Breakdancing circus performers will lead the audience from site to grassy site throughout Exhibition Park where five professional choreographers will showcase works that use the "space"-the grass, the trees, the audience, even-to tell their stories. Inspired family fun in a refreshing venue.
Saturday May 31st & Sunday June 1st | noon
| pay-what-you-can
Exhibition Park (between London and Division, west of Woolwich Street)
Inclement weather location: River Run Centre
Into the Unknown is a dramatic, romantic duet that fuses contemporary dance with elements of B-boying and B-girling. It is about the push and pull, ups and downs of a relationship whose swings of emotion are captured in the inverted breakdance elements.
Photo by Emanuel Cyr
K8 ALSTERLUND [Montréal] Stick Hop (2007)
Choreographer: K8 Alsterlund
Stick Hop is a comedic duet about the competitive relationship between a b-boy and a beatboxer. But the b-boy is not just any b-boy, he is also a juggler. Manu Cyr is actually a specialist in the circus art of devil-stick juggling; he combines this art with breakdancing (b-boying). The soundtrack for this piece comes entirely from Jason Levine, a beatboxer. Beatboxing is a vocal art form originating in Hip Hop culture; it creates percussive beats, sounds and melodies using only the voice and throat of the performer.
K8 Alsterlund, aka B-girl Lynx, started breaking in '98 and was a founding member of Ellementale, a 5-b-girl crew. She has a degree in Contemporary Dance from Concordia University. K8 has danced for the companies Solid State, House of Pride and Destins Croisès. She currently dances with 48 Steps, a choreographic and performance duo with b-boy WD-Forty. K8 is deeply involved in the Montreal breaking community, organizing a weekly break practice, the Eccentric Cypher dance event and the Break Survivor competition. She has taught breaking to youth and adults in Montreal, Alberta, Toronto, France, Nunavut and Nunavik with Blueprint for Life Social Work through Hip Hop. Her choreographic work has been presented at Edgy Women, the Definition Non Applicable Urban Dance Festival, the Festival Montréalais de la Danse, Studio 303's Vernissage Danse series, La TOHU, the Hysteria Festival of Women and Groundswell Theatre Festival in Toronto. In 2006, Lynx participated in the prestigious Redbull Beatriders program and won the We B-girlz battle in Manhattan. In 2007, she won the Braggin Rites battle and the Nuits Blanches battle, both in Montreal, the Rocksteady Crew 30th Anniversary b-girl battle in NYC and was the recipient of the Absolut Canadian B-boy & B-girl Award, recognizing her efforts as a b-girl, teacher and event organizer.
COMPANY BLONDE DANCE PROJECTS INC. [Toronto] Molly (Premiere)
Choreographer: Sunny Horvath
Trapped between the Baby Boomers and Generation Y were the Children of the 80s, like Molly, whose bright leggings, big hair and bangles take us back to a time before MTV, when leg warmers, headbands and jelly shoes ruled the school and students moonwalked their way into solving the Rubic's cube. Inspired by Atari, neon colours, Ferris Bueller and Molly Ringwald, this extravaganza will transport you back in time to the beat of the conga.
Company Blonde was founded in 1999 by Michelle DeBrouwer, Stephanie Thompson, Monica Dottor, Michelle Rhode and Sunny Horvath, who came together to produce Blonde Jokes, an evening of dance and comedy at Toronto's Opera House. Their common passion for laughter led them to fusing modern dance with comedy to produce works that are lauded for their wild energy and wit. Blonde Jokes was a huge success: people wanted more, and Company Blonde was officially born.
KAEJA D'DANCE [Toronto] Bird's Eye View (2007)
Choreographer: Karen Kaeja
Hailed as the 2007 #1 Greatest Hit of Nuit Blanche by The Toronto Star, Bird's Eye View is a dance installation where solo performers illuminate a magical world and incorporate audience members as witnesses or participants. Some of Guelph's finest dance artists will perform for the public in a riveting work of spontaneous living art conceived by Karen Kaeja with creative collaboration by Diana Groenendijk. Performer: Karen Kaeja
Photo by Ella Cooper
Photo of Karen Kaeja
Hailed as "one of the city's most watchable performers" by NOW Magazine, Karen Kaeja is co-artistic director of Kaeja d'Dance for whom she performs for stage and film locally and abroad. She has won the Moving Pictures Award for Best Performance, the 2005 Paul D. Fleck Fellowship as one of Canada's innovative artists of excellence and was nominated With Allen Kaeja for the 10th annual American Choreography Awards. Featured in NOW Magazine's top ten dance artists as a "champion of contact dance," she is on faculty at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and has assumed other guest artist positions at Universities in North America. As a dance educator, she has developed the Express Dance approach with Allen Kaeja, serving in-need communities across Canada. "One of Toronto's top Improvisers" (Toronto Life), Karen has conceived performance events for Toronto's Distillery Jazz Festival, Nuit Blanche 2007 at the Casa Loma Stables, which "left visitors spellbound, and haunted" (The Toronto Star), and she co-founded/directed the Festival of Interactive Physics (FIP). She has been commissioned to create works for dancers in Sweden, India, Toronto, and across Canada. Recent commissions include Dusk Dances, Nuit Blanche 2008 and Kathleen Rea's VIVID. Karen and Allen Kaeja are featured in various television documentaries, including the Gemini-nominated Bravo! Freedom series on Canadian dance. Their 16 dance films have garnered international awards, an "Old Country" Gemini nomination, and an "Asylum of Spoons" 2006 Banff World Television Award nomination. Among their recent initiatives are the completion of a new Bravo!FACT dance film, the MADance Screen Salon (hosting Canadian Dance on Screen), a new solo for dancer Ashley Sanderson, and a Vancouver creation residency for Kaeja d'Dance's premier of Abattoir--a collaboration between some of the city's finest artists. www.kaeja.org
