Borderless Music and Arts Festival

Date: July 22 to 25

Multidisciplinary arts showcase that centres women, intersectional identities, and inclusive community-building with an eclectic mosaic of music, dance, visual art, poetry, drag, improv, and film.

Stream via Twitch: @BorderlessArts.

Check out Borderless Arts’ new website, with details about this and upcoming events. And check our Borderless’ YouTube page for archived videos of all the Borderless events

Yumna Leghari (Spoken Word / Poetry): Yumna is a poet and spoken word artist. She is a Trent University alumna with a joint-major in English and History. She explores and expands outside of the perceived boundaries of what the pen can create. With a focus on the liminal space of the body and mind, her work aims to connect ideas that may have otherwise drifted away from eachother, never knowing their relation. Yumna has also worked as a journalist and newspaper editor and enjoys writing prose and fiction. She believes that the power of the word is indescribable.

Casandra Lee (Visual Art): Casandra Lee is an Asian-American visual artist, author and Montessori educator, based in Peterborough, Ontario. Casandra has written and illustrated two children’s books, The Sun Dance and Building a Home. She loves very bright colours and every medium available in the art store. She is passionate about storytelling and capturing feelings better expressed through art. Casandra is inspired by everything from the cosmos to communities to ladybugs.

DonxSoul (Music): Don soul is a self-taught musician born in Mississauga, Ontario. Don’s art covers styles such as Neo-Soul, Ballads and Fresh Hip-hop. As a child, Don had always had a fascination with music and learned to play the piano at a young age. His passions continued to grow throughout his school years, and eventually spurred him to start a band called the “Generations”, which consisted of a diverse group of young musicians from all over the world. Don has had many accomplishments on his musical journey such as being the lead vocalist in a jazz band playing for many bars in the Mississauga area, being the lead role in the original musical called “Crazy Love” and being featured on many radio stations including Trent Radio. Don is an artist whose music reaches further than just the stage. He is a music producer, multi-instrumentalist, song writer and has been producing for many artists in the GTA and surrounding areas. His diverse music allows for creative ideas and introspection being guided by the principle “Higher Infinite Power, Healing Our People” to flow together collectively, and it shows in his music.

Steelburner & Suns (Music): Steelburner & Suns is a musical family, enjoying creating and performing together. Featuring the stavelEy-Watson family, these musicians learn and play together, performing a collection of original and traditional tunes as a 4 piece band.

Naomi Duvall (Theatre): Naomi is a regional actor, creator, feminist and emerging playwright. Dance, puppetry, comedy, passion and honesty feature in her work and she loves dogs.

Carlo Jose Quinones (Poetry): Hi I’m Carlo (they/he). I’m from the Philippines and moved to Peterborough on the year 2012. I’m a poet, the second child of Celia and Eduardo Quinones. I’m queer and a visual artist at odd times. I like to swim, dance, and take care of plants. I like to bike, hike, and go on road trips. I’m an Aries sun with a Cancer Moon and Ascendence. On my spare time I like to write or play video games or garden. My art is about migration, femininity, my grandmother, hurt, and pain. It’s challenging, provoked, and emotional.

Danny Taro (Music): Danny Taro, a.k.a. Erroneous Monk, is a rapper, activist and entrepreneur born in Mississauga, Ontario. Like many who moved to Peterborough-Nogojiwanong to study at Trent University, he fell in love with the local arts community and was an active member of the Peterborough Poetry Slam from 2008-2015. An organizer at heart, events follow Danny wherever he goes, including Bangkok, Thailand, where he worked as a teacher for nearly 5 years. While living in Bangkok, and finding himself in good company, Danny started a band called Peanut Butter Jams, which produced 3 EPs: Launch, Transit, and Arrival. Having returned to Peterborough pre-pandemic, he is excited to share some of the work he created while living in Southeast Asia.

Aras Mommertz (Music)

Kavya Chandra (Poetry): Kavya’s name literally translates to a collection of poems. Poetry exists within them as a form of comprehension, a form of longing, a call for desperation. From a small hill station in India, Kavya spends her time unlearning colonial thought and making spaces where everyone exists as they are. Keep a lookout for some bonus content you can carry in physical forms (hint: an upcoming chapbook “frolic of identity”).

