International Presenters Program (IPP) presents
Independent Showcases
October 4th 2024 from 12:00 – 1:00 PM
at the Winchester Street Theatre
w e d l o c k m o u r n
by VICKI SUE MACHIN (Montreal)
“In w e d l o c k m o u r n, the net is a constant extension of my body. Inside a spatial circuit, I move in garments who act as guardians for my grief. An unlawful marriage to uncertainty, I enter my emotional body which constructs its own logic with the materials that are here.”
Creator and performer: Vicki Sue Machin; Residency support from: Ottawa Dance Directive, CCOV, Maison de la Culture du Québec; Thank you to: Katya Montaignac, Lila Geneix, Thea Patterson, Karen Fennell, Ellen Furey.
Chocolate Betty Crocker Fudge Goddess (ICP)
by MARS ALEXANDER (Toronto)
“More than just an ode to my love of burlesque, cakes & chocolate… I wanted to create something that speaks to the internal & external. Being on stage, images or “diversity” campaigns, being desired objectively but not as human, the pressure to maintain composure in these situations – all this can make someone feel like a zoo animal.”
Performer: Mars Alexander; Food sculptor: Anna-Bella Randall.
Coalescing Towards
North American debut, in partnership with Nuit Blanche Toronto
October 5-6, 2024 from 7:00 PM to 7:00 AM
Free Public Presentation
Coalescing Towards reveals the concealed, yet dynamic space surrounding emotions like ecstasy, euphoria and anticipation. The performance evolves through repeated sets of simple pedestrian movements, enacted in unison by groups of performers as they navigate their environment. A gradually intensifying dance performance investigating the concepts of repetition and unison, exploring the capacity for movement to forge togetherness.
Milan-based choreographer and visual artist Michele Rizzo’s work explores processes of transformation and transcendence. His work HIGHER has toured internationally since 2015 and the extended version HIGHER xtn was recently acquired to the Stedelijk Museum’s collection in Amsterdam. Since 2020 Rizzo has collaborated with fashion brands such as MARNI, Off-White, Magliano and Moschino.
Ness Lee X TDT
A new performance work in collaboration with visual artist Ness Lee, in collaboration with TDT’s Company Ensemble
As part of the Toronto Biennial of Art
November 23, 29 and December 1, 2024
Free Public Presentation
Location: 32 Lisgar Street, Toronto
After their initial collaboration during the Performance Clash in 2020, TDT and Ness Lee come together to imagine a performance that will gently move through the biennial’s exhibition space, with seven performers interacting with Lee’s distinctive sculptures and objects. Finding moments of intimacy between their bodies and the plush characters Ness creates, the dancers will animate the gallery through a tender parade, embodying the breath of space as a momentary feeling of one another.
Weathering
Conceived, choreographed and directed by Faye Driscoll
January 18–21, 2024
January 18–20: 8pm. January 21: 5pm
Ada Slaight Hall, Daniels Spectrum
585 Dundas St E, Toronto
Performed by James Barrett, Kara Brody, Miguel Alejandro Castillo, Amy Gernux, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Jennifer Nugent, Cory Seals, Eliza Tappan, Carlo Antonio Villanueva, Jo Warren
Curated by Christine Shaw
𝘞𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 is a multi-sensory performance, conceived by Driscoll as a moving human sculpture made of bodies, sounds, scents, liquids, and objects. Ten performers perpetually enact a morphing “tableau vivant” on a mobile raft-like stage that surges and spins through crisis and alienation. Grappling with the Anthropocene—the geologic toll of environmental destruction resulting from human activity on the Earth—𝘞𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 considers its effects on individual bodies and their interdependencies. It explores the unstable boundaries between grief, anger, emergency, and eroticism.
The Attunement Sessions
Part of the Blackwood’s presentation of Weathering and Toronto Dance Theatre’s winter double bill, FACE RIDER and Odd-Sensual.
January – March 2024
Ada Slaight Hall, Daniels Spectrum
585 Dundas St E, Toronto
Winchester Street Theatre
80 Winchester St, Toronto
Contributors: Amanda Boetzkes, Fran Chudnoff, Beth Coleman, Yehuda Duenyas, Macarena Gómez-Barris, k.g. Guttman, Jack Halberstam, Aisha Sasha John, Lara Kramer, John-Paul Ricco, Erin Robinsong, Marina Roy
How can we attune ourselves to the world-to-come? Presented alongside three choreographic works premiering in Toronto in winter 2024—Weathering, FACE RIDER, and Odd-Sensual—the Attunement Sessions inquire into the profound aesthetic, environmental, geopolitical, philosophical, sexual, social, and technological questions necessary to approach difficult problems about how we live, think, act, build, sense, and move together towards an imperiled future.
