Mocean Dance

PLAY⁠ ⭕️⁠ Mocean Dance + Jacinte Armstrong⁠ ⁠ Multifaceted artist Jacinte Armstrong brings together an interdisciplinary cast to put into play a communal and joyful building of a work. Beginning from the idea that dance is in all of us, PLAY explores how objects around us choreograph the movement in our everyday lives.⁠ ⁠ Using movement, drawings, music, and colorful large-scale objects, the performers invite the audience to take part in the creative flow.⁠ ⁠ Audiences can choose to join in to experience moving and performing with the artists, or just sit back and enjoy the time and space, letting this whimsical piece draw them into the moment.⁠ ⁠ Saturday, June 6 @ 6:30pm⁠ ⁠ ⭐️ STAGES THEATRE FESTIVAL⁠ 📅 June 3 - 7, 2026⁠ 🎟️ easternfronttheatre.com/stages⁠ 📍 @alderneylanding in @downtowndartmouth ⁠ ⁠ [IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A group of people of all ages hold up various colourful foam shapes.]

Find out what the Moving with Mocean participants love about our program! Our spring sessions kick off tomorrow at the Halifax Central Library at 1pm. Join us for all three classes with ASL interpretation, May 22, 29 from 1-2 pm in the Paul O’Regan Hall. We can’t wait to get dancing with you. Building Accessibility: Located at 5440 Spring Garden Road, Halifax Central Library is a fully accessible building, with accessible washrooms. The building includes universal washrooms, tactile warning surface indicators at stairways, Braille and tactile signage, and sensory design elements. The first floor connects to the South Plaza via a ramp, providing accessible access to the outdoor patio and performance space. Thank you to our program partners: Halifax Public Libraries (@hfxpublib ), J & W Murphy Foundation, Mental Health Foundation of Nova Scotia (@mentalhealthns ) and Shannex Cares Community Grant (@teamshannex ).

***Save the Date*** Sea Unseen, an immersive dance performance with plastics collected on Sable Island, returns to the Halifax Central Library on June 3rd! Meet the spectacular artistic collaborators who are bringing you Sea Unseen. We are brimming with excitement as we prepare to take this project back to the stage. Lisa Phinney-Langley (Choreographer/dancer) Meredith Kalaman (Choreographer) Susanne Chui (Choreographer) Sara Coffin (Dancer / Choreographic support) reg rose (Dancer) Sam Penner (Dancer) Sébastien Labelle (Dancer) Zoe Lucas (Sable Island Institute President and Researcher / collaborator) Jackson Fairfax-Perry (Sound Designer / Composer) Francine Dulong (Dramaturg / Collaborator) Dylan Hay (Sound Technician) Sea Unseen also carries the voices of diverse collaborators from earlier phases of creative research. Deep thanks to our past contributors, dance artists Sarah Prosper and Julie Robert, sound artists Lindsay Dawn Dobbin and Brian Riley, and Mi’kmaq consultants Hannah Martin and Anastasia Nevin. Sea Unseen is supported by the Sable Island Institute (@sable_institue ) Ocean Week Canada (@oceanweekhalifax / @oceanweek_canada ) and the Centre for Ocean Literacy (@centreforoceanliteracy ). Click the link in our bio to register for the free performance at the Halifax Central Library! Building Accessibility: Located at 5440 Spring Garden Road, Halifax Central Library is a fully accessible building, with accessible washrooms. The building includes universal washrooms, tactile warning surface indicators at stairways, Braille and tactile signage, and sensory design elements. The first floor connects to the South Plaza via a ramp, providing accessible access to the outdoor patio and performance space. #OceanWeekCanada2025 #SemainedelOcean2025 #Mocean #Seaunseen #SableIslandInstitute

