Mile Zero Dance ZERO Lab | Ember Collective
Schedule
Sat May 23 2026 at 07:30 pm to 08:30 pm
UTC-06:00Location
9931- 78 Avenue, Edmonton, AB, Canada, Alberta | Edmonton, AB
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Mile Zero Dance Presents ZERO Lab #3 | Ember CollectiveEmbers, slowly dying or fading emotions, memories, ideas, responses still capable of being revived. In a return to quiet spaces and voices unspoken, we weave and gather movement, music, and form to carry forward stories old and new about memory and identity. The Ember Collective is an interdisciplinary arts group composed of Soni Dasmohapatra, Jia Jia Yong, and Jeannine Naboye Kroening, who collaboratively create work rooted in movement, sound, and form to carry forward both ancestral and emergent stories. Ember Collective presents From Me to You at Mile Zero Dance's ZERO Lab!
Show info:
Zero Lab #3: Ember Collective
May 22+23
7:30 PM
$20 MZD Member/ $25 General Admission
Location:
MILE ZERO DANCE
9931 78 Ave NW
Edmonton, AB
Ember Collective members:
Jeannine Naboye Kroening
Jia Jia Yong
Soni Dasmohapatra
Full list of performers:
Christine Naboye Bautista
Danni Okemaw
Jayden Naboye
Jeannine Naboye Kroening
Jia Jia Yong
Keoni Tan
Micaella Guillermo
Niya Coates
Soni Dasmohapatra
Ember Collective
The Ember Collective is an interdisciplinary arts group composed of Soni Dasmohapatra, Jia Jia Yong, and Jeannine Naboye Kroening, who collaboratively create work rooted in movement, sound, and form to carry forward both ancestral and emergent stories. Grounded in themes of memory, identity, land, and diaspora, Ember centers Pan-Asian expression and decolonial approaches, weaving these perspectives into contemporary artistic practice. The collective is guided by values of relationality, space, and imagination: they foster collaborative co-creation among artists, invite audiences into reflective and connective storytelling experiences, and intentionally create space for historically underrepresented communities to increase visibility, healing, and presence. Through their work, Ember Collective carries ancestral art into the present while imagining and designing regenerative futures, using innovative, boundary-pushing expression to challenge dominant narratives. A core ethos of their creative method is to inspire justice, care, and collective transformation.
From Me to You
From Me to You is a Mile Zero Dance zero residency performance created by the Ember Collective that unfolds as an exchange of letters across generations and communities where past, present, and future converge in movement, music, and storytelling. Through embodied “letters” sent to those we ancestrally connect to, who we are in the present, and what the future can be, Ember Collective traces these intergenerational stories and invites audiences to witness how identity and lineage can be written, received, and reimagined across time.
Rooted in Pan-Asian artistic perspectives and collaboration, Soni Dasmohapatra, a Kathak dancer, with guest artist Danni Okemaw, an Indigenous Jingle Dress dancer, open in a dialogue that honours both diasporic memory and Indigenous presence. Niya Coates, Soni Dasmohapatra’s daughter, offers a violin collaboration with Jia Jia Yong that provides a glimpse into regenerative futures.
Jia Jia Yong grapples with the yearning and sense of loss that comes with losing connection to her mother tongue. Through music, movement, and spoken word, Jia Jia shares the present struggle and grief that leads to a realization of how she can connect with language into the future.
In exploring different perspectives of identity, Jeannine Naboye Kroening reflects on childhood imprints that carry on to the present, celebrates empowerment through folk dance, and expresses her hopes through a lullaby to her daughter joined by dancers Christine Naboye Bautista, Jayden Naboye, Micaella Guillermo, and Keoni Tan.
Photo credit | Jordon Hon
MZD ZERO LABS
This new curatorial initiative by Mile Zero Dance features local artists/groups who receive production residency support in our Warehouse venue, and present their new work in process. We invite you to share the excitement of these new works in progress.
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Where is it happening?
9931- 78 Avenue, Edmonton, AB, Canada, AlbertaEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
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