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Tracing the FORM: An Anniversary Celebration 🎟️

  • VIVO Media Arts Centre 2625 Kaslo St, V5M 1Y8 Vancouver, BC Canada (map)

Tracing the FORM: An Anniversary Celebration
Friday November 7 | 6:00-10:30PM PST 

Presented in Partnership with VIVO Media Arts Centre
With Live Panel facilitated by Nancy Lee, in conversation with FORM leaders Erin Lum, danielle Mackenzie Long, Tamar Zehava Tabori and Sophia Mai Wolfe 
Location: VIVO Media Arts Centre
Doors: 6PM PST

To open the festival, the team of artists behind FORM celebrate and reflect on our momentous first decade of learning, connections, and creations with our artists, audiences, and peers. In conversation with legacy artist Nancy Lee, we pay tribute to the development of the form—the genre of movement-on-screen—and the framework of FORM. By sharing stories of our evolution and watching films from our past, we take time to map a few of the moments that have had a hand in shaping FORM, complete with cake and celebratory toasts.
We welcome you, our vibrant community of artists and audiences, to FORM 2025 as we usher in our 10th year!

To learn more about our support offerings and venue accessibility visit our FAQ page.

Films Screening:

TracingtheFORM
In Plain Sight عیان 
In Plain Sight عیان 

Tanin Torabi (Iran) EMERGING

Screened at FORM 2021

Duration: 10:30

In Plain Sight عیان is the result of months of exploring urban movements on a boulevard in Tehran, Iran. In a society where many questions and restrictions exist around the concept of ‘movement’, three performers try to define the borders of dance. They interact with their surroundings and thus become an integral part of the flow of the city. They accompany each other to find the power of collective movement. The journey is the destination.

Director: Tanin Torabi 
Producers: Sina Saberi & Tanin Torabi 
Director Assistant: Mahsa Akbarabadi  
Performers: Masoumeh Jalalieh, Tina Beyk Abbasi, Tanin Torabi 
Cinematography: Masoud Banafsheh 
Composer: Faran Fahimi 
Choreography: Tanin Torabi in collaboration with Masoumeh Jalalieh & Tina Beyk Abbasi
Production Manager: Mahsa Akbarabadi
Editor: Anis Eshraqi
Colour grading: Farbod Jalali
Photography: Hannaneh Heydari 
Style advisor: Sahar Mactabi

opaqueREFUSALS
opaqueREFUSALS

danielle Mackenzie Long (Canada) EMERGING

Screened at FORM 2023

Duration: 1:32

A ribcage embodies a dance, refusing to allow its movement to be constrained by a diaphragm made of bubble wrap. 

Using animation software and motion capture data from a non-binary dance artist’s movement a dance is presented through non-gendered means of performance. opaqueREFUSALS is the first volume of a work-in-progress interdisciplinary project combining movement, digital media, installation, online game design and live performance. The work aims to empower genderqueer dance artists to exist in a world where gender is neither binary, nor defined.

Director, Animator, Dancer, Editor: danielle Mackenzie Long
Sound Designer: Miya Kosowick Mawatari
New Media Support: Freya Björg Olafson, Casey Koyczan

Ninde
Ninde

Nils Janssens (Belgium) EMERGING

Screened at FORM 2016

Duration: 2:00

André (full name: Hakim Andrusha Ndirembako) is half African, half Russian and raised in Belgium. This projection-on-sand stop motion visualises and describes the search for his identity and his point of view.

Director: Nils Janssens
Participants: Hakim Andrusha Ndirembako, Dimana Shishkova, Kelly de Boelpaep

RELINQ
RELINQ

Adam Smith & Colby McLean (Canada) YOUTH

2023 FORM Commission 

Duration: 14:02

RELINQ inverses the relationship between dance and music. Sounds created by dancers have been warped and molded to produce a piece of music led by dancers, rather than a dance piece led by music. Through this mixture of movement and sound, RELINQ captures the unfiltered energy of the Session and offers it to the viewer without external interference.

Through the viewfinder of a camera, the audience is invited to experience the session as a dancer, a spectator, and a fly on the wall.

Directed & Produced by: Colby McLean & Adam Smith
Assistant Director: J. L. McLean
Assistant Producer: Justin Larioza
Shot by Nicholas Alford, Benjamin San Martin
Sound Design and Arrangement: Adam Smith
Edited by: Colby McLean & Justin Larioza
Mentors: Sophia Mai Wolfe, Eric Cheung, Alim Sabir
Dancers (in order of appearance): Colby McLean, Eunice Fae Dionisio, Adam Smith, Skargfy, Samantha Nicole Alvarez Lindo, Justin Larioza

soft teeth
soft teeth

Zahra Shahab (Canada) EMERGING

FORM 2019 Commission

Duration: 6:37

soft teeth is an experimental video about mutant creatures that undergo several processes of metamorphosis. It is a playful illustration of metaphysical queer identity in its indefinability and perpetual state of emergence. The creatures morph and merge, birthing new versions of themselves while finding synthesis with their physical landscape. Their soft bodies become a terrain of potential, with body parts growing, shrinking, relocating, and being replaced with images from other worlds. An emphasis on the fantastical allows room for the entities to not rely on a stable future or a concrete narrative, but instead exist in a continually amorphous, unpredictable state.

soft teeth is an experimental video that explores the idea of a mutable body through the interaction of costume design, choreography, and after effects. It is the result of artists playfully working beyond their disciplines to translate fantastical ideas into fabric and footage. An unpredictable laboratory of digital and choreographic fusion, soft teeth works to illustrate the queer idea of an unstable and continually emergent identity.

