Marion's S l a n T

One of my life- long goals has been to never stop learning. Being a part of SlanT allows me to do that. I love challenging myself as an artist and learning new ways to express myself. SlanT gives me a way of expressing my love of new music, movement and dance with a twist.
Tilly's S l a n T

My passion is to participate in artistic endeavors with other inspiring artists who push me beyond the boundaries of the familiar. I aspire to travel to a world where art is transformed into magic, and where the artists and the audience are transformed by the experience. In the spirit of collaboration, SlanT offers that opportunity to travel into the unknown, to explore new paths, to learn from each other, to learn about ourselves, to find that place where art meets magic. By sharing these experiences, I hope we can enrich the lives of others who we encounter on our journey.
The most significant influence on both my life and music over the past two decades has been the work of renowned Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer who writes in his essay on “What is the Purpose of Art?”: “First Exaltation. Let us speak of that. The change that occurs when we are lifted out of the tight little cages of our daily realities. To be hurled beyond our limits into the cosmos of magnificent forces, to fly into the beams of these forces and if we blink, to have our eyes and ears and senses tripped open against the mind's will to the sensational and the miraculous.....”
That is what motivates me to continue searching, learning, growing, creating.......
The most significant influence on both my life and music over the past two decades has been the work of renowned Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer who writes in his essay on “What is the Purpose of Art?”: “First Exaltation. Let us speak of that. The change that occurs when we are lifted out of the tight little cages of our daily realities. To be hurled beyond our limits into the cosmos of magnificent forces, to fly into the beams of these forces and if we blink, to have our eyes and ears and senses tripped open against the mind's will to the sensational and the miraculous.....”
That is what motivates me to continue searching, learning, growing, creating.......
Rae's S l a n T

Poetry came alive for me as a teenager when it moved off the pages of school textbooks and into my lungs. Poetry as necessary as air. It first began on those long, brooding walks of adolescence, shouting Shakespeare into the wind: “Blow, blow thou winter wind!/ Thou art not so unkind/ As man’s ingratitude.” Giving voice to inner turmoil somehow transformed anxiety into action. Or in those mercurial teenage days, if it was elation I was feeling, then I’d run with arms outstretched, reciting lines from Hopkins’ “Windhover”: “the hurl and gliding/ Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding/ Stirred for a bird. The achieve of, the mastery of the thing.” The words, aloud in the air, gave me lift, flight.
These outbursts were all solitary practices, but I was enlivened by the sound of poetry and soon I sought out other ears to share the aural excitement. Poems crackled around campfires on canoe trips, poems laughed at parties, poems spoke solemnly about the dead. And gradually, I ventured my own poems too. It wasn’t enough to write poems; I had to get inside them, know them, listen to them breathing.
Reciting poems became a way to infuse my daily life with poetry. The poems came out according to the circumstances. As a labourer on a construction site, I could offer up poems along with the mortar for the bricklayers. I could regale a shoe salesman, or match verses with the barber’s stories. The province of poetry was not just books and literary magazines. Or even poetry readings. Poems could slip out quietly at a secluded beach, or hang in the autumn mist on a hike through the forest. Poetry off the page, into the lungs, into the air. Poetry as breath, wind, spirit.
These outbursts were all solitary practices, but I was enlivened by the sound of poetry and soon I sought out other ears to share the aural excitement. Poems crackled around campfires on canoe trips, poems laughed at parties, poems spoke solemnly about the dead. And gradually, I ventured my own poems too. It wasn’t enough to write poems; I had to get inside them, know them, listen to them breathing.
Reciting poems became a way to infuse my daily life with poetry. The poems came out according to the circumstances. As a labourer on a construction site, I could offer up poems along with the mortar for the bricklayers. I could regale a shoe salesman, or match verses with the barber’s stories. The province of poetry was not just books and literary magazines. Or even poetry readings. Poems could slip out quietly at a secluded beach, or hang in the autumn mist on a hike through the forest. Poetry off the page, into the lungs, into the air. Poetry as breath, wind, spirit.
Owen's S l a n T

I love to explore the continuum between art forms; the push and pull between them, when does one become the other. I also revel in the collaboration that occurs with a group like SlanT. How each member sees the piece allows me a chance to see things through another set of eyes.