This year the charming outdoor dance festival, Dusk Dances, celebrates 25 Years, featuring five different works in Toronto’s east end. Each piece is spread throughout Withrow Park, using the park’s amenities, like its a baseball field and hockey rink.

The 2019 festival includes work from Hanna Kiel, Meredith Thompson, Mix Mix Dance Collective, Denise Fujiwara and Yuichiro Inouo, Pulga Muchochoma & Naishi Wang.

Each choreographer creates a ten-minute site-specific piece, mostly staying within a contemporary dance style, with the exception of a work that mixes house, waacking and breaking street styles.

Continue reading Review: Dusk Dances 2019 – Celebrating 25 Years (Dusk Dances) →

Shakespeare in Action presents the Bard’s comedy under the stars, on stage in Toronto

Shakespeare in Action presents its first annual ‘Shakespeare in a Shell’ outdoor performance. Bring your own blanket (or maybe even a picnic) to the Little Avenue Memorial Park in Weston and settle in for an energetic, fun and a family-friendly night filled with unrequited love and farcical characters of the classic, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Although, expect some tastefully added singing and hilarious modernized bits in this campy re-telling.

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Percussionist Fara Tolno and a company of dancers opens Toronto’s Luminato Festival

KIRA, The Path | La Voie brings a lively and rhythmic energy to the Luminato Festival, with a mix of dancers and percussionist who perform Fara Tolno, choreography and composition. Tolno is a guest artist with the Lua Shayenne Dance Company, specializing in Guinean dance and music. Lua Shayenne, artistic director of the company, took to the Fleck Dance Theatre stage as a performer in the work.

Continue reading Review: KIRA, The Path | La Voie (Lua Shayenne Dance Company / Luminato) →

inDance presents solo performances by Asian-Canadian dance artists on stage in Toronto

inDANCE and Co.ERASGA present Undivided Colours, four solo works by seasoned Asian-Canadian dance artists. Reflecting, re-imagining, mixing dance styles and stories from their personal heritages and perspectives, the four solos take the Dancemakers Centre For Creation stage.

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An award-winning adaptation mixing dance and opera returns to Toronto

Presented by Citadel + Compagnie, the 2016 Dora nominated Against Nature returns to the Citadel. The opera and dance mix adapts French/Dutch author Joris-Karl Huysman’s 1884 novel À Rebours through the direction and choreography of James Kudelka.

After living a luxurious life in Paris, Jean des Esseinte, an aristocrat played by Alexander Dobson, flees to the countryside to live in solitude. In an attempt to escape society, he aims to create a perfect world, and surrounds himself with literature, art and artifacts. Through this isolation, his mental and physical health deteriorate, leaving him unable to escape memories and experiences from his past life.

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Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre showcases its young company members in Toronto

Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre (CCDT) presents Light Years at the Harbourfront’s Fleck Dance Theatre, a mixed dance bill showing the technical prowess and maturity of its young company’s members. All under the age of 19, the technically strong and agile dancers perform five works – two world premieres, two CCDT premieres and one returning piece.

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Canadian Stage presents a tribute to Chinese poet Xu Lizhi to Toronto audiences

A beautiful ode to the late poet Xu Lizhi, I Swallowed a Moon Made of Iron gives a voice to migrant workers, expressing the hidden lives and hardships of those working in grim factories in Shenzhen, China. Presented by Canadian Stage at the Berkeley Street Theatre Njo Kong Kie performs, produces, composes and directs the musical and theatrical mix.

Continue reading Review: I Swallowed a Moon Made of Iron (Canadian Stage) →

Choreographer Lee Su-Feh creates a participatory meditation on migration in Toronto

Developed as part of the Migrant Bodies Project, The Things I Carry is a solo performance by seasoned artist Lee Su-Feh. Presented by Theatre Passe Muraille and Dancemakers, Su-Feh tells stories while reflecting on her life and other’s surrounding the topic of migration.

Continue reading Review: The Things I Carry (Dancemakers / Theatre Passe Muraille) →