Artist Residency 2023/24: Carol Mendes

Artists in Residence
Carol Mendes

In residence Summer 2023 at Q7

Meet Carol

Carol Mendes (she/her) is a choreographer and teaching artist with a dance practice that interweaves contemporary, ballet, somatics, and cultural heritage empowerment. She is Brazilian with a polyethnic background, living on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh Nations. She holds a BFA in Dance from UNICAMP (Brazil) and an MFA in Dance Performance and Choreography from NYU, Tisch School of the Arts (USA). Her choreography works have been presented at Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, Scotiabank Dance Centre, KW Studios (Canada), La Mama Theater, Judson Church, Dixon Place, Martha Graham Theatre (USA), Loikka Dancefilm Festival, and Haihatus Art Center (Finland), among others. Her work focuses on female empowerment, decolonizing practices, and respecting multicultural identities and diverse experiences.

I’ll be working on a cross-disciplinary dance work “Been there, done that, made a dance about it” (working title):

During the New Work Residency, I will begin explorations for a dance work with cross-disciplinary and intergenerational aspects. My collaborators and I will dive into human nature to explore how repeated adversity can push people to change and transform, inspiring various reactions relatable to the human condition. Through equal doses of humor and despair, we will create a dance to ponder how we can overcome feelings of failure. The cyclic hurdles in life and love will be the jumpstart of “Been there, done that, made a dance about it” (working title).

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