Vanessa Goodman

Vanessa Goodman respectfully acknowledges that she lives and works on the ancestral and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations. She holds a BFA from Simon Fraser University and is the artistic director of Action at a Distance Dance Society. Vanessa is attracted to art that has a weight and meaning beyond the purely aesthetic and uses her choreography as an opportunity to explore the human condition. She has received several awards and honours, including: The Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award (2013); The Yulanda M. Faris Scholarship (2017/18); The Chrystal Dance Prize (2019); The Schultz Endowment from Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (2019); and the “Space to Fail” program (2019/20) in New Zealand, Australia and Vancouver.

Vanessa’s work has been presented in Vancouver by DanceHouse, SFU Woodwards, The Belkin Gallery, The Firehall Arts Centre, The Dance Centre, The Chutzpah! Festival and The Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. Presentations further afield include the Fluid Festival (Calgary), Kinetic Studio (Halifax), The Dance Made in Canada Festival (Toronto), On the Boards (Seattle), Risk/Reward Festival (Portland), Offset Dance Fest (Brooklyn) and The Bienal Internacional de Dança Do Ceará (Brazil).

Vanessa has been artist-in-residence at The Dance Centre, Dance Victoria, Harbourfront Centre, The Shadbolt Centre and The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, where she was also on faculty. Most recently Vanessa presented work and was a facilitator for Trinity Laban’s 2020 Co-Lab Project (London). Commissions include Springboard Dansé Montréal, the plastic orchid factory (with Ame Henderson), Votive Dance, Lamon Dance, Modus Operandi and The SFU rep class.

Upcoming projects include collaborations with Scott Morgan (Loscil); Caroline Shaw (premiering January 2021); and Simona Deaconescu (premiering at National Dance House, Romania).

This page was last updated in February 2022.