Mainstage C

Thursday March 31st | 9 pm
Saturday April 2nd | 4 pm [Talkback Session to follow]
Co-operators Hall, River Run Centre

In DANCE [Toronto]
Bollywood Hopscotch (2004)
Choreography by Hari Krishnan
Bollywood Hopscotch is Hari Krishnan's critically acclaimed work created for 6 dancers with an original sound design by Debashis Sinha. A light-hearted, whimsical, and subversive take on Bollywood retro-culture as seen through the eyes of the Bollywood Diva who is simultaneously coy, vivacious, shy, tragic, melancholic, romantic, yet eternally happy. Six dancers create snapshot vignettes from the Diva's many lives. The work is the choreographer's personal response to the aesthetic principles of hyper-exaggeration and melodrama. It is also a comment on the homologizing dialectic between today's Indian classical dance and contemporary Indian cinema. Rooted in strong rhythmic Bharatanatyam dance, the satirical quality of the work is embedded in the hybrid physicality of the movement, the edgy juxtaposition of classical and film dance, and the melodramatic facial and corporeal articulations, providing a wonderfully eclectic palate of expressive possibilities.

Toronto based company inDANCE, established in 1999, presents works that are a unique synthesis of artistic director Hari Krishnan's South Asian and Western aesthetic sensibilities. inDANCE's aim is twofold. The first is to develop a new and innovative movement language that is Canadian in context, Indian in practice and personal in vision. To this end, inDANCE collaborates with individuals from a range of artistic disciplines. The company produces invigorating and progressive dance productions that challenge dominant discourses about culture. The experimental approach of the company addresses and entertains a diverse range of audiences. The second aim of inDANCE is to present exponents and scholars of historically oriented Bharatanatyam in Canada, thereby exposing audiences to the specific origins and historical contexts of the art form. The company's experimental and vintage work continue to be performed at international venues including St. Mark‚s Dance Space (New York City), The Smithsonian Institute (Washington DC), Canada Dance Festival (Ottawa), Canadian Museum of Civilization (Hull), Tangente (Montreal), Kalanidhi Dance Festival (Toronto), Can-Asian International Dance Festival (Toronto), Harbourfront Centre (Toronto), Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto), Rice University (Houston), University of Minnesota, Southern Theatre (Minneapolis), Columbia University (New York City), Mount Holy Oke College (Massachusetts), The Singapore International Festival of Arts, St‚ Lawrence University (Canton, New York) and Wesleyan University (Connecticut).

Blaze Entertainment [Toronto]
Eight
This piece will take a snapshot of various powerful instruments of media. The primary goal is to have one reflect on the messages we are allowing our children to receive when connected to these mediums. Choreography will be primarily Hip-Hop, however minimal elements of Jazz, Modern, and African will be fused into the piece. 6 dancers who bring to life the view of an eight year old boy whose watching, listening, and learning from the information allowed into his home through televisions, computers, radio and newspapers.

Blaze Entertainment is a full service dance company situated in Toronto, whom is known for diversity, multi-cultural dancers, and distinctive choreography. Primarily a Hip Hop company, Blaze preserves its originality by incorporating various genres of dance. Established by founders Fatima and JaeBlaze's clientele includes Nelly Furtado, Ashanti, and Sean Paul to name a few. Critically acclaimed video directors Hype Williams, Mr. X, Chris Robinson, Dawn Shadforth, Noble Jones etc. continuously use Blaze‚s distinctive dance style to intensify and enhance their videos. As Fatima explains, "We want to provide the world with dance diversion by contributing to an art form that will change rhythmical entertainment forever. Blaze Entertainment isn’t merely a dance company, it's a cultural movement, an art form, and to many a way of life."

Susanna Hood/hum
Waking En-Dessous (2004)
With musical collaborator Nilan Perera, Susanna Hood fuses a dynamic and emotionally charged vocabulary of voice, movement and text to explore the shifting relationships between two people, and between a person and space. It deals with how a body can be in a very present state, dealing with a task at hand while their mind/heart can be living out something that is not physically there and vice versa. It is a sense of standing on a threshold or moving incessantly back and forth between two rooms: one of the present and one of the past, trying to figure out at any given moment which one you are in, two places at once? Where are you? Anywhere?

This is a 20-minute set piece of work. The sound score is developed live by the manipulation through effect process of signal picked up by wireless microphone, worn by Susanna, throughout the piece. The palette of sounds includes spoken and sung voice, the manipulation of inanimate objects in the space, as well as the sound of Susanna’s body moving against surfaces in the playing area.

Susanna Hood is a compelling and virtuosic performer in dance and music.  She began her career as a member of the Toronto Dance Theatre from 1991 through 1995.  Independently, she has performed the works of various Toronto choreographers, created singing/dancing roles with Autumn Leaf Performance, acted on film for filmmaker Philip Barker, created music for the dance works of Rebecca Todd and Eryn Dace Trudell, collaborated extensively with composers John Oswald and Nilan Perera, and performed widely as an improviser both in dance and music. Her collaborative projects as well as her own choreography and music compositions have been presented throughout Toronto, nationally, and internationally on stage and in film since 1991.  In the fall of 1998, she was one of two recipients of the K.M. Hunter Emerging Artists Awards in Dance. In the past 19 years, Nilan Perera has been active in some of the most forward looking, influential and radical Canadian ensembles including NOMA, Bill Grove’s Not King Fudge, Handslang and the Excalceolators. He has also performed and recorded with Vinnie Golia, Don Preston, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Glen Hall, John Oswald, Vinx, Al MacDowell and Michael Ondaatje. His decade long association with guitarist/composer and iconoclast, Rainer Wiens has led him into the world of dance/theatre as composer/performer/instrumentalist with Wiens and Jan Komarek in Sound Image Theatre and most recently with Susanna Hood’s hum dansoundart.