Sahira Q (Dance): My name is Said (Sahira) Jiddawy and I am a multidisciplinary artist. My main focuses are digital illustrations and performance art, but I have played around with all mediums of art. I identify as transfeminine, non-binary, and queer. I am black and emigrated to Canada from Tanzania.

A lot of my art is centred around the intersections of being queer and black. My older pieces focused a lot on male bodies and MSM sex, with the use of crayons and markers on paper. My current pieces have been digital portraits of black women/femmes I admire and I hope that my future pieces will explore differing body types and travel further into studying black femmes and the different ways we show love, are loved and exist in relationships. I want to explore this with acrylic paint on canvas. I’m also a performance artist through the medium of drag and use this to shine a light on certain issues that matter to me (i.e. like the hyper sexualization of youthfulness or black lives matter).

Outside of art, I am often found playing video games, watching cartoons with my partner, or dancing up a storm in my kitchen. I am an activist in my community and am one of the founding members of the current chapter of BLM in my city. I am a freelance graphic designer and currently work part-time for LGBT YouthLine, a peer-to-peer queer youth support line. I’ve secured and successfully completed contracts with Trans Youth Can!, PARN (Peterborough Aids Resource Network), and the HKLN Drug Strategy, just to name a few. For more, visit www.saidjiddawy.com.

Just Janis (Dance): It’s a bird?! It’s a plane?! It’s…. Just Janis…. hailing from the acclaimed Haus of Accounting based in Peterborough, Ontario. Janis started drag 3 years ago, and has been taking the Peterborough drag scene by storm, ever since! She describes Herself and her “look” as a “neon, 80s, bondage, pop princess”

She is a (completely self proclaimed) Dancing Diva, and comedy queen. Who absolutely LOVES working a steamy sweat on stage! With an original background in Theatre, This Sativa Diva is sure to make you laugh, cry, and feel ALL the good feels. Get ready to go back to the Future baby! Heeeeeeeeeeere’s Janis!

DJ Freddie (Music): DJ freddie, playing beats ranging from heavy reggaeton to light and fun house. Federico was born in Colombia and moved to Canada when he was a kid. Always a big fan of music, he started experimenting as a DJ for Trent’s HOLA events. Inspired by hanging out with his cousins in Colombia, DJ Federico has a strong Reggaeton sound, but also enjoys playing a variety of regional music, hip hop, old school, new wave, and experimental mixes of many genres. With larger than life charm, DJ Federico feeds off the energy of the room and keeps the good vibes going.

Muna Ahmed (Comedy)

Kristal Jones (Comedy/Poetry): Kristal Jones (She/Her) is a Queer, Fat, multi disciplinary artist who works in visual, audio and story telling mediums. She is an internationally published model, spoken word artist/poet who has competed nationally with the Peterborough Poetry Slam Team, as well as a Photographer who has been featured in several local publications. Her focus is primarily on creating a narrirative that challenges patriarchal norms and celebrates big bodies. She creates from an anti-oppressive framework, often drawing on lived experiences, authentic emotions and personal trauma. In this performance titled ‘Fat.Girl.Riot.’, she will be showcasing a collection of her work using a mixture of comedy, poetry and visual projections to share with the audience, ideas of radical self love and a proverbial flipped bird toward the patriarchy.

Saskia Tomkins (Music): Saskia Tomkins is a master musician of Violin/Fiddle Viola, Cello and Nyckelharpa. She is classically trained with a folk background and a B.A.hons. in Music (Jazz & Popular Music), and she won All Britain Champion Irish Fiddler.

Over the years, Saskia has worked with many musicians, including: Jimmy Bowskill, The Chieftains, Kim Doolittle, Tim Edey, Tim Garland, “Jabbour”, Robb Johnson, Sonja Kristina (Curved Air), Ron Korb, James McKenty, Crispian Mills (Kula Shaker), David Newland, Donald Quan, “Sin E” Ted Staunton , “Sultans of String”, Miranda Sykes, “Uriah Heep”, Lotus Wight (Sam Allison), Ken Whiteley, “Al-pha-X” and Astrid Young, her husband Steáfán Hannigan and son Oisín Hannigan, and a plethora of other amazing musicians, actors and dancers!

