No Bullshit Talk With Siren of the Elements 

Interview by Astropsyhe

Siren is a multidisciplinary artist who combines music, movement, and the elements to create transformational experiences for her clients & her guests. She’s performed at numerous parties, parades, cabarets, conventions, and was featured at Bass Coast in 2023.

He’s curated & DJ’ed a number of ecstatic dance journies & retreats across BC and strives to take participants on an emotional journey. As a facilitator, she supports her attendees in harnessing the healing powers of movement & music by offering flow arts classes, fire dancing lessons, movement workshops, and private coaching sessions.

1. Hey. Please tell me about yourself

I love music, I love nature, I love anything to do with embodiment.
I feel like by getting people in touch with their bodies, and with the Earth, it’s inevitable that they’ll feel, you know, just naturally, I think it’s like, something that we’ve understood for such a long time. And so many cultures, they always use music to connect dance, prayer etc.
We lost a lot of that, and that’s just like, you know, we might think long lost, but it’s not that long lost ago, you know, I mean, it’s, it’s so easy to activate.

2. So, how did you discover this in yourself?

I guess Music has always been my therapy, to be honest with you, like, hearing the song..
I mean, growing up, like if I heard a song that had the lyrics in it that I related to, it was like, oh I’m not alone in what I’m going through, such like a unifying experience.
I think it’s amazing because artists can reach people from anywhere in the world, you know, and music is a bit of a universal language, even songs that don’t have any words in it are still connected to so many cultures. So for me, it was just listening to music as a kid as a teenager, my mom loved Michael Jackson and Bob Marley growing up and Abba, listen to a lot of that.

And then discovering pop music and pop artists and dance came to me around the startup COVID, I wasn’t a big on dance growing up, my sister was a dancer. And I would always go to her show, see, her on stage. And I was like: « Oh my God, I want to do that.» But I also didn’t want to go to the dance school. I didn’t like the technical, I didn’t like the cattiness ,body shaming and all like that. So I just started getting into spirituality and inner work, and then went to some ecstatic dances and did some psychedelic journeys with music and just moving. It was so powerful, it just set the trajectory of like: «well, this works!»
It works for me, it’ll work for other people.

3. Completely understand you! I have very-very similar journey, even the timings !
I was also trying to take dance classes as a teenager, but eventually schools with it technical stuff was not something I was looking for.

The freedom of movement and expression, I think, has to kind of come first.
Well, It doesn’t have to… There are some incredible dancers who are doing structure and training for their whole life. The way it came out to me was like – open the can of worms, let everything out, and then when I started realizing that I wanted to take myself more seriously as performance artist, that’s when I started taking dance classes to give myself some technical knowledge to put structure and make a craft from it.

4. So, how did you decide to become a DJ?

I went to an ecstatic dance in Mexico, it was four hours long. And the way I felt when I walked into that experience – was very heavy going down. I was traveling on the road for the last eight weeks or so. I was really craving for home, I just broken up with someone. And I felt very lost.

I’d gone to Mexico because I felt called to go but I didn’t know what I was. Because I was just having this moment of:
«What am I am doing here?»

It was my solo backpacking trip and I ended up in this small town called Mazunte.
It’s a very powerful spot over the last 90 years or so it’s attracted so many healers to it, and people seeking healing as well. So there’s like, so many different practitioners. And it’s definitely like a bit of a bubble.

I went to this one event. There was this woman-dj named Echo. The intention that I set was to just clear the channels, and at some point during the journey it started raining! pouring, pouring rain. There were some muddy spots and some big rocks which were solid to dance on.
And I found myself on top of those rocks. And there was this one moment where she just dropped that little bit of dubstep, a little bit. And something exploded, it was so much like anger and grief and rage. And it felt like home, and like wild essence came through. Then one of my friends who I hadn’t met yet at that time, but his name was Ty, he came up to me, first time meeting and he was like, I can see that you’re going through a lot. I offer you a hand on your heart. And I just kept dancing and dancing and you know, just letting it all out. And then by the end of the event like I was holding hands with Ty and like spinning around in a circle. Like a little kid – literally the definition of an estatic – is how I felt by the end.
Because I was able to dance all of that, like, if it’s in my body through the elements literally. The rain pouring down, it’s going into the rocks, it’s going into the roof. And then the music, the beat – it just shakes it all up, and you let it go.

And after that I was like – this is so powerful, I want to be able to offer this to other people!

That one event was the inspiration for me to start with DJing and start learning and buying new equipment and specifically to do Ecstatic Dances. Because nevertheless I met the spiritual community through raves – I don’t like drugs, the harm they can do for your body if you don’t use them properly. By drugs I mean synthetics. And also I discovered the other part of all this – when you actually do it for healing with music – for expression, not for compression.

5. Tell me about your name – «Siren of The Elements»

I adopted this name when I first went to Mexico, that was also the start of my fire spinning journey. So I did my very first burn the night before I made a big bonfire at Wreck beach ( beach in Vancouver, BC) with my friends. That was also when I decided to go by my chosen name, which is Siren.
So it was new name, new instagram handling new country, new hobby – very much like the start of something.
I love the Siren Archetype – that dark feminine seductress beauty, like angelic voice kind of energy, but also, with an edge.
I really resonate with that, because growing up, I’ve always just had more dark feminine energy that like, to be honest with you. I was always able to just see through bullshit and not being able to just cover the face and take it.

