Based in Montreal since 2010, Susanna Hood is a compelling and virtuosic performer in dance and music and was the artistic director of her interdisciplinary performance company hum dansoundart from 2000 till 2013. She began her career as a member of the Toronto Dance Theatre from 1991 through 1995. Independently, she has performed the works of various Canadian choreographers, composers, and filmmakers (including Tedd Robinson, Scott Thomson, John Oswald, Nilan Perera, and Phillip Barker) and has performed widely as an improviser both in dance and music. For over a decade, she has been synthesizing voice and movement into a dynamic practice through which she creates intimate, raw and sensual performance work. Her choreography, compositions, and interdisciplinary collaborations have been presented locally, nationally, and internationally on stage and film since 1991.

Awards include the 1998 K.M. Hunter Emerging Artists Award in Dance and the 2006 Dora Mavor Moore Award (DMM) for Outstanding Performance in Dance for She’s gone away. Prominent nominations include the 2007 DMM Award for Best New Choreography in Dance for her first group work on the Dancemakers company loveloathing, and the 2010 DMM Awards for Best Composition (Nilan Perera) and Outstanding Performance (Dan Wild) for Shudder. In 2008 Susanna was the recipient of the Canada Council’s Victor Martin Lynch-Staunton Award for Outstanding Achievement in the field of Dance.

Theatre credits include Assistant Director/Movement Coach to Jennifer Tarver for both Nightwood Theatre’s production of Sarah Kane’s Crave in 2007 and the Stratford Festival’s production of George F. Walker’s Zastrozzi in 2009 as well as Co-Direction with Jennifer Tarver for the National Theatre School’s production of Edward Albee’s Everything in the Garden in 2011.

Part-time teacher at both the School Toronto Dance Theatre and l’École de Danse Contemporain de Montréal in improvisation and elements of composition respectively, Susanna also teaches improvisation and synthesis of voice and movement through independent workshops in Canada since 2004. In 2010 she was certified to teach Open Source Forms that combines the principles of Skinner Releasing method with the varied and developing practices of its teachers. Since 2012, Susanna has also become a teacher trainer for OSF.