Stage Door News
Stage Door News
SummerWorks Performance Festival and The Theatre Centre are excited to announce the third edition of Progress, a collectively-curated festival that brings together the most progressive and transgressive Canadian and international performance works, running February 1 – February 18, 2018 at The Theatre Centre.
As part of the collaborative curatorial model, Progress assembles a different group of collaborators each year. It is an innovative and non-hierarchical approach that gives space and resources to both established and emerging curatorial voices. The 2018 Festival is collectively curated by SummerWorks Performance Festival, The Theatre Centre, Anandam Dancetheatre, FADO Performance Art Centre, Little Black Afro Theatre Company, Toronto Dance Community Love-In and Volcano.
“We are thrilled to bring Progress back this year in collaboration with The Theatre Centre and other like-minded local companies that share our commitment to exploring new possibilities for performance,” says Laura Nanni, Artistic and Managing Director of SummerWorks Performance Festival. “The unique collaborative curation model embraced by Progress remains at its core. It enables sharing, dialogue and exchange between companies that results in a festival that could not happen in isolation; Progress is more than just the sum of its individual parts.”
Franco Boni, The Theatre Centre’s Artistic Director adds, “The Theatre Centre is very pleased to return as a presenting partner and home to Progress. Progress is vital. It represents a movement away from the singular vision of an Artistic Director and places the decision-making in the hands of many. This year, all the collaborators have come together more often than in previous years. It’s been a true investment of time and heart, and this shared and collaborative approach to programming has resulted in the most exciting festival line-up to date.”
The lineup for this year’s Festival includes: internationally renowned theatre company Motus’ electrifying exploration of identity in the genre/gender defying MDLSX, starring award-winning performer Silvia Calderoni; Leeds-based artist Selina Thompson’s Race Cards, which challenges participants to confront their biases in this constantly growing installation; UK-based live artist Dickie Beau’s hallucinatory solo performance LOST in TRANS; Contemporaneity 2.0, an ongoing series that unsettles the use of ‘contemporary’ to describe European and white American theatrical dance; Quebec’s Joe Jack et John’s Dis Merci, a multidisciplinary performance that cracks open the complex issues around how we treat anyone who deviates from the norm; and Dominican-born Ligia Lewis’ Bessie Award-winning minor matter, featuring three dancers pushing against the boundaries of the stage and challenging conventional views of the black body. Together, these works confront issues of race, gender and identity, concepts that are timely and relevant not only locally but on a global scale.
Progress gives Toronto audiences the opportunity to see some of the most critically acclaimed performances from around the world while creating opportunities for dialogue and partnership development between international and Toronto based artists and programmers. In addition to collaborating with local companies, Progress is working with the PuSh Festival (Vancouver), High Performance Rodeo (Calgary), Istituto Italiano di Cultura – Toronto, Montréal, arts interculturels, Live Art Development Agency (UK) and the British Council to bring these works to Toronto. These collaborations are strengthening touring networks across Canada and internationally, and contributing to the development and growth of the local, national and international arts ecology.
The success of previous editions of Progress has demonstrated that Toronto audiences have an appetite for contemporary, experimental performance and the desire to engage in conversation around it. As in past years, programmed performances and installations will be accompanied by a line-up of ancillary programming connecting the presented work. SummerWorks Performance Festival is curating and producing the ancillary programming that will include opening and closing night parties, community meals, workshops, free exhibitions, talks and artist Q&A’s. A highlight of this year’s ancillary programming is an ASL Interpreted Long Table hosted by its originator, Guggenheim award-winning artist and performer Lois Weaver, presented in collaboration with FADO Performance Art Centre and The Rhubarb Festival.
For complete details on Progress parties, meals, talks, and workshops, please visit progressfestival.org / #progressTO. More information on Accessibility can be found at progressfestival.org/accessibility.
Tickets for Progress are on sale now can be purchased online at www.progressfestival.org or by calling The Theatre Centre box office at 416-538-0988. Single tickets are $25 and three-show Festival passes are $60.
Progress 2018 lineup
MDLSX (Italy)
With Silvia Calderoni
Directed by Enrico Casagrande and Daniela Nicolò
Produced by Motus
Curated and presented by The Theatre Centre
Runtime: 80 minutes, Presented in Italian with English surtitles
* Toronto premiere
Franco Boni Theatre
“I was born twice: I was first one thing, and then the other.”
Award-winning performer Silvia Calderoni defies gender and genre in this visceral and visually ravishing production from Italy’s renowned performance company, Motus.
MDLSX is an explosive performance-art-piece-meets-pulsating-DJ-set which refuses to be labelled or contained. It spills across barriers, both artistic and societal, in its exploration of gender ambiguity. Combining Calderoni’s own life stories with fiction, the works of Judith Butler, and rock & roll, MDLSX is a kaleidoscopic investigation of identity. It is a hymn to the freedom of becoming, to gender-bending, to a being that cannot be contained by the borders of the body, skin colour, sexual organs, or a national identity.
"Silvia Calderoni must be made of mercury, or some improbably liquid element that has yet to be discovered. Surely no body of mortal flesh could undergo the quicksilver transformations achieved by this remarkable performer...." – New York Times
About The Theatre Centre
The Theatre Centre is a nationally recognized live-arts incubator that serves as a research and development hub for the cultural sector. We provide artists with infrastructure and resources to make their art – from idea to production. The Theatre Centre is committed to new work and new ways of working. We are a public space, open and accessible to the people of our community, where citizens can imagine, debate, celebrate, protest, unite and be responsible for inventing the future. (theatrecentre.org)
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Race Cards (England)
Created by Selina Thompson
Curated and presented by The Theatre Centre in association with Little Black Afro Theatre Company
Runtime: timed entry throughout open hours. Free admission. Availability is limited. Advanced and at the door registration available. Presented in English.