PHERAN 🤍 This piece carries a part of my mother with me, a letter she gave me before I left for Canada, and her pheran that held warmth far beyond the cold. Revisiting these words meant reliving conversations, pauses, and emotions I hadn’t touched in years. It was cathartic, overwhelming, and deeply grounding all at once. The process of creating this was an emotional rollercoaster, but after holding this idea close since 2022, I finally felt ready to share it. Performing PHERAN at Spring Blooms felt like an exhale, a moment that I didn’t know I needed. Thank you @moceandance for giving me the space to tell this story. Mother’s Day feels like the right time to share this and for the love we carry, even across oceans 🤍 Video credits: @adityapeer Image courtesy of Mocean Dance, presented in Spring Blooms | The Dance of Life Photographer: Kevin MacCormack @kevinthefellow #mothersday #dance #interpretiveart #immigrantstories

Re-membering Kmɨtkinu creative team at our in-community residency at Membertou Heritage Park. Wela’lin to Jeff Ward for the beautiful morning and sharing a drum making workshop with us. #membertou #creativeresidency #drum Video Description: seven people gathered around three working tables threading drums with raw hide.

Moving with Mocean returns to the Halifax Central Library! Our FREE library class series with ASL interpretation is underway. Join us on Fridays, May 15, 22, 29, from 1-2 pm in the Paul O’Regan Hall. About Moving with Mocean: This favourite community dance class series is open to all ages and designed for all levels and ranges of mobility inclusivity. Together we will engage our body-mind connection through awakening breath and mobilizing joints - we can’t wait to move with you at the Library! “This class felt like movement purely for the joy of being in a body, and I left the class feeling loose and strong in my body, and glowing in my spirit. Thank you so much for the gift of movement!” ~ Library Class Participant, 2022 Building Accessibility: Located at 5440 Spring Garden Road, Halifax Central Library is a fully accessible building, with accessible washrooms. The building includes universal washrooms, tactile warning surface indicators at stairways, Braille and tactile signage, and sensory design elements. The first floor connects to the South Plaza via a ramp, providing accessible access to the outdoor patio and performance space. Thank you to our program partners: Halifax Public Libraries (@hfxpublib ), J & W Murphy Foundation, Mental Health Foundation of Nova Scotia (@mentalhealthns ) and Shannex Cares Community Grant (@teamshannex )

***Save the Date*** Sea Unseen, an immersive dance performance with plastics collected on Sable Island returns to the Halifax Central Library on June 3rd! As the world turns its attention to the health of our waters for World Oceans Week (June 1-8), Mocean Dance and Sable Island Institute announce the return of its visionary co-production, Sea Unseen. This immersive dance performance offers a poignant reflection on a crisis that remains as urgent as ever: the over-consumption of single-use plastics. Beyond the captivating beauty of its wild horses and windswept dunes, Sea Unseen uncovers the hidden story of ocean plastic pollution on Sable Island. Dance, music, and storytelling unite in a delicate balance of artistic expression and environmental activism, holding space for the urgent and complex issue of plastic pollution. Born from a collaboration between Mocean Dance and the Sable Island Institute, Sea Unseen embodies the struggles of the ocean itself, navigating a sea of plastic in search of hope. ✨Sea Unseen 🗓️ Wednesday, June 3rd | 7pm 📍Paul O'Regan Hall, Halifax Central Library - 5440 Spring Garden Road 💵Free admission - Family Friendly Mocean is thrilled to present this multidisciplinary experience, created across multiple iterations with a diverse group of contributors including Sable Island researchers, Mi’kmaq ecologists, dance artists, sound artists and puppeteers. Sea Unseen is supported by Ocean Week Canada (@oceanweekhalifax / @oceanweek_canada ) and the Centre for Ocean Literacy (@centreforoceanliteracy ). Click the link in our bio to register for the free performance at the Halifax Central Library! #OceanWeekCanada2025 #SemainedelOcean2025 #Mocean #Seaunseen

