Award-winning choreographer Jaime Martino is a lifelong contributor to the arts and social justice, making art that challenges narratives and centres queer voices. Following the completion of her Master’s degree in New Zealand in 2009, she co-founded the Aha Dance Collective, a contemporary dance company dedicated to exploring gender and movement through a queer feminist lens. In Toronto she dances and choreographs for Momentum Dance Toronto and creates contemporary dance works as an independent artist.
Jaime is recognized as a leader in pushing for equitable creation and management practices in the opera community; she is a member of the 2019 Opera America Leadership Cohort and a 2020 Toronto Arts Council Leaders Lab fellow. Since joining Tapestry in 2016, Jaime has helped to more than double the annual operating budget, launch two national initiatives, and produce some of the largest shows produced by the organization since 2001.
From 2013-2016, Jaime served as Director of Operations for Pride Toronto, steering one of the largest LGBTQ celebrations in the world every year. In 2014, she was officially recognized by the City of Toronto for her contribution to WorldPride, called a “historic and overwhelming success”, and received a Rainbow Warrior award “for outstanding support for international LGBT solidarity and LGBT culture” as awarded by the International Lesbian and Gay Cultural Network.
Jaime believes deeply in the power of art to transform lives and the world that surrounds them. She is committed to challenging structures, investing in new art in a way that reaches emerging artists, and carving out space at the edges of the mainstream, where creative disruption lives.