Talk:Priya Thomas

Early life and education

Raised in Montreal, Thomas began studying violin at a young age and started writing songs at eleven. She completed a DEC in Fine Arts before earning a B.A. in Religious Studies from McGill University, where she also pursued Sanskrit. She later obtained an M.A. and Ph.D. from York University.^[2]

Academic career

Thomas has held tenure-stream appointments in university dance and theatre departments in Canada and the United States. From 2018 to 2021, she served as a tenure-stream professor in the Department of Dance at Texas Woman’s University. She currently teaches in the Department of Dramatic Arts at Brock University. Between 2021 and 2024, she served as the Book Reviews Editor for the peer-reviewed academic journal Theatre Research in Canada (University of Toronto Press). Her publication record centres on dance and theatre histories, with particular focus on the non-human in performance.^[3][4][5]

Music career

Thomas released her debut album In the Throes of the Microscope in 1996. Her follow-up, Armageddon Weather Channel (1998), was recorded with contributions from Ian Ilavsky (Constellation Records, Silver Mt. Zion, Godspeed You! Black Emperor). She later released Songs for Car Commercials (2003) and You and Me Against the World Baby (2006) on UK-based IRL/Universal Records. In 2008, she released Priya Thomas is Blood Heron (Renovation Tracks) on Sunny Lane/Universal. Reviewed in national and regional outlets, Brad Wheeler of The Globe and Mail described the record as “all guts, bones, and jugular veins,” while in his Anti-Hit List column, John Sakamoto of The Toronto Star called Thomas’s music “comically literate,” alluding to its raw textures and emotional precision.^[6][7]

In 2012, under the project name Iroquois Falls, Thomas released the EP Twice-Born-Once-From-A-Gun through Hi-Scores/Universal Records. Writing for Interview Magazine, Erin Brady described the accompanying video for “The Magician’s Niece” as “opening like a diary entry” and creating “an effect, coupled with the flicker of found footage, [that] is at once trance-like and jarring.”^{[8] [9][10]}

Dance and theatre

Thomas trained in the Balasaraswati tradition of Bharatanatyam under Priyamvada Sankar, daughter of Sanskrit scholar V. Raghavan, performing her arangetram in 1983 and continuing to study and perform until 1995 in Canada, the United States, and India. Alongside her classical training, she studied Carnatic vocal music with Sankar. Her later choreographic work explores the relationship between embodiment and visuality, intersecting dance, sound, and text-based practices. In recent years, she has choreographed and directed theatrical productions in Canada.^[11][12]

Discography

• 1996: In the Throes of the Microscope
• 1998: Armageddon Weather Channel
• 2003: Songs for Car Commercials
• 2006: You and Me Against the World Baby
• 2008: Priya Thomas is Blood Heron (Renovation Tracks)
• 2012: Twice-Born-Once-From-A-Gun EP

References

External links

• Official website
• Faculty profile – Brock University

Note: I would prefer to omit the "Discography" section from the proposed update. The rest of the article text remains accurate and complete. — Commons Arts Archivist (talk) 06 November 2025 (UTC)

• Canadian musicians
• Canadian interdisciplinary artists
• Canadian women in music
• Performance studies research

^[1]

^[2]

^[3]

^[4]

^[5]

^[6]

^[7]

^[8]

^[9]

Hello — I am an editor with a declared conflict of interest, as I am associated with the subject. I would appreciate assistance from an uninvolved editor.

Two items in the current article are outdated or inaccurate and need correction:

The Discography section – It contains outdated material and duplicates information already present in the prose. It should be removed for clarity and accuracy. The statement that the subject “she also teaches and practices Ashtanga yoga in Toronto.”

This information is outdated and no longer accurate; it should be removed.

Requested edits:

Remove the entire Discography section Remove the sentence referring to studying/teaching Ashtanga yoga

Thank you very much for reviewing this request. Commons Arts Archivist (talk) 12:11, 14 November 2025 (UTC)

 Done removed the discography section Perfecnot (talk) 04:39, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Hello again — adding a brief clarification so the request is actionable under COI guidelines.

• Please remove the outdated “Discography” section. • Please remove the sentence stating I “currently study and teach Ashtanga yoga in Toronto,” as it is no longer accurate. • Please replace the article content with the fully-sourced draft provided above in this section.

For clarity, the exact sentence currently on the article is: “She also teaches and practices Ashtanga yoga in Toronto.” This is outdated information, so I’m flagging it here for an editor to remove it.

Thank you — and I won’t add further notes unless requested.

Hello — just following up on the edit request above, as some time has passed without a response. I wanted to check whether an uninvolved editor would be able to review the proposed update when time permits. Many thanks for your time and consideration. Commons Arts Archivist (talk) 18:07, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

Commons Arts Archivist Sorry to be late to the game here. Your request is the oldest that is not being worked. The backlog is almost 400 articles now, so every request has to be easy to understand. I can't tell without doing more work what you want to change, and it looks like some of the work was done (discography removal). Can you use the format that I describe here? User:STEMinfo/COI_edit_requests#Simple_connected_edit_request. You can ping me to review when you are done. STEMinfo (talk) 19:58, 20 February 2026 (UTC)