Join Mocean Dance and @iamsalprosper_ Sarah Prosper to learn more about our dance project Re-membering Kmɨtkinu, a collaborative, multi-sensory, land-based dance performance currently in creation. The artists will lead a movement workshop based on the project’s themes and invite participants to share their dances, stories, and reflections on the project. 🗓️Saturday, May 9th, 3:00-5:00pm 📍Membertou Heritage Park, 5 Su'n Awti, Membertou 💵FREE, All ages! About the work: Re-membering Kmɨtkinu is a collaborative, multi-sensory, land-based dance performance being developed by Mocean Dance (Halifax) and Sarah Prosper (Eskasoni First Nation). The team is working with a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous dance artists from across Mi’kma’ki to develop this new work towards a future premiere performance in Amnu’kati (Point Pleasant Park, Halifax), in May 2027, in partnership with Live Art Dance and Prismatic Arts Festival. Re-membering Kmitkinu is a response to @shalanjoudry shalan joudry’s poem Kmitkinu, (Mi’kmaw word meaning “our homeland”). The poem traces Mi’kmaw history from pre- to post-colonization, calling for truth-seeking, solidarity, and collective healing, mirrored in the land’s own restoration. Centered on connection, it aims to strengthen relationships and build hope between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples and the land.

Sara Coffin, Co-Artistic Director and Program Director of Mocean Dance, has spent nearly a decade building Moving with Mocean into Halifax’s most accessible dance offering—a free, inclusive class that has reached over 1,800 participants since launching in 2016 through a partnership with Halifax Public Libraries. Designed for all ages and abilities with seated and standing options, live musical accompaniment, and ASL interpretation, the program awakens body and breath connections through gentle warm-ups and playful movement rather than conventional step-learning. #halifax #charitablechoices #halifaxcharity #halifaxhelps #dance #halifaxguardian

Happy International Dance Day from all of us at Mocean. Today, we’re looking at our season and our core value of Cultivating Connections. To us, dance is more than just movement; it’s the bridge between generations, stories, and the community. Whether it’s the wisdom shared in our Communities in Mocean Older Adults Centre Stage program, the raw energy of our SURGE emerging artists, or the evocative worlds of our works Sea Unseen, Re-membering Kmɨtkinu, and PLAY—every step we take is about cultivating a thriving community that reflects Nova Scotia’s cultural dynamism. Mocean is about movement. To be like the ocean: powerful, alive, regenerating, and generative; we are strong and fluid. We believe the body is the vessel through which life is perceived and experienced; we centre the body’s somatic knowledge to create dance, through which we access the deepest parts of ourselves and our shared humanity. We nurture and bridge artistic questions into possibility and make work that resonates in the body, ignites the imagination, and inspires a shared reverie. Our work lies in the ethos of interconnection, cultivating potential with care, and empowering artists to develop creatively and connect with our greater community. Dance allows us to see the unseen and remember what truly moves us. Thank you for being part of our journey this year. How has dance connected you to your community lately? Let us know in the comments! 👇 @artsnovascotia @canada.council @cdaacd @candance.network @fodardance @atlantic_presenters @cada_east @kineticstudiodance @liveartdance @prismaticarts @rosscreek

Winner of three Dora Mavor Moore awards 🏆🏆🏆 This athletic and empathic work of dance theatre lifts a glass (and then smashes it) to love, loyalty and the difficult things we hope never to escape. May 7 & 8 @breakingcircus Ticket link in bio. @vazariartsco @liveartdance 🇫🇷 Show bilingue pour les francos! @ccghalifax ASL on May 7th

Join us for the final morning training classes of the season. We are so excited to share with you the awesome teachers and facilitators that we have lined up for you. We will start off this month with the incredible @jessiegaron of @vazariartsco visiting from Toronto, followed by our Co-Artistic Director @saracoffin . Our training schedule is now winding down this month, however be sure to check out the upcoming training offerings attached to all the great @liveartdance shows happening in May. Class fees: Drop-in rate: $15 or PWYC If cost is a barrier, please contact us - Mocean Dance is happy to work with individuals on sliding scale memberships/alternate payment schedules. May Schedule: May 5: Contemporary with Jessie Garon / Vazari Dance Projects (in collaboration with @mayworkskjipuktukhfx Festival) May 12: Contemporary with Sara Coffin Click the link in bio to see class descriptions, our schedule on our website, and stay up to date with our class offerings! P.S Stay tuned for a special guest class coming in June!