Thea Patterson

Originally from British Columbia, Thea Patterson is a Tiohti:áke/Montreal based choreographer, performer, and dance dramaturg whose practice revolves around an acute set of questions regarding the body, objects, perception, vitality, and time. Her early choreographic works include Rhyming Couplets (08), and A Soft Place to Fall (06) was made into a BravoFact film by Mouvement Perpetuel. From 2007 to 2015 she was dramaturg, and co-artistic director with Peter Trosztmer, on seven acclaimed stage works, including Eesti: Myths and Machines (2011) which received mention as top dance works of the year by Le Voir, Montreal as well as installation and site-specific works “5 out of 6 Machines”(2012) #Boxtape (2014). An interest in collaborative models led to the co- founding of the collective The Choreographers (2007-2011) with Trosztmer, Katie Ward and Audrée Juteau who went on to make several works together including Man and Mouse (2008) and Oh!Canada (2011). During that time, Thea also co-choreographed the multimedia work “Norman: an homage to Norman McLaren” (2008) for Lemieux.Pilon.4Dart which toured extensively through Canada, USA, Asia, Europe and South America. Thea’s work often explores expanded choreographic methods and live compositional scores. This led to the dance that i cannot do (2013) presented at, amongst others, Movement Research-The Judson Church and the Munich Dance Festival and the solo project between the is and the could be (2016) which explored emergent choreographic forms, and other methods for altering aspects of spectatorship. During this period, she was also an artist in residence at Montreal Danse. In 2018 and 2022 Thea was twice selected to participate in intensive choreographic residencies with dance icon Deborah Hay. Her work Silvering (2020) was presented at Mile Zero Dance in Edmonton as one of the first ZOOM shows of the pandemic. Her new work Un-nevering was presented (in process) at the OFFTA in April 2023, and will receive delegated production support from Parbleux for a 2025 premiere. Thea has several ongoing collaborations, as a dramaturg, and collaborator, choreographer and performer in Montreal, Portugal, Edmonton, and Newfoundland. She has Masters from DAS Choreography (Amsterdam 2016) and she is a SSHRC funded PhD candidate in Performance Studies at the University of Alberta where she was Co-editor-in-chief of Intonations, an online Graduate run journal from 2019-2021.