Committed to its home base in Kjipuktuk/Halifax in Nova Scotia, Mocean provides fertile ground for exciting artistic endeavours and cultivates potential in the field of dance for the region. Through our work, Mocean aims to support the region as a hotspot for creation, research, experimentation, collaboration, and performance, as well as nurturing community vitality through education and outreach programs that celebrate dance as a vehicle for transformation. Our activities range from professional opportunities for local dance artists to community-based classes for youth and senior citizens.

Led by Co-Artistic Directors Susanne Chui (she/her) and Sara Coffin (she/her), Mocean is an award-winning contemporary dance company that commissions Canadian and international choreographers to create dance that is highly physical, collaborative, and technically and emotionally rich. Founded in 2001, Mocean is recognized nationally as a leading dance company from the Atlantic Region. The company was honoured with The Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Art Award in 2016 for Canvas 5 x 5, which was the first and only time this esteemed provincial award was given to a Nova Scotia dance work.

Sara Coffin (she/her) is an award-winning dance artist, choreographer, dance educator and Co-Artistic Director of Mocean Dance. Coffin has been teaching and creating interdisciplinary contemporary dance work for twenty years. She received the NS Established Artist Award in 2018, her MFA in Choreography (Smith College), BFA in Dance (Simon Fraser) University and BSc Kinesiology Science (Dalhousie).

Coffin has created over 30 dance works, her choreographic work has been presented in many prominent Canadian dance festivals and in the United States. Her research interests include interdisciplinary collaboration, technology as an extension of the body, contact improvisation, and the poetic junction between vulnerability, resiliency, and courage.

As a dance educator, Coffin teaches at Halifax Dance and has taught as adjunct faculty at Smith College and Hampshire College in Massachusetts, as visiting artist at Universidad Rafael Landívar (Guatemala City), Earth Dance, and as a guest artist at Holland College School of Performing Arts (Charlottetown,PEI), NSCAD (Halifax) and University of Alberta (Edmonton). www.saracoffin.ca

Sarah Prosper (she/her)  Dancer & Artistic Director of Samqwan, Sarah Prosper, 22 year old L’nu woman she/her, has a B.Sc Therapeutic Recreation & ADAPT Certified. From Mi’kmaq First Nation community Eskasoni (Wekwistoqnik ~ land of the fir trees). An accomplished creator and leader in arts dance and culture, Sarah has performed, collaborated, co-created, co-produced, consulted, in Indigenous inspired multi-disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and intergenerational productions, most recently: Koqm (shalan joudry), Nutuwiek? (NS Choral Federation), Alan Sylliboy & The Thundermakers (Co presented with Symphony NS), Fluid Forms ~ Utawtiwow Kijinaq (Mocean Dance & Sara Coffin), Ki’kwa’ju Reimagining Prokofiev’s Peter & the Wolf (FSPA, Christina Murray & Shelly MacDonald) & Lost Soul (George Woodhouse & the Public Service). Sarah creates and moves through topics of intergenerational healing, history, health, wellness, and truth, through these elements and stories of our history and the land, uplifting contemporary Indigenous artistry with an approach that is guided by Mi’kmaq spirituality. Sarah hopes to incorporate Indigenous creativeness in movement of all forms and help others find their inherent ability to move freely with Ms~t No’kmaq (All My Relations).