Animikiig Creators Unit 2024/25
The first year of the Animikiig Creators Unit focuses on artistic practice cultivation and mentorship. In collaboration with their mentor and the program director, the participants will build toward an excerpt performance of a new work at Weesageechak Begins to Dance 38 in November 2025.
MONTANA SUMMERS (Creator)
Montana (he/him/they/them) is from Oneida Nation of the Thames. He is an emerging choreographic artist who has begun development on his first performance project in 2022 at the Banff Centre named Conditions to Strike, which he showcased in the Jenny Belzberg Theatre. Montana has been working in theatre professionally since 2015; noteworthy works Montana has performed in Kaha:wi Dance Theatre’s productions and touring: The Honouring (2015-2017), The Mush Hole (2016-2023) and most recently SKéN:NEN (2021-2023). Montana has collaborated with different performance collectives over the years like Dusk Dances (Kan^stote – 2021), Unsettled Scores (Canoe – 2023), as well as Blue Bird Theatre Collective and Sweet Labour Art Collective. Additionally, Montana has previously acted on stage in plays such as Backyard Treater’s The Other Side of the River (2019) and The Grand Theatre’s Love Song for the Thunderbirds (2021).
2024 Mentor: Monique Mojica
JESSICA ZEPEDA (Creator)
Jessica is a de-indigenized performance artist from Tkaronto (Treaty 13) with roots from Kuskatan, post-colonial El Salvador and focuses on collaborations with Salvadoran artists. Jessica has produced/starred in the short film Sinvergüenzilla in First Kiss (Official Selection: 31st Inside Out LGBTQ Film Festival) and starred in the short film Saturday Fuego Diablo (Official Selection: Sivar en Cortos 2022), both Directed by Anita Abbasi. Currently, Jessica is working on a piece called mi historia que no es única (working title), synthesizing recorded audio of their father’s fragmented migration story and the memories he had to bury 41 years ago in El Salvador. The work responds to being uprooted and aims to decompose and regenerate over and over again in the natural cycle. Stage Manager credits include: Otros Rostros – Uxbridge Studio Tour 2021, TAOS The Art Of Storytelling – Why Not Theatre’s Riser Toronto 2022, TAOS The Art of Storytelling: Song Cycle Series – Rumble Theater’s Tremors 2023 Festival in Vancouver, Chez Moi – 2024 Rhubarb Festival, Surrendered Spirits by CinnaMoon Collective – Debut at Dance Immersion’s Double-Bill Presentation May 2024.
2024 Mentor: Violeta Luna
MONIQUE MOJICA (Mentor)
Monique’s theatrical practice is centred in land-based embodied research and the development of culturally specific Indigenous dramaturgies.
Her first play, Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots was produced in 1990 and is taught in curricula internationally. She founded Chocolate Woman Collective in 2006 to create the play Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way.
She is the co-editor, with Ric Knowles, of Staging Coyote’s Dream, vols. I & II and of volume III, co-edited with Lindsay Lachance. Newly released is Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way: Mapping Embodied Indigenous Performance, written with Brenda Farnell.
Most recent performances include: Izzie M.: The Alchemy of Enfreakment written by Monique with a diverse creative team, My Sister’s Rage for Tarragon Theatre and The Unnatural and Accidental Women at the NAC. Monique has collaborated with Santee Smith since 2013 as the dramaturg for Kaha:wi Dance Theatre’s tryptic, Re-Quickening/ Blood Tides/SKe:NEN, Teneil Whiskeyjack’s Ayita for Edmonton’s SkirtsAfire Festival and most recently as the dramaturg for Audrey Dwyer’s “Come Home: The Legend of Daddy Hall” for Tarragon Theatre
She is a member of the newly formed Indigenous Dramaturgy Circle at Tarragon Theatre and was the inaugural Wurlitzer Visiting Professor at the University of Victoria’s Theatre Department in 2023.
Upcoming: In Fall 2024, Monique will be the George A. Miller Visiting Artist at the University of Illinois through their Center for Advanced Study.
2024 Mentee: Montana Summers
VIOLETA LUNA (Mentor)
Luna is a San Francisco-based performance artist. Her works reflect and inquire upon the relationship between theater, performance art and community engagement. Luna uses her body as a territory to question and comment on social and political phenomena. She performs and teaches workshops extensively in a variety of settings throughout Latin America, Europe, Africa, and the US. Her performances have been featured and discussed in a broad range of performance literature, from books to journals. Her collaborations include work with the Bay Area-based immigrant women’s rights organizations Mujeres Unidas y Activas and La Colectiva de Mujeres, as well as the performance collectives La Pocha Nostra and Secos & Mojados. Luna is a Creative Capital and National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC) Fellow and artistic member of The Magdalena Project: International Network of Women in Contemporary Theatre.
2024 Mentee: Jessica Zepeda
IRMA VILLAFUERTE (2024 PROGRAM DIRECTOR)
Irma Villafuerte is a Tkaronto based dance artist, educator, choreographer and first-generation daughter of refugees from Nahuat Territory Kuskatan, post-colonial El Salvador. Irma is a Toronto Arts Foundation 2021 Emerging Artist Finalist and a Dora Nominated artist for her co-created work “Surrendered Spirits”. She’s had the honor to be part of festivals such as Nigh Shift 2020 Presented by the Citadel & Compaigne, Fall for Dance North’s Open Studio, The Rhubarb Festival, DanceWeekend Ontario, Aluna Theatre’s Panamerican Routes Festival, Panamania 2015, 12th Bienal de la Habana 2015, Vanguardia Dance Projects Festival, International Dance Meeting in Guantanamo, CounterPulse Performing Diaspora in San Francisco, etc. She’s been part of works by Kaha:wi Dance Theatre, Jaberi Dance Theatre, Kaeja d’Dance, Victoria Mata, Aria Evans, Alejandro Ronceria, and Michael Caldwell. Since 2017, she has led a journey nurturing her choreographic development through residencies with Dance Makers, TDT’s Emerging Voices, Kaeja D’dance KAIR and Aluna Theatre; currently developing her important dance work Xilopango. As a Latin American woman, her passion for social justice and human rights, is the driving force for creation in Irma’s choreographic and performance work. Irma is the co-founder of CinnaMoon Collective.