Stage Door News
Stage Door News
Volcano Theatre is pleased to announce their mainstage curatorial selection, Century Song, as part of the second annual PROGRESS festival, taking place January-February 2016 at The Theatre Centre. Century Song has its Toronto premiere at PROGRESS from January 19 (preview) to January 23, 2016. Opening night is January 20, 2016.
Century Song is a live performance hybrid created by luminous soprano Neema Bickersteth and Dora Award winning collaborators Ross Manson (direction) and Kate Alton (choreography). Inspired in part by Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, Bickersteth seamlessly melds song and movement to inhabit a century of women whose identities are contained within her own. This exquisitely unique show features music by some of the past 100 years’ most adventurous composers, including Sergei Rachmaninoff, Olivier Messiaen, John Cage, Georges Aperghis and Toronto’s own Reza Jacobs.
Century Song is a Canada/Germany artistic collaboration which looks at the past century in Canada from the perspective of a black Canadian woman - but it does so in an unusual way: the show is wordless. Composed entirely of classical songs on open vowels or nonsense words (vocalises) and projected animated artwork (developed by top German stage projection firm fettFilm), the show dismantles the usual approach to history (dates and names) and instead is a pure exploration of human emotion as expressed through art.
Through Bickersteth’s captivating one-woman performance, audiences gain an emotional insight into the lives of some of the women whom our traditional approach to history has overlooked. Sharing the stage with Bickersteth are two of Toronto’s finest musical experimenters: pianist Gregory Oh and percussionist and computer sound specialist Debashis Sinha.
Born in Alberta to Sierra Leonian immigrants, Neema Bickersteth has received acclaim for her work as a classical singer, performing at major venues across Canada, and in Europe. Her own interest in new and experimental music as well as her desire to explore the untold histories of black women over the past century led to the development of Century Song. Originating with vocalises and then adding dance, structured improvisational music and video along the way, Century Song has grown into an epic exploration of Canadian hybrid identity rooted in Bickersteth’s own unique perspective and experience.
In short, Century Song is a wordless chronicle of the age, built from art.
Volcano Theatre returns to PROGRESS as a curator for its second annual festival. Volcano joins fellow curators SummerWorks, The Theatre Centre, Volcano Theatre, FADO Performance Art Centre, Dancemakers and Aluna
Theatre to engage Toronto in conversation surrounding the creation and presentation of socially engaged works tackling challenging subject matter, like race, gender and identity.
Performances:
Tues Jan 19 – 8.30pm Wed Jan 20 – 8.30pm Thurs Jan 21 – 8.30pm Fri Jan 22 – 8.30pm Sat Jan 23 – 2.00pm Sat Jan 23 – 8.30pm
Tickets:
*PREVIEW $15 all tickets *OPENING
$20 Students/Senior/Artsworkers
$25 General Admission
Promo Code: $18 tickets for all people, all shows with code ‘EARLY18’ – expires Dec 25th Progress 3-show pass available for $50
About Volcano Theatre
Volcano is an international award-winning theatre company based in Toronto. Using innovations in global and intercultural performance practice, Volcano creates theatre that is stylistically and socially modern, a theatre that explores identity, politics, and history. Volcano is both cosmopolitan and uniquely Canadian, bringing this country the latest in international theatre trends while touring Canadian artists and works around the world. Led by Artistic Director Ross Manson, Volcano has been a vital contributor to the independent theatre scene since 1994, and continues to question what it means to be a purveyor of outward-looking, rigorous Canadian performance.
Get social:
volcano.ca
T: @volcanotheatre F: /volcanotoronto
About Progress
Progress is a new international festival of performance and ideas produced by the SummerWorks Performance Festival in partnership with The Theatre Centre. The festival is collectively produced by a series of Toronto-based curating companies operating within a contemporary performance context. Progress 2016 is curated by SummerWorks, The Theatre Centre, Aluna Theatre, Volcano Theatre, FADO Performance Art Centre, Dancemakers. #progressTO thisisprogress.ca
Photo: Neema Bickersteth.
2016-01-06
Toronto: Volcano presents "Century Song" at Progress festival January 19-23