Join us for the third event in Fire and Light, a series of public conversations that brings together artists to discuss their creative practices in performance, sculpture, bio art, video, social practice and visual art, as well as their crucial work as producers of major international festivals, conferences and performances. Concordia faculty will join the visiting speakers in conversation to offer a unique opportunity for the Concordia community to be in dialogue with the international artist/producers with roots in or relationships to Latvia, Germany and greater Europe.

For this event, artist Margo Zālīte will be in conversation with Sheena Bernett to discuss various disciplinary perspectives on creative process, professional practices, and conceptual concerns when engaging with performance, music, material, and other forms. 

How can you participate? Join us in person or online by registering for the Zoom Meeting or watching live on YouTube. 

Have questions? Send them to info.4@concordia.ca  

Margo Zālīte

Zālīte describes her work as “moving pain paintings” that, in a free flow, balance between reality and imagination. Numerous opera productions have been created in the director’s interpretations. In Berlin these include G. Verdi’s La traviata, R. Wagner’s Die Walküre, B. Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, W. A. Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte, etc. She is passionate about architecture, anthropology, biology and expanding space-time with the help of music theatre. Rolling through countless mentalities and world-views is her answer to the dismayed Western Europe.

Festival FAVORITEN is the festival where Margo Zālīte is artistic director. FAVORITEN is the theater, dance and performance festival of the independent scene in North Rhine-Westphalia – has been held every two years in Dortmund since 1985. It is one of the oldest festivals of the independent performing arts in Germany and is aimed equally at the people of the city and region as well as at a nationwide and international (professional) audience.

Sheena Bernett

Bernett is an agender, neurodivergent, Singer, Dancer, Actor, Songwriter, Composer, Choreographer and Performing Arts Educator from Montreal. She holds an MA in Musical Theatre from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and a B.F.A. in Music Composition and Classical Voice from Concordia University where she graduated with distinction. She is a Musical Theatre graduate of the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York and studied Classical voice at Vanier College. Sheena has had a diverse career as a multidisciplinary artist; appearing in film/TV, on stage, and with her own theatrical musical project Darling Ghost. In 2014, Darling Ghost was part of TedxGlasgow and premiered internationally at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. During the festival, Sheena also captured audiences with her comedic portrayal of Grandma in the Addams Family musical and appeared as the bratty Queen Bella in The Girl Who... a new musical inspired by the classic Choose Your Own Adventure books. Sheena is also an accomplished dancer and has trained at the National Ballet School of Canada and l'École Supérieure de Danse du Québec.

Sheena recently completed her PhD studies at Concordia University. She is investigating a radical approach to creation and performance practices that transcends disciplinary paradigms—with the aim of utilizing the performing/creative arts as a practice and languaging that facilitates neurodiverse thinking-doing. Sheena is committed to neurodiversity as a concept and movement that attends to the diversity of perception and full range or ways of being/becoming.