Nancy Lee is a curator of interactions. Her crafted spaces stimulate behavioural dynamics, inviting their release into a broth of intangibles. In setting the stage for these action experiments, she is as much an observer as an artist. The notion of staging is a constant in Nancy’s work, underpinning her projects from her early days as a more traditional filmmaker through to her conception and planning of live events, and into the realms of VR and new-media performance and installation, where her art practices continue to coalesce and evolve.  

An award-winning filmmaker, Nancy has worked as a documentarian and advocacy journalist with various global health initiatives, as well as with Vancouver’s Chinese-Canadian community, among others. The considerable responsibility she bears as not only the capturer but also a co-author of events while behind the camera has never been lost on her. Her dance films, Let It Go and Faux Solo, have been selected to screen at international and Canadian film festivals. 

Born in Sweden, Emmalena Fredriksson trained at Balettakademien in Umeå and the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance in Austria. She holds an MFA degree from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.   

Emmalena has presented her choreographies, performed, and taught in countries throughout Europe—at the Daghdha Dance Company, Canaldanse, Pact Zollverein, the University of Malta, and Falmouth University, among others. She has been based in Vancouver since 2013, and her work has appeared at Dance in Vancouver’s Choreography Walk, curated by Justine A. Chambers, as well as at the Dance Centre’s Discover Dance Series, the Dancing on the Edge Festival, and the Audain Gallery. Emmalena regularly teaches at Modus Operandi, the Harbour Dance Centre, Simon Fraser University and the Training Society of Vancouver. Continuing her research into choreography as a relational practice in the expanded fields of dance, her current and upcoming work includes collaborations with filmmaker Nancy Lee, lighting designer Kyla Gardiner and dance artist Arash Khakpour. 

Nicholas Klassen is an Interactive Producer with the National Film Board of Canada’s Digital Studio. Drawing from over a decade of experience creating and producing online content for the social and cultural sector, he works with filmmakers, writers and artists to produce interactive storytelling projects that push the boundaries of story, form and platform. 

Prior to his work at the NFB, he co-founded the creative and online strategy agency Biro Creative, where he advised leading movement-building organizations like Greenpeace, WWF, and Avaaz.org on a number of Webby Award-winning and -nominated projects. He has also served as Senior Editor at Adbusters, overseeing editorial content for the acclaimed and globally recognized magazine. 

Rob McLaughlin is a Canadian producer and journalist most known for his work in interactive media. He is currently the Executive Producer of the National Film Board of Canada’s Digital Studio in Vancouver. From 2008 to 2011, he was the Director of Digital Content and Strategy at the NFB, where he led the development of the institution’s digital programming strategy and pioneering interactive documentary work, including Welcome to Pine Point and Bear 71. 

From 2011 to 2015, he was an editor, publisher and senior executive at Canada’s largest newspaper chain, responsible for leading newsroom staff through a time of radical transformation in the newspaper industry. 

Prior to working at the NFB, Rob was a producer at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. There he focused on developing new forms of audiovisual content designed to attract new audiences for public broadcasting, including the interactive radio service CBC Radio 3. He also served as the CBC’s director of digital programming, responsible for the creative development of digital platforms in the areas of documentaries, arts and entertainment shows for television and network radio programming. 

A former tree planter and fishing guide from small-town Saskatchewan, Rob now lives in North Vancouver with his wife and the world’s two most brilliant girls, aged 8 and 12.