Siren Of The Elements is more of like a calling of the Elements.
So imagine that if the Earth has a calling to you you.
The Fire is calling you to it like
The Water is called
The Air is calling you.

6. Okay, now I see the connection of your name and your story about the Mexico

It was an Vortex…
This whole experience happened on the southernmost tip of Mexico, on this Peninsula.
I feel it was just one of the most powerful places where all four elements converged because you have the Sun beating overhead at 35-40 degrees in the summer, the wind is howling you’re on these massive rocky cliff tops and the waters crashing against besides on cliffs, so it was very much like the center point of consider to be the Energy Vortex.

And I learned on my travels that there are multiple energy vortexes in the World that draw people to them, because they have a bit of a heightened spiritual potency around it. It can be a combination o properties in the geology and just repeated activity happening there over and over again.
You know how in some temples you walk in and feel immediately because thousands of people have prayed there for over thousands of years.

I know Salt Spring Island is another one … It’s one of a Gulf Islands in British Columbia. It’s a very artisan ,a lots of farms, cute little community, spiritual vibes , quartz beds there as well – it very much accelerate processes is what I experienced that too when I went there – like, things came to boiling point and boiled over.

There is also a Lake Atitlán in Guatemala, where in the center of the lake there are two volcanoes that are active. And there are towns and along the perimeter of the lake and similar to Mazunte, a lot of spiritual people congregate there.
I was told how people tend to travel from energy vortex to energy vortex and it blew my mind because I had visited Salt Spring a couple days prior to flying to Mexico..

When I got home, I’d obviously had such a beautiful, enlightening experience while I was there, because aside from all the synchronicities, all the growth, I also did a 10 day silent meditation and a three week yoga retreat while I was there, so there was just a very deep devotion to the practice on a daily level. When I got home, back in Vancouver, there was still during COVID., I was traveling during COVID, so I did the two week quarantine, and I immediately went to the Fairy Creek Old-Growth Blockades.
Which were the protest happening on Vancouver Island, where a bunch of people were there to defend, some of the last old-growth trees were getting cut down, they’re over 500-600 years old.
I knew a lot of people that had gone camped, put their efforts towards essentially just occupying the space so people can come along and that was their method of defense. So I went and I was camping and I gotten violently arrested basically dragged out of the bush. And that was the idea, everyday the cops would show up and remove as many people as they could to let the machines in. But there was always more people to fill it.

I was arrested by the Chief of the Police and when I looked him in the eye, my path became a lot more clear.

Before I went to Mexico, I was an oceanography student. And I was studying oceanography at UBC. And I wanted to help the environment, I wanted to go to environmental scientists to help the planet, do research, do this, do that get bylaws passed, you know, but I realized that is actually just a bad day solution. And I have to help people heal so that they don’t feel motivated to destroy the planet. Like when values shift: I have to help people so that they revere Mother Earth in her natural state more than the dollars that they can get for her old-growth and trees. The priority has to shift from within you at the end of the day. You can put every by-law in the fucking world in but … they help, they absolutely help. But it’s like external and internal as well.
And I realized that I’m not going to win this battle going in the front door. Because even when I was working for an environmental consulting company – it was never about stopping destruction, it was about minimizing the impacts the destruction has.
At the end of the day the people that want to build are always going to build, you know, the people that want to mine, they’re probably always going to mine and the people working in that sector to protect the environment trying to mitigate the impact of it.

It just wasn’t sustainable. Because at the end of the day – what is your plan for when there’s zero growth left, can you do it? You know, at a certain point, you’re not going to have any more big ass trees to chop down, you’re only gonna have the regenerative timber – what is your plan then? So it’s set me on this path of how can I help people connect to themselves and to the environment, connect to music, heal their traumas, using the tools that I use and I’m still using to this day. Because then it makes them more compassionate to the Earth, to care about other living things.

Recently I went to an Immersion with Deya Dova. She’s a beautiful singer. S
he did a very intimate Q&A session in the White Rock, BC – got to chat with people and shared her story. And one thing that interested me about what she said was that as a kid, she wanted to be a singer and archaeologist and an astronaut. Through what she does, traveling around the world to these planetary grid points, intuitively learning the history that’s there, the stories in the past and singing them, and also using her consciousness to travel, she’s kind of filled all three.

And for myself, I loved science growing up, I loved it, science was always my favorite subject. Again, I went into science at UBC, I was studying Oceanography. And I’ve definitely, left a lot of that behind as I’ve gone into the performance and DJing world, but I’m curious about how to integrate the research of how the planet can help us heal when it’s left in its natural form, especially. Because it will help to build bridge between people.

7. Your Mission Statement?

I help people to connect, I help people strengthen their mind body spiritual connection using movement, music and aliveness. So also getting people in touch with themselves and the planet and their emotions, through music and movements, the elements.
I do like a lot of different things.
Me as a performer as my own artistic expression. Me as a DJ is creating space for people to dance really. Me as a floor constructor is guiding people in their movement and hosting fire ceremonies or cold plunges and building community around.
There’s a lot of different things that happen in this world, me teaching people how to fire spin as a multitude of that or using the elements – it’s like a therapeutic tool to connect with yourself. The question is to transmute whenever you might be bringing into the session. And you’re using movement to optimize that.
So that is what I am about.

Siren of the Elements LINKTREE