident instructor at the Flava Factory Dance Studio (2011-present) she has been choreographing, performing, organizing events, teaching and studying dance for the last 20 years.
She has studied from dance masters and pioneers in NYC, Paris, London and Tokyo such as Ken Swift, Ynot, Whichway Shannon, Tone McGregor, Ejoe Wilson, Caleaf Sellers, Bravo, Archie Burnett, Marjory Smarth, Brian “Footwork” Green, Buddha Stretch, Sekou Heru, Dazl, Yugson, Mamson, as well as Mr. Wiggles, Tyrone Proctor, Jazzy Jay, Poppin Pete, Benny, Future and Aus Ninja, and Melissa Aguirre.
She has been actively involved in building up her urban arts community with her work with House of Paint Urban Arts Festival, Capital Sessions and Flava Factory Dance Studio.
She has been involved as artistic director, choreographer and dancer in several video projects, including for the Juno Award nominated musical group Silla + Rise and for the NAC Canada Performs and Revive series.
Having a trained visual eye and a meticulous attention to detail, her approach to dance is conceptual and she bears the name Tangent well, constantly surprising audiences and drawing on art-forms such as Martial Arts, Parkour and Yoga to inform her art.