Valerie Calam is a Toronto-based, Gen-X, caregiving dance artist interested in finding pathways to refresh and support herself. She is a performer, teacher and choreographer, and uses sound and costuming to enhance her collaborations in dance. She was recently a guest dancer with Toronto Dance Theatre, Citadel & Cie, and Bad New Days Theatre. Valerie enjoys her arts admin role as Membership Coordinator and Operations Manager at CADA/East (Canadian Alliance of Dance Artists- East Chapter).
Valerie umbrellas much of her work under the name Company Vice Versa (www.companyviceversa.com) and is currently collaborating with fellow dance artist Allison Cummings and Vivine Scarlett on a solo performance entitled Bear, to be performed by Cummings. The work-in-progress was selected for the Orilla Centre for Arts and Culture’s Dance & Design Residency that took place in September 2022.
Valerie works as a costume designer and seamstress. She enjoys studying vintage sewing patterns and repurposing used clothing. She finds costume design and coordination to be a fruitful means of collaboration— a new way to support the creative process of other dance folks.
Over the past few years (under the AD of Andrew Tay), Valerie performed in Pilot Episodes Project (TDT 2020 & 2021) in processes by choreographers Miss Coco Murray, Ralph Escamillan, Tyra Temple-Smith, and Angela Schubot, the Co-Conspirators Project (TDT 2021) with Be Heintzman Hope, and Performance Clash (TDT 2022) with designer Angela Cabrera. Before this, Valerie worked with Toronto Dance Theatre under the AD of legendary Christopher House. Valerie toured and performed in numerous works of Christopher’s while being a company dancer from 1999-2009.
Valerie has been working with Bad New Days Theatre (Tkaronto) as a dancer/performer over the past few years. Under the AD of Adam Paolooza, Valerie will be a part of the upcoming performance run of A Last Landscape (the project born of Big Data) at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in March 2023. Valerie has been working as a performer in Citadel & Cie’s remount of Nuit by Jean-Pierre Perreault (choreographed in 1986) which will be presented at the Luminato Festival in 2023.
As a performer, Valerie collaborated on an experimental video game with filmmaker Franci Duran and Fantastical Realms through the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Valerie is a KM Hunter Award winner for Dance. She completed a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Choreography in 2014 from York University where she continued her research of state and imagination-based movement and composition.
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