CCDT Artistic Director, Deborah Lundmark and Managing Director, Michael deConinck Smith are delighted and proud to welcome

Natasha Poon Woo

as CCDT’s new

Associate Artistic Director

During her seven years as CCDT’s Rehearsal Director, Natasha has driven the quantum leap taken by both our artist development and repertoire enrichment programs. Her qualifications are many.  She began with CCDT in 2000 at the age of eleven as a Young Apprentice and joined the Company at thirteen, quickly maturing into a lead dancer. She became a dedicated acolyte of the Limón technique under Donna Krasnow–who designed CCDT’s foundational Limón syllabus accessible to dancers as young as seven years of age–and has been a School of CCDT Modern Instructor for six years.

Performing with CCDT from 2002-2007, Natasha interpreted creations by Carol Anderson, Darryl Tracy, Heidi Strauss, Michael Trent, Santee Smith, Sasha Ivanochko, Gerry Trentham, Laurence Lemieux and many others.

Unsurprisingly, Natasha, at age 15, was featured as the soloist in Lundmark’s 98 and 3/4 per cent guaranteed, which humorously riffed on a well-known quote from Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go! :

And will you succeed?

Yes! You will, indeed!

(98 and 3/4 per cent guaranteed)

 

Her trajectory following CCDT more than made good on that forecast. Natasha graduated summa cum laude with the President’s Award from SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance, trained at Rotterdam Dance Academy, and toured Europe with Conny Janssen Danst (The Netherlands). She performed works by American choreographers Twyla Tharp, Pam Tanowitz, Doug Varone, and Kevin Wynn and has collaborated locally with Human Body Expression, Little Pear Garden Dance Company, Gadfly, Hit & Run Dance Productions, Benjamin Landsberg, and, most notably, Rock Bottom Movement, earning a Dora Award nomination for Outstanding Performance in an Ensemble for RBM’s MANICPIXIEDREAMGIRLS.

Beyond her impeccable rehearsal direction, Natasha brings to CCDT her credentials as one of Canada’s leading Limón instructors and, above all, her personal embodiment of CCDT’s boundary-pushing artistic ethos.

WELCOME NATASHA!

I have a very clear memory of being 16 years old and on tour with CCDT, working through yet another long tech rehearsal at yet another theatre somewhere in Southern Ontario. During a particularly slow point in the night Deborah shouted my name up to the stage–immediately triggering my assumption that I was about to be scolded for talking too much, as I often was–to simply state, “Natasha, I hope you know that 10 years from now you’re going to be back here running this company with me.” I think I laughed and responded with something like, “I mean… maybe 20?” Little did I realize that it would be less than a decade before my return to CCDT, and that working for the company would provide joy and fulfillment incomparable to anything else I have experienced in my dance career.

I am deeply honoured to continue with CCDT as Associate Artistic Director, and excited for what the future holds for our company and its brilliant young artists.

-NPW