Meet our Dancing WITH
Teaching Exhange Mentees
Welcome Lissy Allen, Claudia Bulaievsky, Deborah Charlie, Luciana Freire D’Anunciação, Sierra Megas and Sarah Wong!
We are excited to have our 6 amazing artists joining us through our teaching mentorship. They will be participating in classes and workshops over the coming months to develop their teaching practices within All Bodies Projects' accessible community-based work.
Please say hello to them in class and find out more about them through their profile.
Meet The 2025 Mentee Cohort!

Lissy Allen (they/them)
Image Description +
Lissy LOVES to dance! They originally found joyful movement through gymnastics as a child, which transferred beautifully into dance, and have spent the past half of their life in the studio, on stage, and under the disco ball. They are so grateful for the expansiveness, presence and lifelong friendships brought to them by dance. They are a musician with an educational background in psychology, and have worked extensively with children. They taught Music Together classes to young families for multiple years, and recently completed an Expressive Movement Facilitation certificate with the Movement Arc. They have also facilitated creative movement spaces geared towards queer and trans community members. They began dancing with the ABDP this past fall and are continually inspired by the project. Their eventual goal is to become a Dance Movement Therapist, and they are honored with this opportunity to learn from all the incredible ABDP facilitators and dancers.

Claudia Bulaievsky (she/her)
Image Description +
A lifelong learner, Claudia connects deeply with playful, and creative experiences that bring communities together through dance.
Beginning her journey in Argentina with Creative Dance Education training, she later delved into Contact Improvisation and Body-Mind Centering, which continue to shape her teaching.
​
In 2002, Claudia moved to Los Angeles, where she completed an in-depth training program for teaching art in schools. She fully embraced dance education, working in public school art programs and community centers to teach cultural dances rooted in Laban concepts, with a special focus on Afro-Brazilian traditions.​ Claudia relocated to Vancouver and in 2018, she directed an intergenerational celebration of Klezmer Music and Dance, creating a joyful, participatory experience. Currently, she teaches Yiddish Dance and a unique class blending Pilates with Somatic movement. She has taught movement to kids in preschool and holds a certificate in Creative Aging Dance for seniors from Dance Exchange (Maryland). Grateful for her teachers’ wisdom, she is committed to passing on the legacies she has embodied.

Deborah Charlie
Image Description +
Interior Salish, Lillooet Nation: Actor, Dancer
Deborah Charlie is an accomplished indigenous actor, dancer who has made her debut as an emerging choreographer with “Deer Dance” which premiered at the Emerge showcase as part of the Downtown Eastside Arts Grant. Deer Dance was featured as part of the Vines Festival, Outsider’s Festival and the Heart of the City Festival in 2024.
​
A veteran performer, Deborah began dancing as a Westcoast dancer with Alert Bay Nation. She has performed as an actor and dancer at Carnegie Community Centre, First United Church, the Vancouver Friendship Centre and Cedar Cottage. She joined Karen Jamieson Dance as part of a UBC Humanities 101 program in 1999 and continued dancing in 2006 with Karen Jamieson Carnegie Dance Troupe for 20th seasons.
​
She is a member with All Bodies Dance Project and a member of the Pigeon Den Art Collective.

Luciana Freire D’Anunciação (she/her)
Image Description +
Luciana is a Brazilian-Canadian dance and performance artist who develops interdisciplinary works with video, photography, visual art installation, theatre and poetry. ​Her works consider the bodily creative reciprocity that exists in the encounter with objects and subjects of curiosity, not only in art making but also community building. She is interested in the dynamic between individual and collective, spectacle and ritual, rational and intuitive. She holds a master's degree in Interdisciplinary Studies in Arts from Simon Fraser University and has a background in somatic dance practices, contact improvisation, improvisation in dance, butoh, physical theatre, clown and dances from the African diaspora.
​
Currently she is an artist-in-residency at The Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre, where she develops new research and work while engaging with its community members.

Sierra Megas
Image Description +
Sierra Megas is an artist and arts worker gratefully based on unceded and traditional xÊ·mÉ™θkwÉ™yÌ“É™m (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and SÉ™lÌ“ílwÉ™taɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) territories. Sierra found her way into dance through Contact Improvisation and has been meandering down a lifelong path of moving-and-thinking ever since. Tiny objects, observing outdoor choreographies, conversation and good snacks bring her into connection with making and being. She enjoys creating space for artists to try-things-out; and for community to come together to witness what emerges. You might find her at EDAM where she is the Interim General Manager, or at Boombox, where she co-curates/produces dance and performance. Recently, she has been falling in love with dance (again!) as a practice of seeing, being seen, relating, and co-creating. She is excited to be diving into DancingWITH Teaching Exchange with this generous cohort, and for all the new dances to be had with ABDP over the coming months.

Sarah Wong (she/they)
Image Description +
Sarah Wong is a writer, choreographer, and interdisciplinary artist based in Vancouver, Canada on the unceded territories of the xÊ·mÉ™θkÊ·É™yÌ“É™m (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and sÉ™lilwÉ™taɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Grounded in the archive of their queer, disabled, and 2nd(ish) generation body, their practice traces lineages of family history, community resistance, movement across land, and slow gestures of care. They make space for the multiple, creating work that spans performance, site-specific installation, textiles, poetry, and film. Sarah also has an emerging practice as an access consultant, approaching accessibility as a creative practice that is inextricably tied to movements for justice and collective liberation. sarahwong.ca / @swongski