StafF

Artistic Director & Admin

Kathleen Rea danced with Canada’s Ballet Jorgen, National Ballet of Canada & Tiroler Landestheater (Austria). She fell in love with contact improvisation (CI) 22 years ago & has been involved in the CI community ever since. She has choreographed over 40 dance works & has been nominated for 5 DORA awards. Kathleen has a learning disability which means writing takes 6 times longer than average. It is one of life’s mysteries that despite this struggle she loves writing & is a published author (“The Healing Dance”). She has a Master’s in Expressive Arts with a minor in Psychology. She is a certified teacher of the Axis Syllabus. She is the director of REAson d’etre dance, a Toronto not-for-profit that is CI based and produces a weekly jam, a Film Fest, & dance theatre. She has autism & works to educate the world about neurodiversity.

kathleen.rea@reasondetre.com

Support Staff

Jeff is a water treatment Engineer in his day job and participates in Contact Improvisation as a hobby that he greatly enjoys. He acts as support staff for REAson d'etre dance. He is known for his dry sense of humor and organizational skills that he exhibits while staffing the front desk at the Tuesday Dance Jam desk, spell-checking Kathleen's work, delivering props, offering grant writing assistance, and the occasional amateur dramaturgy.

 info@reasondetre.com 

Assistant/Intern

Samantha Johnston is 19 years old and from Woodstock Ontario. Samantha has been dancing for 15 years. Her career in dance has included performing, teaching, and choreographing. Samantha assisted and taught ballet, hip hop, jazz, and acro classes for ages 2-10 at Dance in Style. In addition, she ran the dance program at Triple Arts Bright for 2 years. Samantha first started with ballet, contemporary, and hip hop at Dance in Style Studios in Woodstock Ontario. Then she realized teaching was her passion she continued with ballet and passed the RAD syllabus grades 6-8 exams, intermediate, advanced 1 and discovering repertoires: level 4 at Burford dancers. Samantha is training at George Brown College in ballet, jazz, modern, hip hop, acting, and vocals. She has had the chance to be taught by Cindy Mercado, Derek Sangster, Kathleen Rea, Lindsay Aquin, Amanda Davis, Clea Iverson,  Ryan Kelly, and Heidi Lange. At George Brown College Samantha performed their winter show, In Haus.