Shion Skye Carter (she/they) is a dance artist originally from Tajimi, Japan, who lives and dedicates time to her artistic practice in Vancouver, Canada on the unceded, ancestral, and occupied traditional lands of the Coast Salish peoples. Through choreography hybridized with heritage artforms that interact with digital and sculptural objects, Shion’s work looks inward to the facets of her intersectional identity as a lens to process the world around her. As co-founder of olive theory, an interdisciplinary duo with musician Stefan Nazarevich, she collaborates to experiment at the intersection between embodied performance, installation art, and live sound. Their ongoing project reach-close features an interactive, sculptural, amplified piano wire installation. The artists activate the wires by plucking, using violin bows, and scraping their buzzed haircuts, creating an interactive performance for both performers and audiences.
In both her independent work and projects with olive theory, Shion has performed across Canada, and worked as artist-in-residence at What Lab, Left of Main, LEÑA Artist Residency, and will work in Fall 2022 at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. She began experimenting with creating short dance films during the COVID-19 pandemic, which have since been screened at festivals globally, including Dancing on the Edge Festival (Canada), CAPSULE by the National Arts Centre (Canada), Hibrido Brazilian Videodance Festival (Brazil), Dance Days Chania (Greece), and Moving Images Dance Festival (Cyprus).
As a performer, she has interpreted the works of artists such as Anya Saugstad, Vanessa Goodman (Action at a Distance), Wen Wei Dance, and Ziyian Kwan (Dumb Instrument Dance). She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Dance and Kinesiology from Simon Fraser University, and is the 2021/2022 recipient of the Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award.
(Headshot photography by Brenda Kent Colina)
RECENT PRESS ARTICLES
October 2021: Nikkei Voice, newspaper article on Residuals (住み・墨)
October 2021: atuvu.ca, web article on Residuals (住み・墨) presentation at Tangente in Montreal, QC
July 2021: The PEAK newspaper, web article on receiving the Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award
June 2021: Stir Magazine, web article on receiving the Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award
June 2021: The Georgia Straight newspaper, print article on Flow Tide at Dancing on the Edge Festival
April 2021: Stir Magazine, web article on olive theory
April 2021: Dance International Magazine, web article on young artists creating work during the pandemic
March/April 2020: Dance Current Magazine, print article on my creative process