UNCUT Presents: A 40th Anniversary Celebration of Charles Atlas’ “Hail The New Puritan”

Friday June 5, 2026
Doors open at 7:30 PM
Show starts at 8:00 PM Winchester Street Theatre , 80 Winchester Street (VIEW MAP)

Accessibility Info: Unfortunately the Winchester Street Theatre is not currently wheelchair accessible. There are three steps outside of the front entrance, a small platform, and then three more steps to the lobby (a straight hallway that then leads you to the theatre). To access the private gender-neutral restrooms, there are five additional steps at the end of the lobby. The seats in the theatre are on risers with stairs; please contact info@tdt.org if you have any questions regarding accessing our space.

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In partnership with Toronto Dance Theatre

Directed by Charles Atlas and featuring the work of Scottish choreographer Michael Clark, Hail The New Puritan is a fictionalized documentary capturing the rare intersection of ballet technique, punk aesthetic, and queer subculture that defined Clark’s groundbreaking work in the 1980s.

With Leigh Bowery in charge of costumes, Trojan contributing to set design, and The Fall behind the soundtrack, Hail The New Puritan is more than a dance film, it is a portrait of a radical artistic moment that reshaped how contemporary dance could exist within popular and underground culture.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of this trailblazing film, the evening will include:

🕺”hey it was nice knowing you”, a live dance performance by DOLLHEAD 2000 (aka TDT’s Bray Cairns and Roberto Soria)
🎓 Introduction by Amelia Ehrhardt from Weird Ballet
🎞️ Feature screening of Hail the New Puritan

(dir. Charles Atlas, UK, 1986, 85 min)

About UNCUT

UNCUT

UNCUT is a Toronto-based film screening series dedicated to presenting queer underground, and radical cinema in a relaxed, community-driven environment. Curated by Billy Terry and Alexis Bouton, the series highlights films that exist outside traditional theatrical circulation – works that challenge form, celebrate subculture, and spark conversation between audiences.

Find out more on Instagram @uncut_presents

DOLLHEAD 2000

Photo by McKenzie James

Brayden Jamil Cairns

Brayden Jamil Cairns (he/they) is a Toronto-based performance artist, costume designer, and long time lover. Bray left rural Ontario in 2015 to train at Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Performance. Since his training, Bray has worked with the likes of Alyssa Martin, Rodney Diverlus and many of his peers in collaborative processes. Bray is interested in movement that can be enjoyed by people from all walks of life. He binds dance and lived experience to create tantalizing works of art; combining media such as writing and film to create a living collage. Many of these ideas come from a powerful need to uplift the queer and BIPOC communities. Bray will often be found researching what it is to feel pleasure and what can come from self-exploration.

Photo by McKenzie James

Roberto Soria

Roberto Soria is the new era no longer restricted by time she walks the earth with patience noticing how all is changing he doesn’t interfere she listens he watches ready for nothing yet it all shows it’s true colours the sun and the moon have her life and it’s the random that keeps him alive.

I am Roberto Soria, and as a seeker of pleasure it only makes sense that movement has been a part of my life for so many years.

I am:
a raver
a dj/creator of noise
a lover
a photographer/filmmaker
a sagittarius
a company dancer for toronto dance theatre
and friendly so if you see me in the street come say hi

Introduction by Amelia Ehrhardt from Weird Ballet

Photo by Krystle Merrow

AMELIA EHRHARDT

Amelia Ehrhardt (they/them) is a dancer, astrologer, and multidisciplinary artist in and from Toronto. Their work manifests as solo improvisation, group choreography, drawing, painting, and writing. Amelia’s work is often concerned with deep dives the western concert dance canon. Their work has been supported across Canada and internationally, including OFFTA (Montréal), SEAD (Austria), Mile Zero Dance (Edmonton), and local residencies at Harbourfront Centre and Toronto Dance Theatre. A dancer with two decades of performance experience, Amelia has appeared in works by Carol Anderson, Susie Burpee, Willi Dorner, Syrus Marcus Ware, Deanna Peters, Julia Sasso, Menaka Thakkar, and Suzy Lake, among others. Amelia was the Curator of Dancemakers Centre for Creation from 2015-2019 and is the founder of Flowchart: a Series of Performance. They were a 2017 danceWEB recipient and a 2016 Toronto Arts Council Leadership Lab fellow. Amelia holds a Masters in Visual Studies from the University of Toronto where they were an SSHRC recipient.

Directed by Charles Atlas

Charles Atlas has been a pioneering figure in film and video for over four decades. Atlas has extended the limits of his medium, forging new territory in a far-reaching range of genres, stylistic approaches, and techniques. Throughout his production, the artist has consistently fostered collaborative relationships, working intimately with such artists and performers as Leigh Bowery, Michael Clark, Douglas Dunn, Marina Abramovic, Yvonne Rainer, Mika Tajima/New Humans, Anhony and the Johnsons, and most notably Merce Cunningham, for whom he served as in-house videographer for a decade from the early 1970s through 1983; their close working relationship continued until Cunningham’s death in 2009.

*bio from Luhring Augustine Gallery

MICHAEL CLARK

Hailed as “British dance’s true iconoclast”, Michael Clark is a defining cultural figure. Since emerging in the 1980s as a prodigy at London’s Royal Ballet School, he has remained at the forefront of innovation in dance, collaborating with – among others – such compelling artists as Sarah Lucas, Leigh Bowery, Peter Doig and Charles Atlas, and musicians Mark E. Smith, Wire, Scritti Politti and Relaxed Muscle. From the outset, Michael Clark’s performances have been marked by a mixture of technical rigour and experimentation, intense and fine-tuned choreography intersecting with elements of punk, Dada, pop and rock. His productions repeatedly break new ground, provoking and electrifying audiences.

*bio from the Michael Clark Dance Company website