Hello! Thank you for visiting me online! I (Dasha Plett aka PRINCESS DASHA) am a Winnipeg/Manitoba/Treaty 1/Canada-based award-winning multi-hyphenate artist and trans woman working with performance, sound, and video. My work is informed by artists like Maria Chavez, La Pocha Nostra, Forced Entertainment, and the New Narrative movement, and practices of psychoanalysis, collective creation, and plunderphonics. Named one of 10 Toronto theatre artists to watch in 2024 by NEXT Magazine despite not living in Toronto, I have performed my work at Cluster Festival, Art Holm, Nuit Blanche, Young Lungs Dance Exchange, WNDX Festival of the Moving Image (where Etudes for Keyboard received the Best New Prairie Work award), and send+receive (where I opened for Carl Stone). Recent artist residencies include Young Lungs Dance Exchange, CARTAE Open School, VideoPool Artists in New Media Residency, PlugIn ICA Summer Institute, 8Days8, and Conversations on Performances at Festival TransAmériques. My current projects are fmmf, an experimental dj performance; and a trio of new semi-autobiographical expanded-cinema/video works about betrayal, power, lesbianism, and cults.
As a composer and sound designer (usually credited as Dasha Plett) I have worked with Buddies in Bad Times, the Stratford Festival, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, Prairie Theatre Exchange, Buddies in Bad Times, Cercle Molière, Theatre Projects Manitoba, OneTrunk Theatre, Frances Koncan, Waawaate Fobister, Debbie Patterson, Festival Antigonish, and Alexandra Elliott. I am a proud member of IATSE local ADC659 (Associated Designers of Canada). My designs have ranged from cinematic folk to industrial metal to adapting 17th century legal documents into art-pop bops. In 2024 I was awarded a Siminovitch Emerging Artist Grant for my sound work. I’ve been lucky enough to be mentored by some of the country’s best, including Deanna Choi and Deb Sinha. My designs have been described as “exquisite” (NEXT Magazine), “propulsive” (Toronto Star), and “immersive” (Winnipeg Free Press).
I am also one half of We Quit Theatre, a performance collective with Gislina Patterson. Dubbed “the hottest collective to come out of Winnipeg since the Royal Art Lodge” by the Globe and Mail, we have presented our work at Buddies in Bad Times, SummerWorks, PushOFF, Stratfest@Home, Théâtre Catapulte, OFFTA, and LOMAA. our work together is very much a continuation of my own interests in aesthetic and collaborative processes. We are currently touring i am your spaniel, or, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare by Gislina Patterson, and working on a dance-theatre hybrid performance about the contradictions of 2nd wave feminism, transphobia in contemporary media, the working conditions of the Playboy Manor, and selling out. I play Gloria Steinem to great effect.
If you’d like to have a conversation about anything I’ve worked on, or think I might be a good fit for your project, feel free to drop me a line!