Through artistic provocations, thought-experiments, and experiential exercises, the sessions foreground the necessity for deeper attunement to the processes of destruction and disaster making the world as we know it (accumulation, alienation, contamination, disembodiment, displacement, extinction, extraction, settlement…) and forms of composing and imagining the future we want to live in (affinities, edgings, interdependencies, proximities, solarities, wet dreams…).
Framed by a series of questions, the sessions bring together choreographed and improvised, intimate and planetary, descriptive and speculative approaches by participants from diverse disciplines and practices including art history, black studies, choreography, dance studies, decolonial environmental humanities, disconnection studies, feminist science & technology studies, Indigenous philosophy, intimacy coordination, poetry, queer and transgender studies, visual arts, and more.
Who Needs A Dramaturg?
Workshop on Dance Dramaturgy and Creative Process
in partnership with CanAsian Dance
Friday May 12 and Saturday May 13, 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Registration Fee: $70 for this expansive 2-day workshops
Only 15 spots available
Develop your own dramaturgical reflection on your artistic practice! Led by Guy Cools, this workshop will offer participants practical tools and exercises to reflect upon, to evaluate and eventually to transform their creative process.
Through practical and physical exercises there will be an exploration on how dramaturgy/the dramaturg can contribute to this process as witness, dialogue partner and ‘editor.’
The Bentway Artist Residency: Dance in Public Space
Residency Duration: June – August 21, 2023
Toronto Dance Theatre has teamed up with The Bentway to support their residency opportunity dedicated to dance in public space. The 2023 residency invites three (3) artists with a focus on dance, movement, and/or embodied practice to participate in a three-month, open-ended, and research-based project that furthers their practice, provides learning opportunities with dance and public art practitioners; and in turn, contributes to the evolution of The Bentway as leading a creative movement to re-imagine the opportunities of urban spaces. Learn more about the resident artists.
Quick Takes on Dance
in partnership with Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF)
September 10, 2022
Slaight Music Stage, TIFF’s Festival Street
Dancers tried to beat the clock in this performance party that celebrates the wide spectrum of dance happening in Toronto. Curated by TDT’s artistic director Andrew Tay, this dance activation at TIFF featured one-of-a-kind performances that range from Tap to Contemporary, Street Dance to Flamenco, and more!
You Can’t Take It With You
in partnership with Toronto Dance Community Love-In
Saturday November 19, 2022
Toronto Dance Community Love-In is presenting Liz Kinoshita’s You Can’t Take It With You at the Winchester Street Theatre, as part of the work’s 2022 transnational tour! Featuring four performers, You Can’t Take It With You is an investigation within dance and musicality, what we need to survive, and what we need to discard in order to sustain ourselves and our environments.
Screen:Moves
in partnership with RT Collective
Winchester Street Theatre
December 13, 2022
RT Collective partnered with TDT to bring Screen:Moves -a screening program of short dance videos- to the Winchester Street Theatre in December 2022. This event featured a mix of new commissions as well as dance films that were created over the past two years.
Artist – Presenter Welcome Party
co-hosted with CanDance Network
Monday January 23, 2023
Winchester Street Theatre
CanDance Network is launched this year’s national dance presenter meetings with a Welcome Party in TDT’s home at the Winchester Street Theatre! Toronto choreographers and dancers were invited to gather for a casual party and chance to re-connect. TDT’s Artistic Director Andrew Tay co-hosted and was DJ for the night.
“Here and Now or Never” Choreographic Lab with Mélanie Demers
in partnership with dance Immersion
Saturday February 11, 2023
Winchester Street Theatre
Mélanie Demers investigates the role of dance and art in society. This workshop is designed as a creation laboratory for dancers and dance makers to experiment and take risks with dance composition in a safe environment. Open to all artists with a dance or choreographic practice, this lab aims to provide a playground for artists to explore their “inner mythology” and develop a creative process derived from the inside while reflecting on the outside. Full Description
This choreographic lab is affiliated with Mélanie Demers’ work, Cabaret Noir (February 9 – 11, 2023), a MAYDAY Production co-presented by dance Immersion with Canadian Stage.
