Crimson Coast Dance operates with the dedicated support
of our Artistic Director, Staff, and volunteer Board of Directors.
Crimson Coast Dance Society brings diverse, high-calibre contemporary dance creations to the Nanaimo area. We deliver performances and educational opportunities at both the grassroots and professional levels. CCDS is seeking Board and Committee members who can draw on their experience and enthusiasm for dance, arts, and culture to govern and support us in the delivery of our mandate. If you have the experience, or a background in finance, human resources, fundraising, special events, marketing, outreach, and guest artist hosting, please consider joining us. We strive to represent the diversity of our the audience, community, and performers and welcome anyone who is interested to contact us at 250.716.3230 or dance@crimsoncoast.com
Crimson Coast Dance Society (CCDS) brings diverse, high-calibre contemporary dance creations to the Nanaimo area. CCDS delivers performances and educational opportunities at both the grassroots and professional levels.
CCDS is seeking Board and Committee members who can draw on their experience and enthusiasm for dance, arts, and culture to govern and support us in the delivery of our mandate. If you have the experience, or a background in finance, human resources, fundraising, special events, marketing, outreach, and guest artist hosting, please consider joining us.
We strive to represent the diversity of our audience, community, and performers and welcome anyone who is interested to contact us.
Staff
Holly Bright
Artistic Director & Founder
Holly Bright is a performer and dance educator. She holds a BA in Dance, BSc in Human Physiology, is certified in Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis, Gyrokinesis/Gyrotonic movement systems and Thai Massage. Holly founded Crimson Coast Dance Society (Nanaimo, 1998), an organization that supports creation and presentation of professional dance programming.
In 2010, Holly was awarded The City Of Nanaimo’s Honour In Culture Award for her contributions to the cultural fabric of the arts in Nanaimo. Her youth program, Body Talk, was nominated for a 2015 Business Achievement Award for Cultural Vitality. In 2016 Holly was selected for one of two annual John Hobday Awards offered through the Canada Council for the Arts by the Saidye Bronfman Family to acknowledge her work as an arts manager and to support her desire to cultivate cultural knowledge of Indigenous people, protocols, and their arts and artists — especially those of Snuneymuxw First Nation.
Teaching credits include; Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle, The University of Akron, Ohio, The University of New Mexico, Las Cruces, and various B.C. dance academies in Nanaimo. Holly has danced with artists including; Susanna Hood, Margie Gillis (Montreal) Judith Adams (U.K), Senta Driver, Hanya Holm, Agnes de Mille, Nina Weiner, Maureen Fleming-Odo, Lynne Taylor Corbett (New York City), Helen Myers (New Mexico), Chick Snipper, Kokoro Dance, Judith Marcuse (film), Lee Eisler, Deborah Dunn, Judith Garay, Jennifer Mascall and Cheryl Prophet (Vancouver).
In her role as artistic director for Crimson Coast Dance Society, Holly has choreographed solo works as well as works for dance professionals, dance students, and community dance projects for which she draws on her experience with Harry Streep and Stephan Koplowitz (NYC).
Musical Theatre choreographic background includes Euphemia (Akron, Ohio), The Spirit of Bleeker Street (NYC), A Good Person? (Malaspina University Theatre), Hot Flashes (Theatre One, Nanaimo), Heidi and South Pacific (Chemainus Theatre), Rocky Horror Picture Show and All Grown Up (Schmooze Productions, Nanaimo). She has performed in Guys and Dolls (Ohio), and created the lead role in an original musical, The Swing of Things (NYC).
Board of Directors
Lynda Adams
President
Lynda is a freelance theatre/dance artist, educator, keynote speaker, adjudicator and passionate board member (CCDS, Edmonton Arts Council, Alberta Dance Alliance, Theatre Alberta). She has a Masters’ Degree in Choreology from the Laban Centre in London, England and has taught in theatre departments at the U of A, MacEwan University, UBC, Douglas College, Red Deer College and for many adult and youth organizations.
Lynda has directed, choreographed, dramaturged and/or coached over 100 productions across Canada. She has received numerous awards including an Edmonton Theatre Sterling Award for Outstanding Choreography and was selected as one of 25 Most Influential Artists in Alberta by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts in 2016. During the past decade, Lynda has been creating community engagement interdisciplinary works, involving up to 200 people, including The Canola Project, which was selected for NYC’s League of Professional Theatre Women’s “30 Plays for 30 Years”. Since transplanting herself from Alberta to the incredibly arts vibrant city of Nanaimo, Lynda continues to teach, sit on boards, adjudicate, create art and present keynote addresses in both Alberta and BC!
