I Woke Up
Zoe Kwan
I have always been incredibly intrigued by the human psyche. Everyone is unique in their own way and each individual lives their life differently than the person next to them. With dance on film, I decided to explore depersonalization-derealization disorder. This disorder makes you feel as if you persistently or repeatedly have the feeling that you're observing yourself from outside your body. Things around you also do not feel real and feelings of depersonalization-derealization can be disturbing and may feel like you're in a dream.
About the Artist
Zoe Kwan
Zoe Kwan is an emerging dance artist and creator from Toronto, Ontario. She began her dance training in Hong Kong at the age of 4 and since then has trained competitively in all disciplines of dance including ballet, contemporary, jazz, modern, and acrobatics. Zoe Kwan is an alumni of the Arts Unionville Dance Program and was the recipient of the 2018 Arts Unionville Dance Council Scholarship. She is currently in her third year of Ryerson University’s Performance Dance Program, training extensively in ballet, contemporary, modern, and jazz. Ryerson University has allowed her to train with incredible teachers and artists including Vicki St. Denys, Tanya Evidente, Louis Laberge-Cote, Coralee McLaren, Lourdes Hernandez, Kenny Pearl, and Kate Hilliard. She was most recently awarded the 2020 Orly Watkin Dance award and outside of Ryerson, Zoe has worked with many other renowned artists and has danced choreography by Robert Des Rosiers, David Earle, Robert Glumbek, Roberto Campanella, Guillaume Cote, Alysa Pires, Lauren Cook, and Motus O’. In 2020, Zoe was in "A Gathering", a dance film by Bobbi jene Smith, Or Schaiber, and Shamel Pitts that was featured in Fall For Dance North’s 2020 program. Zoe was also in Hanna Kiel's dance film called "Together, Inside-Out" which was a part of Kenny Pearl’s Emerging Artist Intensive 2020. Zoe was a part of a dance film created by Andrea Nann in collaboration with the third-year dance class at Ryerson University. In April 2021, Zoe will debut two original dance films at the Ryerson Choreographic Film festival titled TINGE and "I Woke Up".