Jaime Martino

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 pushing for equitable creation and management practices in the opera community. She is a 2019 Opera America Leadership Cohort member and a 2020 Toronto Arts Council Leaders Lab fellow. Since joining Tapestry in 2016, Jaime has helped double the annual operating budget, launch two national initiatives, and produce some of the largest shows the organization has produced 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, the City of Toronto officially recognized her contribution to WorldPride, which was called a “historic and overwhelming success,” and she 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 surrounding 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.