I Am My Body: TD Amplify Episode 1
Photo credit: Daman Singh (@damaann_)
On Friday night at the Werklund Centre, TD AMPLIFY: Episode 1 unfolded not as a conventional showcase, but as a collective experience — one that asked the audience to consider the body not as spectacle, but as something to be respected. Unapologetic and emotionally charged, the multidisciplinary program brought together music, contemporary dance, and physical theatre to examine what it means to inhabit a body that is watched, politicized, celebrated, disciplined, and ultimately reclaimed. TD Amplify is the Werklund Centre’s interdisciplinary performance series dedicated to championing bold, emerging voices across music, movement, and theatre. It’s a platform designed to encourage experimentation, collaboration, and risk-taking within contemporary performance.
Opening the night, one by one, performers approached what is perceived to be a projector-style mirror, backs turned to the audience, speaking affirmations into their reflections. “I am who I present myself to be.” The gesture set the tone for the night: an inward-facing reckoning that would soon spill outward. From there, the cast launched into a David Byrne–esque choreography — angular, rhythmic, slightly uncanny — with Sierra Oszust appearing in an oversized suit, her movements exaggerated and precise. As the performers began chanting “I love my body. I am my body. I am all of us,” they ran toward the audience, collapsing the distance between stage and seats and making it immediately clear that this was not a show meant to be observed passively, but to be engaged with.
Photo credit: Daman Singh (@damaann_)
Throughout the night, SHY FRiEND acted as both a musical anchor and emotional accelerant. Created by classical composer and self-described “online goblin” Jubs, SHY FRiEND’s music threaded through the evening — sometimes foregrounded, sometimes bleeding into movement and theatrical scenes. Their sound, equal parts alt-pop melodrama and queer irreverence, gave the night a flow that was interpretive, fluid, and emotion.
Oszust’s choreography moved through darker terrain. A Calgary-based dance artist with a background spanning stage, film, and international residencies, her work focused on the body as something both mechanical and vulnerable. Her movements oscillated between rigidity and release, suggesting power structures imposed onto flesh that is social, institutional, and internalized. Rather than offering clarity, her performance lingered more in feeling and individual interpretation.
Photo credit: Daman Singh (@damaann_)
That tension deepened through the contributions of Murmur Theatre, led by Rita Rebetskaya and Polina Káulio. Drawing from Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, Murmur Theatre reframed the 19th-century tragedy through a contemporary, feminist lens. The original story — centred on a poor soldier driven to madness by exploitation, jealousy, and dehumanization — became a vehicle for examining how bodies are controlled, surveilled, and discarded.
Their scenes were fragmented and abstract rather than narrative-driven, with contributions from Warren Sulatycky, Grace Fedorchuk, Max Vinogradov, and Nikhat Saheb. One of the night’s most affecting moments came during Sulatycky’s monologue, which cut through the theatrical abstraction with startling emotional clarity. Reflecting on love, loss, and care, he spoke about holding a dying parent’s hand and reframed eternity not as something infinite, but as the act of trying to save one another, again and again. The audience was visibly moved, the room settling into a teary-eyed stillness.
Photo credit: Daman Singh (@damaann_)
After the intensity of Woyzeck, SHY FRiEND stepped fully into the spotlight. “NEVER BEEN A SINNER” erupted into collective joy, the audience clapping along as the band leaned into theatrical excess. “SICK OF IT” pushed that energy outward, with Jubs grabbing a handheld phone microphone, yelling into it while running through the crowd and climbing to the top balcony — a literal elevation of voice and body within the space.
One of the most intimate moments of the night came with the debut of a new song, “bathtub song.” Sitting on the floor alone with their guitar, Jubs explained that when asked to create work centred on the feminine body and emotional grit, they returned to a place where they feel most themselves: the bathtub. The song unfolded as a quiet, vulnerable ballad — stripped back and grounded, as Jubs sang about contemplation and washing feelings of worry down the drain.
Photo credit: Daman Singh (@damaann_)
The set closed with “Tenderness,” as SHY FRiEND divided the room into quadrants and invited the audience to harmonize “hold me tender, hold me sweet.” Slowly, the rest of the performers returned to the stage. Together, they repeated the affirmations that opened the night, with the audience echoing back: “I am who I present myself to be. I love my body. I am my body. I am all of us. I feel safe alone. I am alive.” Sierra’s choreography returned as well — shaking out limbs, releasing tension, letting emotion move through rather than settle.
What makes TD AMPLIFY so special is the presence the performers have in sharing experimental, conceptual ideas through their artistry. This was not a program concerned with easy conclusions. Instead, it embraced friction — between genres, bodies, emotions, and perspectives. The body, in all its messiness and power, remained the loudest instrument in the room. In a cultural moment that often asks bodies to be explained, perfected, or consumed, TD Amplify offered something rarer: a space to feel and to be fully alive — together.
Photo credit: Daman Singh (@damaann_)
