Olivia C. Davies is a Canadian Contemporary Indigenous dance artist who creates and collaborates across multiple platforms including choreography, curation, conversation, film, and sound design to share stories that open new ways to experience the world. Davies’ body of work spans three decades with creations and collaborations that explore the emotional and political relationships between people and places, often investigating the body’s dynamic ability to transmit narrative, blood memory, and a neo-traditional Indigenous perspective. In 2018, she founded O.Dela Arts and Matriarchs Uprising Festival. She honours her mixed-blood ancestry as an Algonquin Anishinaabe-Kwe with French-Canadian, Finnish and Welsh heritage.
After training at York University, Davies gained professional experience as a compelling improviser in Toronto’s live music and cabaret scene. She pursued commissions to choreograph for gala presentations, fashion shows, festival stages, burlesque revues, and music videos. She choreographed runway presentations for Annie Thompson Designs and Karey Shinn Designs . Upon moving to Vancouver in 2011, Davies apprenticed with Body Narratives Collective, Raven Spirit Dance and Starrwind Dance Projects. She is a founding member of the MataDanze Collective (2005), Circadia Indigena Aboriginal Arts Collective (2016), and Crow’s Nest Collective (2016). Davies was artist in residence at The Dance Centre for the 2018-2019 season where she curated CoexisDance Western Edition 1 (December 20, 2018) and the inaugural Matriarchs Uprising festival (June 19-23, 2019).
Davies’ choreography transmits narrative. She has collaborated with Canadian spoken word artists Julie Peters (I Want, 2018) and Melissa Frost (Gidaashi, 2019), and with award-winning author Carmen Aguirre to adapt the short story Open Fire (2015). Davies combined forces with celebrated Coast Salish storyteller Rosemary Georgeson to create Crow’s Nest and Other Places She’s Gone (2017) exploring the shifting landscapes of refuge and dispossession experienced by Indigenous women. Directions (2018) activated the garden stage of a private residence in East Vancouver, while Kichissipi Love (2019) activated the banks of the Ottawa River; each work building on a solid foundation of site-specific performances that subvert the audience gaze to revel in the world of land-based art activation.
Davies’ work traverses boundaries and challenges social prejudice, conveying concepts and narratives with performance works and community of practice workshops that open different ways to see and experience the world.
Davies’ community-engagement is inclusive of dance and story-telling practises that offers ways to decode unique expressions of personal legacy. Her work has been presented across Canada since 2004. She has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, British Columbia Arts Council, and the First Peoples Cultural Council. To learn more about her company, please visit O.Dela Arts