MAINSTAGE 2026-27

ROOTS: Memory in Motion

ROOTS: Memory in motion is an interdisciplinary creation project integrating dance, live music and voice. The work explores ancestry, migration, and embodied memory through a research-driven process rooted in rhythm, improvisation, and cultural dialogue.
The project investigates how intergenerational memory lives within the body and how sound can activate ancestral narratives. Drawing from pre-Hispanic Mexican rhythms, Afro-Cuban percussion traditions, and Eastern European sonic influences, ROOTS: Memory in Motion examines cultural hybridity as both inheritance and resistance. These musical lineages intersect to reflect the complexity of diasporic identity and the layered histories carried across borders.

Through improvisational practices, movement research, and vocal composition, the work seeks to translate personal and collective memory into a contemporary performance language.

Ultimately, ROOTS is both an offering and an affirmation a performance work that honours ancestral resilience while generating new forms of embodied artistic expression.

Judith Colibri

photo Yvonne Chew

TRAILER

ARTIST BIO

Judith Colibrí is a multidisciplinary artist, choreographer, facilitator, and activist originally from Mexico. Rooted in movement, performance, and community-engaged practice, her work explores Indigenous knowledge, social and environmental justice, ancestral memory, and the healing potential of art as a catalyst for personal and collective transformation. Through dance, ritual, and interdisciplinary creation, she develops experiences that foster connection, resilience, and embodied storytelling.

Judith collaborates with the Indigenous dance activist group Butterflies in Spirit and has presented her work at the 2 Rivers Remix Indigenous Music Festival. She also facilitates movement-based community practices with Watari Counselling & Support Services, sharing dance as a tool for healing, empowerment, and collective rebuilding with women and communities in vulnerable situations. Her artistic collaborations also include New Works, the Vancouver Latin American Cultural Centre, and other cultural organizations and independent artists across Vancouver.

As a dancer and choreographer, Judith has presented performances and collaborative works in Mexico, Cuba, Colombia, the United States, and Canada. She has organized and co-curated exhibitions and community initiatives honouring and raising awareness of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit People (MMIWG2S+), reflecting her ongoing commitment to art as a practice of social engagement and cultural remembrance.

She lives and creates on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her solo work, Roots, was presented as a work in progress at the 2 Rivers Remix Indigenous Music Festival and selected for the Dance West Network DADAO Residency (2025) and Black Out Art Society Emergency Lab.

Judith is also a collaborator and co-creator with artist and actress Silene Razo as part of OME Dance Collective, where they create multidisciplinary performances that intertwine movement, voice, ritual, and ancestral narratives to explore identity, memory, and collective healing.

Project Created by: Judith Colibri

Performance type:

How do you define this work:

Length of performance: 40 min full performance. 15 mi. Pitch

Audience type:

Number of Performers on tour (including choreographer): Judith Colibri, Ricardo Hardy, Carlo’s Cota

Number of Support Staff on Tour: 3

Availabilities:

Project Details

Community Engagement

General Technical Requirements: Projector. Basic lights. Dance floor.

Required amount of time for tech set up: Flexible

Comunnity of dancers

Outreach Activities

Master class

Contact information

danxajudith@gmail.com