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Dana Gingras Biography

In 1993, Dana Maria Gingras (with Noam Gagnon) co-founded The Holy Body Tattoo as a multi-media dance company. Since its inception, the company has captured a number of significant awards and honours for both its stage and film work. In 1997, Our Brief Eternity won The Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best Ensemble Performance. The work has been performed over one hundred times in Canada, Europe, USA, and most recently in Australia at the Sydney Opera House. Circa, which received the inaugural Alcan Performing Arts Award, has been performed around the world, including at Ein Fest in Wuppertal, Germany at the invitation of Pina Bausch, and at London’s Barbican Theatre. monumental, The Holy Body Tattoo’s last work, involved the company’s largest performing ensemble to date. Co-produced by the National Arts Centre (as a CGI Youth Commission for Dance), monumental premiered in Ottawa at the National Arts Centre in February 2005, toured nationally and was presented at UCLA’s Royce Hall in Los Angeles. In 2006 Gingras formed a satellite company, Animals of Distinction, directed and choreographed Dances for Dzama a Bravo! FACT short and created Smash Up a full evening presentation of solos and duets conceived as a collision between dance, animation and sound with animator/ programmers James Paterson and Amit Pitaru. Smash Up is a co-production with the Festival TransAmériques and premiered in Montreal, May 2008. Dana is an Associate Dance Artist of Canada’s National Arts Centre.