ANIMA, a metamorphosing ensemble, is the gathering-place in art of scholar-singer Daniel Cabena and trans poet/librettist Luke Hathaway. It is a place of queer friendship and sustaining story, a place where old texts and melodies are animated by spirit and voice.
Our work is inspired by Dan’s genderqueer voice and performance history; by early-music sources which suggest new and fabulous possibilities for love and community; and by Luke’s trans-mystical poetry, in which masculine, feminine, and nonbinary voices often speak as multiple aspects of a single person.
Working together, we create and commission new works of text and music that are in conversation with early sources and soundworlds. We put these works up on their feet in novel performance contexts (workshops, teach-ins, touring programs …).
We collaborate with other artists whose worlds of sound and spirit enrich our own.
• Afterwords Literary Festival
• Balance Design
• Baseline Press
• Biblioasis
• Caw Audio
• Inter Arts Matrix
• The Canada Council for the Arts
• The Guelph Youth Music Centre
• Musique Royale
• Pine Gum Studio
• The Sackville Festival of Early Music
• Saint Mary's University
• Skerrcraft Creative
• The Wild Writers Festival
as also to our friends and families, for their loving collaboration and support.
We are grateful to our sponsors, collaborators, and presenting partners
We humbly acknowledge that we live and work respectively on the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, and in Mi'kma'ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi'kmaq People.