An Emerging Artist's Statement

Photo by Magenta Studio Photography

I see dance and creating movement as a cathartic practice for me. It sounds intense, but I like intense. The arts are my voice and my artistic practice as a dancer and choreographer assists me in telling my story. I find much joy in performing on stage and hoping that I can make an audience member feel inspired as they leave the theater, it’s what I live for. My inspiration for creating movement comes from a fascination about myself, specifically drawing from my identity past and present. I possess a strong curiosity of creative movement on the human body and how it can be challenged when athleticism is experimented through seeking to surpass the physical limits of my body in different ways or methods. Although trained in many different dance styles and techniques, my work is mainly focused on contemporary dance, incorporating my own movement quality characteristics that are drawn as inspiration from other dance genres such as jazz and acrobatics. When creating work, I think about my foundation and how I can utilize the floor as a dance partner, by allowing myself to yield into gravity and feel the weight of my skeleton and muscles as I dance. Through my curiosity of movement, animalistic characteristics such as quadrupedalism comes into play and is one of my methods to exploring my own physical limitations. I strongly believe that dance reveals the strength of the body and the vulnerability of not just an artistic athlete but a human being who finds an explainable passion speaking out loud using their body in time and space. The dancer’s body and soul go hand in hand.

Kadin Who?

Kadin Vanden Heuvel is a contemporary dance artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Originally from the east coast in Brampton, Ontario, she started doing gymnastics at the age of 3, when she was 6, a dance show grabbed her interest and switched from the gym to the dance studio. From there on her love for the art form grew with her over the years. Kadin has learned many different dance styles including jazz, tap, acro, ballet, hip-hop, and contemporary. After attending a regional arts dance program at a local high school, Kadin then decided to continue her studies in Contemporary dance in her post-secondary career at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. Now in her fourth and final year to attaining her BFA, Kadin’s perspective of the contemporary arts in not just dance but all art forms has broadened with a curious mind. She has gotten to collaborate with students in other disciplines to create interdisciplinary projects. Through the dance program, Kadin has been fortunate enough to have been given opportunities to get to learn and perform works done by local and international professional choreographers such as Chengxin Wei, KT Neihoff, Rob Kitsos, Noam Gagnon and many more. Some of her own choreographer has also been given the chance to be featured in a couple student choreography dance concerts as well and has performed in works created by her peers as well. In her final semester at SFU, Kadin plans on staying in Vancouver and becoming more connected with the dance community here by collaborating with other artists and finding opportunities to create and perform.