YURAGI [Toronto] Red Dream (2006)
Choreographer: Keiko Ninomiya
"Red Dream was inspired by the series of paintings named Cantique des Cantiques by Marc Chagall. These five paintings are all aggressively red in colour, like a large fire, and yet I felt an innocent calm when I saw them. This feeling of peace in a chaotic world is what I want to share with the audience." ~Keiko Ninomiya
Keiko Ninomiya is originally from Japan. She studied at the London Studio Centre and the London Contemporary Dance School in England, then came to Toronto, where she graduated from The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. Keiko has appeared in works by CORPUS, Hiroshi K. Miyamoto, Masumi Sato, William Yong, Matjash Mrozewski, Mari Osanai, Lincoln Shand and Denise Fujiwara. She has been showcasing her own choreographic work at various venues since 1996, including fFIDA international Dance festival and The CanAsian Dance Festival. She is the founder of Yuragi Dance Project and co-founder of AKA, ZUKE and Green Tea, a collective of Japanese contemporary dancers in Toronto. Keiko is the joint recipient, with Louis Laberge-Côté, of the eighth annual Paula Citron fFIDA Award (2003) for their piece Futari en trois couleurs, which was named one of the top ten performances of the year in both The Globe and Mail and Now magazine. This past year, Keiko was invited to choreograph for Le Groupe Dance Lab in Ottawa and premiered her first solo piece Fly in Aomori, Japan. Most recently, Keiko and Kinya "Zulu" Turuyama (ZUKE) were nominated for a 2007 Dora Award for Outstanding New Choreography. Keiko has taught creative movement, hip hop and modern dance.
AYELEN LIBERONA [Toronto] Falling (2003)
Choreographer: Ayelen Liberona
Falling is the first part of a dance tetralogy that explores the history of and struggle for female emancipation, where nature is revealed as the catharsis of her transformation. Created out of deep respect for the life-sustaining power of our forests and our trees, Falling makes us wonder about birth and transformation. Beginning in a cocoon suspended high up in a tree, a creature probes her shell and eventually emerges as a blood red body twisting and turning and falling down the silken strings. Will she fall or will she fly?
Ayelen sat on a beehive at age 6, was stung 23 times and has experienced mystical dreams ever since. Born in Toronto to Chilean political refugees, Ayelen got her training in dance and life in Havana, Toronto and New York City. She began to explore her own definition of dance at 19 when she started throwing underground dance parties in caves, forests and on beaches. More recently, she directed Falling, a short dance film that has been an official selection at 11 international film festivals, including New York City's Dance on Camera at Lincoln Center and London, England's DanceScreen Festival. She has choreographed numerous music videos, as well as assisted choreography on Feist's 1,2,3,4 and My Moon, My Man. Ayelen's work has been commissioned by Frank Augustyn for Adelphi Dance, the historical LAbbaye de Neumunster (Luxembourg), the Toronto International Dance Festival and Dusk Dances (Canadian Touring). Her work has been performed throughout Canada and New York at venues such as Harbourfront (Toronto), WAX (NYC), Galapagos Art Space (NYC), and The First Annual Latin American Culture Week of New York. From 2004-2007 Ayelen was artistic director of Dance Anonymous in New York City where she collaborated with founding director Harry Mavromichalis and cellist /composer Rubin Kodheli. The company received commissions from the Cypriot Ministry of Culture to tour Cyprus and perform with the National State Orchestra. As a performer, Ayelen has worked with CORPUS, ConfiDanse, Cirque du Soleil Special Events, Turbo Bonz Dance, Gabrielle Roth, she collaborates with Bessie-award-winner Noemie Lafrance as performer and rehearsal director and is a member of the Wes Veldink Movement, touring to Los Angeles, Seoul and Tokyo. Currently Ayelen is developing her second dance film, Becoming, and is collaborating with director/producer Joseph Johnson Camî on a feature-length documentary entitled A Grain of Sand, set to release very soon.
K8 ALSTERLUND
Stick Hop is a comedic duet about the competitive relationship between a b-boy and a beatboxer. But the b-boy is not just any b-boy, he is also a juggler. Manu Cyr is actually a specialist in the circus art of devil-stick juggling; he combines this art with breakdancing (b-boying). The soundtrack for this piece comes entirely from Jason Levine, a beatboxer. Beatboxing is a vocal art form originating in Hip Hop culture; it creates percussive beats, sounds and melodies using only the voice and throat of the performer.
Hailed as the 2007 #1 Greatest Hit of Nuit Blanche by The Toronto Star, Bird's Eye View is a dance installation where solo performers illuminate a magical world and incorporate audience members as witnesses or participants. Some of Guelph's finest dance artists will perform for the public in a riveting work of spontaneous living art conceived by Karen Kaeja with creative collaboration by Diana Groenendijk. Performer: Karen Kaeja
"Red Dream was inspired by the series of paintings named Cantique des Cantiques by Marc Chagall. These five paintings are all aggressively red in colour, like a large fire, and yet I felt an innocent calm when I saw them. This feeling of peace in a chaotic world is what I want to share with the audience." ~Keiko Ninomiya