Desirée Pahl
President
In the heart of Nanaimo, Desirée Pahl ignites cultural fervor and community connection as the visionary Artistic Director of Acclaim Celtic Dancers. With a kaleidoscope of Celtic culture, her troupe captivates audiences through dance and immersive events inviting the community into unconventional performances that blur the lines between spectator and performer, while also nurturing minds and bodies through Highland and Irish dance classes.
Recognized as a beacon of influence, Desirée has been honoured as Nanaimo Women of Influence 2024 “Breathe Fire” awardee and the recipient of the 2024 “Women in Business” Award from the Nanaimo Chamber of Commerce however, her true passion lies in fostering inclusivity. In addition to her accolades, Desirée has been a member of the Scottish Official Board of Highland Dancing since 1999. She is also a member of ScotDance Canada and Cumann Rince Náisiúnta – Dublin, Ireland.
For Desirée, supporting contemporary dance isn’t just about applause; it’s about joining a movement that dares to break boundaries, express the human condition, and shape the future of art. As President of Crimson Coast Dance Society, she champions this ethos, fostering a dynamic landscape where every artistic pulse enriches lives and unites the community in celebration of its diverse spirit. With over 35 years of dance devotion, she believes deeply in the power of movement and melody to weave the fabric of Nanaimo’s diverse heritage.
Patricia Newton
Treasurer
Pat is an artist of relationships and observer and friend of four-legged and feathered creatures. She travels frequently to observe our avian relations in their native habitat and works locally towards protecting and restoring our natural environment to allow them to flourish. She follows a long-standing family tradition of gardening for birds, pollinators and wildlife.
Her passion for cultural history led to several years of graduate research in London focusing on the education of girls and young women in London in the mid- to late-19th century. Her special interest was the intersection of gender and botanical studies.
Pat supported her own interest in arts and culture by working as an accountant for a children’s charity for more than 35 years, together with many other non-profits and professional associations. She has been an active volunteer for more than fifty years with various community organizations supporting youth, seniors, and refugees so they may become more resilient and independent.
Lori Sorensen
Treasurer
Tânia Amaral
Director at Large
Born and raised in Mozambique (South East Africa), Tânia is a dancer, teacher, researcher for dances & culture from Africa, cultural activist, curious, traveler and enthusiastic person. She was also for a decade a Pharmacist, which she gave up to become a full-time dancer and researcher for dances from Africa. She has already lived in Portugal, Cape Verde (West Africa) and now Canada.
She works full time in this dance concept/ style called Afro Fusion Sharqi Dance that she created in 2015 when she was still living in Mozambique. A fusion dance style between different elements of the dance culture of Africa (from folklore to traditional and urban). This dance brings together the dance elements of Africa (from North to South, East to West and Central). This is about creating bridges that connect Africa’s diversity. It is about unification. Since she moved to Canada, she has been teaching and performing Afro Fusion Sharqi Dance in many different places around British Columbia (Vancouver, Nelson, Nanaimo, Kelowna, and Lillooet) but also outside of BC, as in Montreal and even USA (Portland, Las Vegas, Seattle).
She completed her studies at Datura Dance School in Portland (USA) and become the first Mozambican and African to become a Certified Datura Dance Style Teacher by Rachel Brice. She also completed with success an Introduction to Laban Movement Studies with Helen Walkley. She also started her studies to become a Dance Certify Teacher by IDTS (International Dance Teaching Standard’s Program). In 2021, she became a member of the International Dance Council CID by UNESCO.
In April 2019 the dance concept Afro Fusion Sharqi Dance was officially patented pending and in 2020 become a Trade Marketing. She is now finishing AFSD Manual in English so students around the world can embrace this new dance style. All the details regarding what this dance form is entails, the mission, vision & aspirations and values & principles are possible to be found on her website www.pynksyshell.com
Barbara Bickel
Director at Large
Barbara Bickel, Ph.D, is an artist, writer, researcher, and educator whose art, performance rituals and arts-based writings strive to embody and live matrixial, Earth-based feminist and Indigenous worldviews that celebrate and embrace the sacred. She is Core Faculty at Southwestern College, Santa Fe in the online Visionary Practices and Regenerative Leadership Ph.D program, and Emerita Associate Professor of Art Education at Southern Illinois University. She is co-founding director of Studio M*: A Research Creation Lab Intersecting Arts, Culture and Healing with her life partner in Nanaimo, BC, Canada. http://www.StudioM.space
A socially-engaged and collaborative artist she co-creates with humans and more-than-humans .Since graduating with a BFA in Painting from the University of Calgary (1993), Canada she has had a performance ritual practice, exhibited internationally and maintained a multi-media studio practice (drawing, collage, painting, sculpture, art-video, sound and time-based installation). As an independent curator, gallery director and arts educator she co-founded The Centre Gallery (1995 – 2001), a non-profit women’s focused gallery in Calgary, Alberta, and Gallery 3342 (2014 – 17), a women, gender and sexuality focused gallery at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale Illinois. She is a co-founding member of the Gestare Art Collective http://www.GestareArtCollective
(2009-2021).