Her theatre work includes: Originating the “Celtic-ifying” of the broadway hit “Come From Away”; The English Shakespeare Company and Michael Bogdanov; 4th Line Theatre, Ontario; Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London UK;

Saskia’s current personal projects include Steáfán & Saskia with Steáfán Hannigan, the instrumental jazz/roots duo 2ish, with Brandon Scott Besharah; the Celtic crossover group Cáirdeas and the jazz trio Marsala and the Imports. She also plays in the Maple Leaf Jug Band. She is currently principle 2nd violin for Quinte Symphony Orchestra.Saskia also teaches privately from her home near Cobourg, Ontario, and runs workshops at festivals.

Boho Fab (Dance/Circus)

B. (Film): B is 26 and is from the other side of the world. They are an amateur film maker and they see film as an escape to self and in to others. The struggle for recognition and the importance of minority influence is something B is passionate about. Their previous work has dealt with environmental justice in minority communities and international youth struggles. Covid has made us all want to escape, B tries to invite her viewers into a visually guided headspace to be heard in silence, together.

people you meet outside of bars (Music): hi, i’m satah. welcome to gay goth vibes dot online, my collection of big feelings. i like to sing about stuff that hearts do, like stopping forever or breaking or going too fast or whatever

Kollene Drummond (Dance): Kollene Drummond is a local circus artist currently practicing aerial silks, cyr wheel, unicycle and hula hoop. She has performed in the Peterborough Academy of Circus Arts shows Circus Stellar, Circus Fusion, Cirquelesque and Circus Peepshow and also teaches hula hoop dance classes. In her non-circus life, she can generally be found
gardening, cooking or dancing!

Ale Suarez (Music): Ále is a queer, trans, non-binary, Venezuelan-American, Canadian immigrant, multi-instrumentalist, Expressive Arts Therapist and singer songwriter. Phew that’s a whole lot of adjectives but bare with us! They are currently a Master’s of Divinity student at Luther Seminary. Their dream is to create a safe space for the LGBTQI2SA+ community to dwell and commune with the divine and spirituality. They believe the arts speak the language of our souls, which gives us direct access to our most authentic self.

Kelli Marshall (Dance): Kelli Marshall is an Anishinaabe(Ojibway) from the Mississauga territory of Hiawatha First Nation. She represents the Pike Clan. Her most important jobs are, a Mother, sister, friend, and provider. She is a Professional dancer, facilitator, teacher, and storyteller. She has been dancing since she could walk, and has been taught in most forms of dance. She has been teaching workshops, and dance classes on Indigenous style dancing for six years. Kelli has preformed, all over Canada, and throughout the United States. She went to a school for the arts, and has been preforming since childhood. She is currently involved in the production of a childs cartoon that teaches anishinaabemowin. Teaching about her culture is one of her passions, as her GrandFather went to residential school, and her family has suffered greatly from his life there. She hopes to help heal those wounds through education and inclusion. She studies the Indian Act both for herself, her family and to help schools create a foundation for learning about Indigenous issues.

Jay (Poetry): My name is Jay. I am an island boy from The Bahamas. I am an English Major studying at Trent University and I believe that art is the kind of space where we can map new worlds and find language to experiences that sometimes have no utterance.

Shahrazi (Music/Art/Dance): Sara O. Shahsavari (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, performer, and cross cultural community-builder. Born to a family of migrants who came to Canada as refugees from Iran and Poland, she has found herself in the middle of a larger moving picture. Sara uses art to express and explore themes of gender, culture, self, home, nature, spirituality, freedoms, dreams, borders, traumas, destruction, migration, change, creation, and growth. Their work explores the tension that distance and diaspora creates in our lives and how it leads us to journey to a new world of understanding of ourselves.

Sara presents work under the name of Shahrazi. She is a multi-instrumentalist in several other projects including the lead of local band Television Rd, while also booking shows for others as the founder of Borderless Records. They have been the editor-in-chief of Arthur Newspaper, a radio programmer at Trent Radio, and a mentor for youth at Peterborough Rock Camp For Girls.* Most recently, Sara has been working for the New Canadians Centre as a social service worker, regularly facilitating relationships between refugees, immigrants, and volunteers while coordinating groups and workshops in the community. She started an ESL group for kids called: Art Skills for Life and is currently putting together a music group for newcomers as well.

