photo Emily Gan
Nate Yaffe is an experimental dance, theatre and video artist, based in Tiohtà:ke (Montreal) who researches queer strategies to create relational choreographic structures, placing performance as fundamentally a social exchange. His tactile dances dismantle movement shame through un-correcting the self-censored body.
Nate initiated and curates the residency series, This is actively built, which brings together queer artists to attack the question ‘what is queer dance?’ challenging the classic residency structure by restituting the artists’ autonomy to allow a cross-pollination of knowledge and practices. From 2022-23, he was the co-curator at Centre de Création O Vertigo (CCOV) alongside Hanako Hoshimi-Caines.
As co-artistic director of Le Radeau, Nate seeks community-centred alternatives for being a dance artist in face of the uncertain future of global capitalism and ecological collapse.
Nate collaborates regularly with Katie Ward, Dorian Nuskind-Oder, Audrée Juteau, Thea Patterson and Montreal Danse, and received a Helen Hayes award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for the role he created in Molly Maxner’s play Occupied Territories (2015) which he reprised in the off-Broadway production in 2017.
