Tom Stroud
Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Genres: Performance
Languages: English
Email: t.stroud[at]uwinnipeg.ca
Interest: My work is interdisciplinary in nature and I specialize in the areas where dance and theatre intersect. I also work a great deal with improvisation both as a means to generate material and in performance.
Bio: Tom Stroud
A graduate of the Simon Fraser University School for the Performing Arts, Tom has danced with the Karen Jamieson Dance Company, T.I.D.E. (Toronto Independent Dance Enterprise), Le Groupe de la Place Royale, and Fondation Jean-Pierre Perreault. As a choreographer he established a strong national presence and toured extensively across the country where his emotionally charged choreography earned him a reputation as a creator of passion, wit, humanity and intelligence. He has been commissioned to create works for Le Groupe de la Place Royale, Montreal Danse, Dancemakers, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s New Music Festival and the Canada Dance Festival. During his 14-year appointment as Artistic Director of WCD Tom added a number of challenging new creations to the company’s repertoire including: Songs (1992), Broken Symmetry (1993), Company (1994), The Last Sleep of the Virgin (1995), R & J... 21 scenes for Romeo and Juliet (1995), Shift (1995), The Raft (1997), Arrows (1998), The Garden (2001), El Rio, (2002), Vuelta (2002), and Desdemona, (2004), Othello (2005) . In 2002, Tom received the prestigious Choo San Goh Award for choreography – one of only eleven choreographers in North America to receive the award that year.
His cooperative approach to the creation and presentation of dance has resulted in an number of highly successful and innovative projects including; JOE, a co-production with the Fondation Jean-Pierre Perreault and Dancemakers which toured Canada and the U.S. (1994 – 1996); Shift, an interdisciplinary installation co-produced with the Winnipeg Art Gallery (1995); and The Pan American New Creation Project, an international co-production with Mexican and American modern dance companies which culminated in performances in Winnipeg and Mexico in 1999, El Río (2002), a co-production with the Winnipeg Singers which integrated 22 vocalists into a choreographic landscape, and most recently Vuelta, a co-creation with Peter Bingham of Vancouver’s EDAM, which was inspired by the epic poem Sunstone, by the Nobel Prize-winning poet Octavio Paz and featured company members from both WCD and EDAM.
Recently Tom has collaborated with Out of Line Theatre on the creation of Jealous/Pervert and is currently teaching theatre, voice and movement for the University of Winnipeg’s Department of Theatre and Film.