Shahrazi; somewhere in between the earth and the stars, she explores themes of diaspora, spirit, love, war, and rebirth. Dreamy, soulful sounds from the woods to the water to the moon and back, sinking all the way to your core (and pulling out subconscious moods and roots). You will be happy, filled with euphoric giddiness, you will dive, be challenged, you will dance and your heart will sing.

Their upcoming EP, Journey to Shahraz, mixes elements of nature, improv, the spirit of jazz and punk infused with rock, middle eatern tones, velvety vocals drenched in poetry, eastern folk fusion, surreal soul, psychic rhythms, offbeat grooves, and sensual dreamy drone dances….

Little Fire Collective (Music): Original, post folk/rock group out of Peterborough. Edging into the ethereal (and sometimes the hokey), trans-genre, quirky, heartwarming and powerful songs twining natural imagery with love, suffering and personal growth.

Featuring songwriting and vocals by Sue Nelson (Scratch, The Loud Sisters), Judy Jordan: electric banjo, bouzouki, Kirsten Addis (Dub Trinity): vocals, percussion, Rory Cogley (Fractal): bass guitar.

Over the years several musician friends have joined LittleFire Collective onstage, including Cindy Moser, John Davis, Benj Rowland, Josh Fewings, Alisha Embury, Jenny Gleason, Leigh McDonald, Daniel Collins, Saskia Tomkins and Steafan Hannigan.

The cornerstones of the band are vocal harmonies, electric banjo, percussion, and occasionally a kazoo.

Shahed Khaito (Film): Shahed Khaito is a filmmaker 22 years old, she came to Canada as a refugee in 2019. Shahed’s passion with camera and video editing started in 2013 while she was living under siege with her family in Zabadani, Syria. During that time, she began documenting the ways that people reacted to the war in the shelter using a camera phone. She shared the materials on Facebook. Then she started editing using simple mobile applications.

Shahed fled from Syria to Lebanon in 2014 with her family. In Lebanon, she studied interior design at Rafiq Al Hariri technical school, and completed a 6-month photography/film-making course at Dar Al Mussawir. In 2015 she produced and directed “With the Flow,” a film about child marriage exploring topics of power and privilege in female Eastern society. For three years she volunteered as the Media Officer for the Gharsah Center, a school in Lebanon that supports refugees, producing and directing promotional videos documenting the center’s work. Shahed produced and directed reports for Women Now, Seenaryo, and the Justice Network for Syrian Women. In 2018 Shahed completed a 2-month course run by Dawlati on digital security and media education. She also attended Action for Hope Film School, learning video editing, script writing, and directing, and worked to document the lives of Syrian women in the refugee camps in Lebanon. She wrote and directed another short film “Live Broadcast,” created in partnership with Action for Hope. It has been shown at various festivals in Lebanon and Canada, most recently the ReFrame Film Festival in Peterborough.

Since coming to Peterborough in 2019 Shahed has volunteered at the New Canadians Centre’s After School Club; at the Finer Things Show and Sale summer craft show; with the Art Gallery of Peterborough’s “Stop Motion Animation” summer camp; and with the New Canadians Centre for their Canada Day event. Shahed graduated from Thomas A Stewart Secondary School. She has been chosen to get the YWCA long term education award and Scott Kid Memorial scholarship in 2020.

Shahed is working as a prduction assistant with Tamarack Productions in their upcoming documentary “The Cost of Freedom-Refugees Journalists in Canada”. She is a videographer and a member of Common Threads Collective. Shahed is attending video design and production program at George Brown College further develop her ability to communicate her ideas about the world through the lens of being a female refugee.

Joncro (Music): is an experimental noise rock power trio based out of Missisauga, Ontario. Fronted by Afro-Jamaican guitarist/singer Daniel G. Wilson with Matthew Mikuljan on drums and now Kieran Christie on bass/keyboards, they have been spreading the gospel of noise since 2015

David Hynes

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