As a child of a dancer, dance has always been a part of Joel’s life. He began his dance training at High Pointes Dance Academy, where his mother taught and sister also danced. Joel then attended the Professional Ballet Program at Canada’s National Ballet School. While at the National Ballet School, Joel performed many roles in the National Ballet of Canadas Nutcracker. When Joel returned to Cobourg to attend high school, he danced with the HPDA competitive team, receiving many overall and special awards.

Now Joel is a graduate from Toronto Metropolitan University (formally Ryerson University) from the Performance Dance Program. While at TMU, Joel trained in Ballet, Jazz, Modern, Contemporary, Improvisation, Creative Performance, and Acting and danced in the works of Matjash Mrozewski, Irena Ponizova, Peter Chin, and Vicki St. Denys. Outside of TMU, Joel has furthered his training with Decidedly Jazz Danceworks Summer Intensive, Kenny Pearl’s Winter Intensive, TransFormation Dance Summer Intensive, and Kenny Pearls Emerging Artist Intensive. During his outside training, Joel has worked with dance artists such as Kimberley Cooper, Alysa Pires, Hanna Kiel, and Andrej Petrovic from Akram Khan Company. Joel has presented his choreography twice in Choreographic Works at TMU. In his final year at TMU, Joel choreographed a full-length contemporary dance work titled To Be Determined: A Dance Project which explored the impact of climate change on earths ecosystem through movement, music, text, lighting, and projection.

Joel’s creative practice is inspired by his environment, visual art, and the need for social change. In his choreographic process, Joel frequently works with improvisation and collaboration with the dancers. Joel has also used dance film as an outlet for his choreography. His goal as a teacher is to challenge the dancers and introduce them to new techniques and styles.