As an artist I consider it an honour to share space with an audience and other artists and collaborators. I am most proud of the work I have made collaboratively with folks who bring their whole selves to the process along with technical excellence and dedication to craft. I hold creative and performance space as sacred, inviting honest vulnerability from artists, and offering audiences windows into my work to facilitate connecting points between art and lived experiences.

As a performer and director I am constantly in pursuit of “aliveness.” Performative emotion and disembodied stoicism hold equally no draw for me. I am most fascinated by integration, by the magic that occurs when the real-time embodiedness of a dancer shapes how movement is expressed and the decisions that are made on stage. Responsiveness, even reactivity while staying deeply connected to oneself and the others with you, held within the tension of choreographic structure or external direction makes space for genuine discovery and deep, surprising presence. The process of making art is formational; I am constantly seeking a new discovery, a new sensation or a satisfying uncovering of something poignant. Metaphor and imagery are my engine and processes of ideation to find connections between disparate ideas is my fuel. The act of sharing art is vulnerable; and the daily practice of being human is where integration nurtures the next discovery.

I understand myself as an artist vocationally - it is my career but it is also my essence, a part of the way I move through the world, no matter whether I am scrubbing soap scum in my shower or teaching dancers to “fish flop”, parenting my boys or presenting a full-length work. My value as an artist is centered in my value as a human, in the value we collectively hold as humans. Art is inextricably linked to our humanity as the vessels of creativity, and so I believe in art that is made ‘for’ something; for community building, for storytelling, for change, for growth, for play, for discovery.

Deanna Witwer (she/her) is a choreographer, director, educator, performer and arts administrator based out of Mohkinstsis (Calgary). In process and performance Witwer holds space for the intersection of artistic rigour and honest humanity through curiosity-driven play, chasing the transformational encounters art can reveal within community.

Witwer is a sessional instructor in the division of dance at the University of Calgary and holds a BA in Dance from the University of Calgary, collaborative with Kinesiology and specializing in performance and choreography (2009). She was the Artistic Director of Corps Bara Dance Theatre for 9 years, where she first danced for 8 years as a company member. Highlights of her time with Corps Bara include choreographing and producing Grief Marked, an immersive, multi-disciplinary installation work funded by Canada Heritage, producing Resonant Soul, a series of ten dance meditation films, choreographing and directing Facing the Light, an evening-length work.

Witwer spent two formational years training in Brussels, Belgium, where she studied extensively under David Zambrano, as well as Peter Jasko, Sun Xiao Jun and Dominique Duszynski and attending ImPulsTanz International Dance Festival (2011) in Vienna.

As a teacher, Witwer’s work draws heavily on David Zambrano's Flying Low technique and Davida Monk’s principles of release and functional technique. She focuses on developing a functional relationship with the floor, harnessing power by releasing the joints to channel force through the body in efficient and dynamic ways. In her classes she prioritizes functionality over form, risk over perfectionism and “failure” is championed as a vehicle for learning.