Guest Curator Lamont
[Image Description: Lamont stretches across a dark red backdrop with tarot cards attached to it haphazardly. Their fingers join loosely above their head, forming a halo with their arms. They wear a black bucket hat with fringed edges and an orange longsleeve shirt.]
After applying as a Guest Curator in 2023, Dancemakers and Lamont began a long relationship of co-production, resulting in the support of 2 iterations of self checkout in Vancouver. After many months of relationship building and project development, Lamont is now bringing self checkout to Toronto this spring!
Keep your eyes peeled for a call for artists in coming weeks!
About Lamont
Photo by Maxx Saddler [Image description: Captured in a dimly lit film photograph, Lamont holds a granola bar wrapper and gazes past the camera in open mouth laughter. They wear colour blocked layers of orange, yellow and blue with an orange cap. Fluorescent lights and office ceiling tiles are in the background.]
Lamont is an emerging contemporary mover and creator. They are a French native speaker from the stolen territory of the kanien’kehá ka nation, in tiohtià:ke / mooniyaang, currently based on the unceded traditional territories of the Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh, Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh and xwməθkwəy̓əm nations. Lamont is now pursuing their artistic development in Modus Operandi under the direction of Tiffany Tregarthen, Kate Franklin, David Raymond and Maiko Miyauchi. Their work has been presented in various venues and festivals in Montreal and Vancouver, including Festival Chronométrie, Material World 10.2.10, chalk it up!, Festival Errances, Festival Quartier Danses, Programmation À Part and Boombox. Through their creative platform self checkout, they work as a producer, facilitator and curator to bring together youth outreach and professional artistic activities within the queer/trans communities in so-called “Vancouver”.
For Lamont, although movement is not always visible a dance is constantly happening. They are interested in queer non-linearity and community-oriented initiatives that approach art through a holistic lens and rethink the ways in which we connect to space, time and each other. Their practice frames excellence as versatility, collective responsibility and genuine curiosity. They are endlessly fighting for that balance of honoring and subverting expectations, blending the familiar with finesse, indulging in their spontaneity and imagination.
Banner image: The cast of self checkout 2024. Photo by dani Mackenzie Long [Image description: 11 youth stand and sit posed wearing a variety of outfits and costumes with different colour schemes and shapes. Three balloons are strategically placed in between the people, offering contrast to the dramatic intensity of some poses. A few people wear intense makeup, and 3 wear glasses. One mysteriously holds a fan up against their face.]