ABOUT
Olivia Shaffer is a Dance Artist born and based in Vancouver, Canada, located on the traditional, ancestral and unceded Coast Salish lands and waters of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) people.
Olivia is an accomplished and expressive practitioner in the dance field, experienced in performing, improvising, choreographing, and teaching. She holds a BFA in contemporary dance and a Liberal Arts Certificate from the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. She is a certified Awareness Through Movement® teacher and Pilates Mat Instructor, and is completing a four year comprehensive training program in the Feldenkrais Method®.
Olivia is Associate Artistic Director at EDAM Dance, where she is also a resident teacher of Contact Improvisation and a performer with the company. Olivia is an Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia, where she teaches embodied movement to students in the BFA Theatre Program.
Over the past decade and a half, Olivia has worked as a freelance performer and improviser with a range of collaborators, as well as expanding her skills and practice as a choreographer. Her passion lies in the creation of embodied, evocative performance by way of crafted improvisations, aiming to highlight tensions between the tangible and the ephemeral. She has taught and performed in Europe, the US, and Asia.
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image credit:
Yvonne Chew
Chris Randle
Shaina Baira
Ed Spence
Sören Wacker
Nayana Fielkov
Justin Reist
Hilary Maxwell