Her books include Art, Ritual and Trance Inquiry: Arational Learning in an Irrational World, and a co-authored book Art-Care Practices for Restoring the Communal: Education, Co-Inquiry and Healing with R. Michael Fisher. She has co-edited two books Arts-Based and Contemplative Practices in Research and Teaching: Honoring Presence and Arts-Based Educational Research Trajectories: Career Reflections by Authors of Outstanding Dissertations. She has published numerous articles and book chapters, and is co-founder and co-editor of Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal.
She is grateful to live by the Salish Sea on the traditional territory of the Snuneymuxw First Nation people, where she creates, writes and teaches art as a sacred inquiry and transdisciplinary meaning making process. To view her arts-based writing and art see http://www.barbarabickel.com
Lindsey Hoetzel
Director at Large
Layla Robbie
Director at Large
Sukhi Sangha
Director at Large
Sukhi Sangha won the 2024 Honor in Culture Award and the 2025 Nanaimo Women of Influence in Arts and Culture Award for her outstanding contributions to Nanaimo’s vibrant arts scene. She is the founder of Vancouver Island Bhangra and an International Dance Adjudicator. Sukhi is a passionate leader with infectious charisma that resonates with all audiences. Originally from North Delta, she has traveled the world sharing her love for Bhangra before making Nanaimo her home. For over 20 years, she has inspired communities across BC through dance and accessible community engagement events.
Since settling in Nanaimo in 2021, Sukhi has become a prominent advocate for South Asian Arts and Bhangra fitness on Vancouver Island. Her contributions have enriched the cultural fabric of the region, introducing vibrant South Asian traditions to new audiences. Her Bhangra fitness classes, offered in partnership with the City of Nanaimo, encourage wellness across all ages, embodying her belief that the mind is the strongest muscle in the body.
She has also performed and competitively danced on national stages, including as a participant on Poland’s Got Talent. Sukhi’s joyful energy and dedication to uplifting others through dance have made her a beloved figure in the community.
Her work continues to promote unity, inclusion, and happiness. Sukhi is honored to be part of Crimson Coast Dance Society and is proud to share South Asian Arts across Vancouver Island.
Jaguar Yggdrasil
(Sonya Blade)
Director at Large
Jaguar (legally Sonya Dennis) is a dedicated mother of three artistic boys, a passionate dancer, and a movement enthusiast. With formal training in hip-hop, modern, salsa, and bachata, along with a deep love for flow arts, she embraces a diverse range of dance styles. She has recently expanded her skills through performances and collaborations with Murmur Arts Collective, Mind Garden Victoria, and Sultry Sirens Burlesque, as well as appearances at arts and music festivals such as Luna Arts and Bass Coast. In 2022, she hosted a segment on CHLY 101.7, showcasing Canadian hip-hop and pop, fostering her deep appreciation for local music, dancers, and artists. At the heart of Jaguar’s work is somatic movement and healing through dance. She is committed to making movement accessible and free from limitations or stigma, sharing its transformative power with others. An engaged community member, she works on the front lines with
precariously housed individuals and other vulnerable populations, striving to give back through active involvement and investment in her community.
Guest Curators
Tsatassaya White
Guest Curator
Tsatassaya White, B.A.(Anthropology, UBC) is a member of the Snuneymuxw First Nation (Coast Salish) and Earthquake House in Hupacasath, (Nuu-chah-nulth). Carrying knowledge from both of her territories she is a community mobilizer. She is an event planner who has a keen interest in all aspects of protocol. Tsatassaya conceived and annually curates a day of dance, “Qwuyulush u’ tl Swy a lana” featuring Indigenous artists for our InFrinGinG Dance Festival and Sumsháthut Sun Festival – a Feast of Indigenous Dance, Culture, Fashion and Cuisine and a celebration of the Solstice.
[Photo Credit: Tsatassaya White (right), her daughter, Isabella (left)]
Consultation
Xulsimalt
(Elder Gary Manson)
Consultation
Image from the Nanaimo Art Gallery