Montreal-based choreographer Sandy Silva was among the first to combine body percussion techniques and contemporary movement with percussive dance – her work stands at the vanguard of contemporary artistry in traditional music and dance. Over the past three decades, Sandy has developed a personal vocabulary of movement and sound based on the percussive dance practices of Hungary, Appalachia, Cape Breton and Andalusia, and the idioms of circus, contemporary dance, and theatre. Silva’s choreography weaves a dialogue between these gestural and rhythmic vocabularies, blending the local and the post-modern in an organic, bodily response to her world. The result is an incredibly dynamic and emotive expression at the crossroads of movement and sound.

Sandy Silva will present her Migration dance films on Thursday February 8 at the Dance Complex, and teach a weekend percussive dance intensive on Saturday-Sunday February 10-11, 2018, at Third Life Studio in Somerville.