A metamorphosing ensemble, ANIMA 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.
— Daniel Cabena and Luke Hathaway, ANIMAtors
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.
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ANIMA is a member of 10C Shared Space.
Our recent projects have received support from Saint Mary’s University and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Many thanks to Melissa Hammell, Mary Peirson, Melissa Marr, and Karen Schindler (Baseline Press), for their ongoing support and collaboration — as also to the kindly volunteers and billet-hosts who help us to make ANIMAtions happen.