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Meet Eva - Founder

Born and raised in Canada. Dance became her first medium for creativity. In her 15 years of travel, she has come across a plethora of cultures and began delving into dances from around the world. Over the past 18 years she has studied with teachers from Canada, USA, Hong Kong, Iran, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Spain, India, Mexico, Brazil, United Arab Emirates, Palestine, Lebanon, China and England. With each culture, she has embodied it's flavours, inturn enriching her style of dance. 

 

Working with children as a primary teacher has taught her to not only find creativity in dance but in all aspects of her daily life. She embraces challenges with a hearty laugh and puts a sparkel in everything she does. With the gifts life has offered Eva, she discovered that everything she had learned to find her happiness was a gift worth sharing.

 

 The creation of Little Pond We is the product of her dreams, heartaches, frustrations, love and diligence. Eva has learned to mix life's lessons and churn out a bowl of happiness. Her optimism and ability to find the sparkles in life creates a wave of smiles around her.  She hopes that Little Pond We will help facilitate the wonderful feeling of freedom that creativity brings to others.

Mentors she's found along her journey...

Meet Sashar - 

Sashar Zarif Biography With 20 years of professional dance experience in over 29 countries around the globe, researching, educating, creating, performing, and producing dance, Iranian-Canadian Sashar Zarif has extensive experience in practice in academic, community, and rural environments. Among many other fields (Zarif has studied various forms of dance and music including Uzbek, Tadjeek, Persian, Georgian, Chechen, Afghan, Middle Eastern, Flamenco, Bharatanatyam and Lezginka), he specializes in the field of Sufi and Shamanic dance rituals of Near and Central Asia. His accomplishments in this field have brought him opportunities such as his collaborative project/performance with internationally renowned singer Alim Qasimov from Azerbaijan and Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali, the prodigious nephews of legendary qawwali master, Nusret Fateh Ali Khan.

 

His research interests are identity, memory, globalization, and cross-cultural collaborations. His artistic practice invites a convergence of creative and cultural perspectives. His teaching practice is steeped in the artistry and history of traditional, ritualistic, and contemporary dance and music of the Near Eastern and Central Asian regions and Islamic communities. For over twenty years Zarif has worked tirelessly to maintain the integrity of these fine arts by operating within three interdependent faculties of research, creation and education.

 

Sashar Zarif is a recipient of the 2006 Toronto International Dance Festival's Paula Citron Award and was awarded a Chalmers fellowship grant from the Ontario Arts Council in 2010. He was named the 2008 recipient of the Skills for Change New Pioneer Award for the Arts and named an Artistic Ambassador for Multiculturalism and Diversity. In 2011, he received the honorary titles of Master of Dance from Uzbekistan State Institute of Choreography in Tashkent as well as Honorary Faculty Member at this institute for his work and contribution to dance in Uzbekistan in the second half of 2011. In 2012, Sashar Zarif was awarded a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.

 

Learn more about Sashar Zarif

Meet Meher

 

 

Friends near by..

Friends around the world..

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