I’ve known Gabrielle Martin across the full arc of her working life, from its rough, exploratory beginnings to the leadership roles she holds now. She grew up in Vancouver in alternative learning environments that emphasized self-direction and collective decision-making, which gave her an early capacity to research, question, and define her own path. That instinct—to learn by doing and to follow curiosity rather than permission—has shaped everything since.
Her entry into performance was physical and unconventional: competitive sport, fire dancing, street performance, and underground gatherings. Dance came later, and formal training later still. She was not an obvious candidate for the career she built. What carried her forward was persistence—an ability to stay with difficulty, to work patiently on weaknesses, and to keep going in demanding and competitive environments. That tenacity took her from contemporary dance training in Montréal into the aerial and circus world, and eventually onto international stages with Cirque du Soleil.
Years of performing at scale taught Gabrielle about endurance, risk, precision, and the realities of cultural labour. When she shifted toward producing and curating, she brought that embodied knowledge with her. Her work is driven by a belief that performance can function as a shared laboratory for meaning, where bodies, ideas, and futures are tested together.
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Which ’hood are you in?
The West End, near Sunset Beach. It’s an ideal pocket for life with a three-year-old—easy access to Science World, the Aquatic Centre, the beach, and the Aquabus, which all regularly shape our days and sense of the city.
What do you do?
I’m a cultural producer, choreographer and live-arts curator, and the Artistic Director of PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. My work sits at the intersection of contemporary performance, experiential design, and embodied inquiry—bringing artists, audiences, and ideas together in ways that challenge dominant ways of knowing and being.
What are you currently working on?
I’m curating the 2026 PuSh Festival, which invites audiences into speculative worlds, ritual pop concerts, club-lit reveries, and chaotic joy through bold, boundary-pushing performance. In parallel, I’m choreographing Drift with Corporeal Imago, a post-anthropocene dance work that imagines bodies as part of a larger, more-than-human ecology.
Where can we find your work?
PuSh Festival runs January 22–February 8, presenting theatre, dance, music and many inbetweens in venues across Vancouver. Drift premieres May 21-23 at The Dance Centre.
