Shannon May
Shannon May is a Canadian professional dance artist from the small town of Fort St. John in northern British Columbia. She began dancing at four years old and continued dancing under the tutelage of Shauna Milne until the age of 18. Upon graduating high school Shannon moved to Vancouver where she completed the Arts Umbrella graduate program. Immediately after this she attended Spellbound’s contemporary intensive in Rome and then moved to Calgary to train for a year with the Decidely Jazz Danceworks company. After this she moved to the Netherlands to work with the Dance in Art Junior Company under the direction of Martine van Santen and Rianne Keyzer. In 2016 Shannon joined Mystic Ballet, a contemporary dance company in Connecticut and has danced and performed for the company for the past two years.
Some highlights of Shannon’s career include performing Rianne Keyzer’s Well Tempered in Haarlem, NL, performing as Ursula in Mystic Ballet’s contemporary take on The Little Mermaid and performing as a soloist in Mystic Ballet’s performances of Grab and Splash. She has had the privilege of working with many talented choreographers such as Gioconda Barbuto, Walter Matteini, Fernando Magadan, Dario Dinuzzi, Lesley Telford, Christophe Dozzi and Francesca Caroti.
Over the years Shannon has had opportunities to develop her own style and choreography. She was encouraged to create her own movement at Dance in Art and, during her time with Mystic Ballet, she choreographed two pieces on the company for their end of season performances.
Shannon is moving to Vancouver and looks forward to immersing herself once again in the Canadian dance community. She hopes to continue to create her own work and collaborate with other dance artists. Shannon is excited to bring back all that she’s learned to her home province and believes she and fellow artist Lauren Yeung can present something new and interesting to the Vancouver dance scene.