Director and Choreographer: Zahra Shahab
Art Director and Director of Photography:Arya Hawker
Editing: Zahra Shahab and Arya Hawker
VFX: Arya Hawker
Costume and Installation Design/Construction: Zahra Shahab and Ileanna Cheladyn assisted by Stéphanie Cyr and Juolin Lee
Performers: Hayley Gawthrop and Diego Romero
Sound Design: Roxanne Nesbitt

About the Panelists:

Featured
Nancy Lee
Nancy Lee

Nancy Lee 李南屏 is a Taiwanese-Canadian interdisciplinary media artist, DJ, curator, and cultural producer whose work spans XR, installation, A/V performance, and documentary. A Sundance New Frontier alum, their projects—such as Tidal Traces, UNION, and Woven Memory: Copper Bodies—explore embodiment, memory, and diaspora through expanded media. Their work has been shown at Cannes, SXSW, MUTEK, VIFF, and Centre Phi. They are a co-founder of CURRENT and Chapel Sound Art Foundation, and teaches immersive media at IM4 Lab. They serve as a board director for Love Intersections and Normie Corp, uplifting queer voices in media arts and music. They are committed to equity in the arts, supporting queer and underrepresented artists through mentorship, community consultation, and cross-genre programming in Vancouver.

Erin Lum
Erin Lum

Erin Lum (she/her) is an emerging artist based on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples (Vancouver, BC). As F-O-R-M’s youngest staff member, she is passionate about fostering youth-engaged spaces in the arts. 

Erin is interested in art-making as a powerfl form for (re)defining diasporic identity. This had led her to create films, dance, write, collage, and explore how these practices intertwine. In 2020, she was a F-O-R-M Commissioned Artist and created Zì Jǐ, which has since screened at international film festivals including a weeklong projection onto the National Arts Centre building in Ottawa. Her second short, Something To Forget Me By, premiered in 2022. Erin is completing her undergrad degree in Sociology and Communications at SFU. In 2022, Erin showcased a multi-media project Just By Existing in a group exhibition at the Art Gallery at Evergreen. She is currently expanding this project into a documentary film with the support of DOXA Documentary Festival.

danielle Mackenzie Long
danielle Mackenzie Long

I use a lowercase “d” because I desire to navigate the world by easing into spaces. I go by my full name to acknowledge my maternal lineage.

danielle Mackenzie Long, a queer emerging artist, resides on the stolen and unceded territory of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh, and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm nations. They seek to use new media and film to liberate gender non-conforming dance artists to create work that surpasses gendered bodies through various means of visual presentation and audience access.

Their creative practice has been supported by a recent commission from Company 605, as well as residencies with Toronto Dance Theatre (Pilot Episodes) and New Works. At this time danielle’s performance practice is being expanded through engagements with Action at a Distance/Vanessa Goodman, Shion Skye Carter, and self checkout/Lamont. Their past works have been shown through GRRL HAUS CINEMA, XINEMA, New Works, FAVA, and Cinevolution among others.

As Co-Artistic Director and Curator in Residence with Festival of Recorded Movement (F-O-R-M), they work alongside a small team of creatives, supporting the seeds of creations by Youth and Emerging artists whose works speak to the theme of “recorded movement.” They strive to navigate academic structures with an emphasis on curiosity, refusal, and rest, most recently through their studies at the School for Poetic Computation (New York).

Tamar Zehava Tabori
Tamar Zehava Tabori

Tamar Zehava Tabori (she/her) dances, creates videos, and works behind the scenes in the arts. With a BFA from Concordia University, her career has spanned national and international stages and screens, shaped by collaborations across disciplines and a deep commitment to shared learning.

Tamar is the General Manager of Recorded Movement Society, home to F-O-R-M (Festival of Recorded Movement). Over the past six years, she has held many roles within the organization, from Commissioned Artist to Artistic Director. Her work reflects an ongoing interest in collective decision-making, thoughtful infrastructure, and building systems from the ground up, shaped not by conventional templates but by the real needs and values of the people they serve.

Alongside her artistic and administrative practice, Tamar is pursuing a Project Management Certificate at BCIT, driven by a belief that everything is a kind of project: from making a film, to shaping a team, to building new systems of care. She’s interested in how structure can support creativity and how strategy can hold space for values.

Tamar is currently an uninvited guest on the stolen and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples: the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō, Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh), and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations. She carries deep gratitude for the ability to learn from and be shaped by these lands and their peoples.

Sophia Mai Wolfe
Sophia Mai Wolfe

Sophia Mai Wolfe (she/her/hers) is a queer, Japanese-Canadian independent artist. She is currently the Organizational Director of Recorded Movement Society and the founder of F-O-R-M (Festival Of Recorded Movement). She is a grateful guest of what is colonially known as Vancouver, on the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

Her interdisciplinary practice moves through dancing, filmmaking, curation, editing, mentoring youth artists and emerging arts leaders, and, on occasion, acting. Her dance practice has taken her abroad, performing and touring internationally with local companies and independent choreographers.

At the heart of her work is movement, and an ongoing exploration of embodiment, a practice that informs not only her performance and filmmaking, but also her curatorial and administrative roles. She holds an MA in Screendance from the London Contemporary Dance School (2022), and is interested in making films and creating experiences for audiences that challenges and slows our attention. She uses film and dance to invite connection and empathy toward the bodies we witness on screen, as well as sensation within the bodies of those witnessing. She works independently and collaboratively with artists and communities to engage audiences in work that moves them through embodied and imaginative experiences.

Earlier Event: November 7
Public Screens: A Body Uncontained🌀
Later Event: November 7
Collisions of Commissions 🌀