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Tea with Mara (2026), meaning to invite Mara—your “demons”—for tea, inhabits a spirited space rooted in Japanese Canadian and Buddhist mythology, practices, and philosophy.
Choreographer/Producer: Suzanne Liska | Co-Producer: Citadel + Compagnie LIVE | Co-Creators/Performers: Gibum Dante Lim, Suzanne Liska, Mateo Gallindo Torres, Mika Lior (initial creation). Composer/Musician: Heidi Chan | Musician: Young Park | Design/Creative Team: Jennie Simm, A.J. Morra, Gabriel Cropley, Maxine Heppner. Supported by: Toronto Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and Japanese Canadian Legacy Fund. |
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Rokuro (The Wheel) 2023 explores Asian Canadian identity, place, and the intersection of cultural artifacts, movement, music, and history.
A collaboration between choreographers/performers Takako Segawa and Suzanne Liska and composer/performer Heidi Chan. The live performance unfolds within a multi-sensory Japanese-inspired garden, with tea ceremony, ceramics, and video woven into the work. Collaborators: Jennie Vallis, Maxine Heppner, Gabriel Cropley, Mayumi Lashbrook, Emiko Nagato, Yves Soglo, Jae Yang, Momo Tea, RAW Taiko Drummers. Supported by: Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, and RAW Studio/Theatre. |
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Thread Bound (2019)
Created and performed by dancers Suzanne Liska and Kathleen Rea with dramaturgy by Tristan Whiston and movement-coaching by Maxine Heppner. Thread Bound premiered October, 2019 at the Intergalactic Arts Collective studio theatre in Toronto, Canada. This dance-theatre work explores inherited ancestral traumas. Suzanne explores the impact of the forced internment of her Japanese Canadian family and Kathleen explores her family’s Eastern European experience in the Gulag concentration camps through movement, words and objects. Both artists are bound together in the search for these thin yet intertwining threads. Reviewed as “elegant and evocative...relentless energy and beautifully executed choreography” (Bateman Review). |
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Yume-Iro (Dream Colour) 2018
Co-choreographed/performed with Takako Segawa and composer Heidi Chan and choreographic mentor Tedd Robinson. The piece is a dance interpretation of the audible, visual, historical and emotional components of Taiko (Japanese drumming). Performed for CanAsian Kickstart, Theatre Centre, Toronto, 2018. The work interchangeably reveals the roles of the body of the drum and the rhythm of the drummer in a dream-like world. “Yume-Iro” fuses dance and music to offer a contemporary interpretation of the dance of Taiko. |
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Momentary
Videography and Choreography by Suzanne Liska with co-camera operator Farviash Babanorouzi. Dance co-creators Louis Barbier, Madison Burgess, Mika Lillit Lior, and Zita Nyarady, presented at the CIFM (Contact International Film Festival 2017) Contours of distance and intimacy, constriction and ease take shape through gestures that flow from, and influence, one another. Organic, elemental, and charged with the raw power of bodies connecting in movement at once determined and innate, the piece itself shows intransigence morphing into expressions, both literal and figurative, of lifting up. |
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Written Publications
Funded by a SSHRC award, she received her MFA in Choreography at York University. Investigating Contact Improvisation and the Alexander Technique within the choreographic process, she conducted her research in Tokyo and Toronto. |
"Somatic ethnographic research: A choreographic process informed by Alexander Technique", peer-reviewed journal Choreographic Practices, Volume 11, Number 1, 1 July 2020, pp. 75-99(25)
https://link.growkudos.com/1hry8dkz8xs https://doi.org/10.1386/chor_00013_1 |
Selected Dance/theatre Performances
Kathleen Rea of Reason d’etre Dance Productions
Dancing with the Universe, CanStage, Harbourfront Centre
Vivid 4, Winchester Theatre
Long Live, Betty Oliphant Theatre
Maxine Heppner
KRIMA, Barrie, featuring duet with Mateo Galindo Torres, Barrie.
KRIMA, Youngplace Centre
Karen Kaeja, commission
“Centennial Motel and Rest” in Half Life Motel, Co-produced by Flightworks (Suzanne Liska and Ajna Samadhi) and Lucy Rupert, DanceWorks CoWorks Series presentation, Dance Makers Theatre.
Pam Johnson
Brother, Can you Spare a Dime?, Winchester Theatre.
Kathleen Rea of Reason d’etre Dance Productions
Dancing with the Universe, CanStage, Harbourfront Centre
Vivid 4, Winchester Theatre
Long Live, Betty Oliphant Theatre
Maxine Heppner
KRIMA, Barrie, featuring duet with Mateo Galindo Torres, Barrie.
KRIMA, Youngplace Centre
Karen Kaeja, commission
“Centennial Motel and Rest” in Half Life Motel, Co-produced by Flightworks (Suzanne Liska and Ajna Samadhi) and Lucy Rupert, DanceWorks CoWorks Series presentation, Dance Makers Theatre.
Pam Johnson
Brother, Can you Spare a Dime?, Winchester Theatre.
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