Violinist Nancy Dahn and pianist Timothy Steeves have built an international career as artist and life partners in the Canadian chamber ensemble Duo Concertante. Outstanding musicians, champions of new music, and visionary artistic directors, Nancy and Tim forge a musical legacy through live performances, recordings and a determination to provoke thought about our world through music. Known for the passion and brilliance of their performances, critics have praised Nancy Dahn and Timothy Steeves’ “artistry, poetry, and impeccable technique” (La Scena Musicale) and “deeply integrated performances that flow naturally as if the music were being created on the spot” (Gramophone). Their busy touring schedule across North America, Europe, and China has led to performances at Wigmore Hall, Weill Recital Hall, Koerner Hall, Roy Thomson Hall, the National Arts Centre, Shanghai City Theatre and the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing. Nancy and Tim’s thirteen commercial CDs include a 2011 JUNO award winner and the ECMA Classical Recording of the Year for 2017, 2018 and 2019. Their newest release of new Canadian works inspired by the climate emergency, Ecology of Being(Marquis Classics, March 2022), has been praised as “world-class…a powerful and deeply moving album” (WholeNote), and “wonderful music, superbly recorded... a balm for the soul” (Audiophilia). Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada, they hold John Lewis Paton Distinguished Professorships at Memorial University and are also Artistic Directors of the Tuckamore Festival. www.duoconcertante.com
Robert Chafe is a writer, educator, actor and arts administrator based in St. John’s, Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland). He has worked in theatre, dance, opera, radio, fiction and film. His stage plays have been seen in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and in the United States, and include Oil and Water, Tempting Providence, Afterimage, Under Wraps, Between Breaths, Everybody Just Calm the Fuck Down, I Forgive You (with Scott Jones), and The Colony of Unrequited Dreams (adapted from the novel by Wayne Johnston.) He has been shortlisted three times for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama and he won the award for Afterimage in 2010. He has been guest instructor at Memorial University, Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, and The National Theatre School of Canada. In 2018 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Memorial University. He is the playwright and Artistic Director of Artistic Fraud.
Dancer and storyteller Louise Moyes (St. John’s) performs and creates Docudances: multidisciplinary and often bilingual shows and films, working with the rhythms of voices as her musical score. Combining her work as dancer, storyteller, filmmaker, and sociologist, Louise has explored her neighbourhood (Long’s Hill Walk 2018-2022), the collapse of the Newfoundland and Labrador fisheries, walking her dog (My Secret Pig), similarities between Québécois and Newfoundlanders, and the life of Franco-Acadian NL musician Florence Leprieur. The same year her Docudance company turned 25, Louise was awarded the Canada Council for the Art’s Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award for Innovation in Dance, in 2016.

Louise currently holds a three-year Canada Council Composite grant for her innovative work in immersive dance walking tours. She is creating a documentary film on Long’s Hill Walk: I live(d) here, which also enjoyed a livestream version, produced by the National Arts Centre in Ottawa and Neighbourhood Dance Works in 2020; a new walk will be produced in 2023.

In 2019 Louise produced the dance film On Hold, created and directed by the award-winning Nicola Hawkins for Louise and her father, 80-year-old dancer and actor John Moyes. It has gone on to be presented at six festivals to date including in Toronto (dance:mic), St. John’s, UK (WOFFF Festival, Prize in Experimental Film), and Cannes Mediterranean Festival. It is currently being aired on CBC GEM.

Louise has been collaborating with artists living with physical and cognitive disabilities since 1992: France Geoffroy Corpuscule Dance and Valerie Dean Montreal 1994-98; Jacinthe Giroux with Jo Leslie Quartiers Danses Festival and creation process 2016; Lee Saunders and Kim White in Long’s Hill Walk 2018-2020. Thanks to a research grant from the Canada Council, Louise has been studying primitive reflexes and their power in working with people on the autism spectrum and living with learning disabilities, through dance and storytelling, with mentor Lee Saunders.

She has performed across Canada and in Germany, Italy, Iceland, New York, Australia, France and Brazil. Louise has bachelor’s degrees in French literature and language and in Medicine from Memorial University. She studied dance and performance at Studio 303 in Montreal and with Neighbourhood Dance Works’ (NL) projects and classes.

Collaborations include dance and interdisciplinary artists: Lisa Porter, Lee Saunders, Nicola Hawkins, Jo Leslie, Anne Troake, Lori Clarke, Eryn Dace Trudell, Tammy MacLeod, Andrea Tucker, Calla Lachance, Lois Brown, Sarah Stoker, Sara Porter, Martha Carter, Suzanne Miller, Tammy Forsythe, among others; Has choreographed for theatre artists Andy Jones, Paul Rowe and Robert Chafe and singer Mary Barry. She has taught at schools throughout Newfoundland and Labrador for 30 years and done several provincial tours. Louise has been Chair, Vice-chair and Board Member of Neighbourhood Dance Works. She served on the board of DanceNL 2015-2018. Louise works in documentary film and radio as researcher, writer and presenter.

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