* North American premiere
BMO Incubator for Live Arts
In three sittings across 24 hours over one weekend in Edinburgh, Selina Thompson wrote 1000 questions about race. You’re invited to answer one of them.
65. Are you black, or are you ‘new black’?
170. What is the long-term psychological impact of white supremacy on people of colour?
220. My mum does not talk about race anymore. It makes her uncomfortable, tired. Will this happen to me?
307. Why do people assume that racism will just passively die out if we wait long enough?
440. Are you angry?
541. Whatever happened to Kony 2012?
660. Who is more problematic – famous racist Nigel Farage, or the liberal journalist politely asking him questions?
720. When does it all end?
Race Cards is a constantly growing installation and archive. Each version never takes the same form twice. It’s been a card game, a durational performance, and an 18-hour one-to-one. It has been supported by BUZZCUT, Camden People’s Theatre, Forest Fringe, and FIERCE Festival.
“...thoughtful, generous, brave & unspeakably brilliant” - Maddy Costa
About Little Black Afro Theatre Company
Little Black Afro Theatre Company is a community of artists dedicated to providing spaces and resources for the development of new Canadian work. From readings and workshops to full productions we connect artists with local charities through outreach, donations and volunteering. (littleblackafro.com)
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LOST in TRANS (England)
Conceived and performed by Dickie Beau
Curated and presented by FADO Performance Art Centre
Runtime: 70 minutes, Presented in English
* Canadian premiere
Franco Boni Theatre
Dickie Beau presents a poetic performance of peculiar personas. LOST in TRANS takes Dickie’s sensational multimedia aesthetic to hallucinatory new heights.
Continuing his shtick of using playback, in which he 'channels' voices he sees as being misplaced, misrepresented or misunderstood, Dickie breathes new life into found sound, 're-writing' audio artefacts and playing them back through his body to become a live performing archive of the missing.
Presenting a compelling constellation of vivid characters inspired by cultural antiquity, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, LOST in TRANS is an off-road trip through the cultural archives. Cyclops, the one-eyed giant, becomes a third eye through which we view the world anew, including a radical re-visioning of Echo, the Nymph, of whom all that remained when she died of a broken heart was the sound of her voice...
'Phenomenal talent... a powerful and moving artist… breathtaking' – Time Out (London)
“Dickie Beau is the closest this country has to a genuine medium, an auteur of the airwaves, who can put flesh onto recorded sound in a manner both gripping and disturbing.” – This is Cabaret (London)
About FADO Performance Art Centre
Established in 1993, FADO Performance Art Centre is a not-for-profit artist-run centre for performance art based in Toronto, Canada. FADO recognizes that performance art as a practice has multiple histories and encompasses various regional, cultural, political and aesthetic differences. FADO exists to provide a supportive platform and rigorous curatorial context for the work of Canadian and international performance artists, at all stages of their careers, who have chosen performance art as a primary medium to create and communicate provocative new images and new perspectives. (www.performanceart.ca)
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Contemporaneity 2.0 (India, Québec, Tkaronto)
Curated and produced by Anandam Dancetheatre
Runtime: 90 minutes, Presented in English
* North American premieres
Presented in an alternating program:
Gandhari (India)
Created by Gitanjali Kolanad
Feb 14, 16 & 17
Becoming & MWON'D (uma)
Becoming (Tkaronto):
Created & Written by Asia Clarke & Jade Lee Hoy
Directed by Gein Wong
MWON'D (uma) (Québec):
Created by Rhodnie Désir
Feb 15, 17 & 18
Franco Boni Theatre
“….a new perspective on space, movement, and performance, and what can be created if we’re willing to take a few risks.” -Toronto Standard
Contemporaneity unsettles the widespread use of “contemporary” to describe European and white American theatrical dance. With this ongoing series, Anandam proposes a re-centering of “contemporary” that widens circles of inclusion, aesthetics and political frames through the body.
In Gandhari, Gitanjali Kolanad (India) uses the mythological figure from the Mahabharata and the martial art form of kalaripayat to examine the effects of loss on the body, tracing a path from grief, through anger and revenge, to transcendence. In Becoming, by Wild Moon & Eventual Ashes (Tkaronto), a young woman journeys from Turtle Island to the dream world to connect to her ancestral guides, challenge her oppression and trauma, and affirm her magic. In MWON’D – UMA, Rhodnie Désir (Montréal) features b-boy Greg “Krypto” Selinger expressing the intimate, troubled and spiritual space of being.
About Anandam Dancetheatre
Anandam creates live performances that explore the body as a curious and shifting filter for diverse viewpoints and practices. Performances are created from dissonant sources in often alternative spaces or re-visioned traditional ones, collaboration among artists is post-disciplinary and the aesthetic interest is polycultural. (www.anandam.ca)
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Dis Merci (Canada/Québec)
Creation, direction and set design by Catherine Bourgeois
Produced by Joe Jack et John
Curated and presented by Volcano
Runtime: 80 minutes, Presented in French with English surtitles
* Toronto premiere
BMO Incubator for Live Arts
The arrival of more than 40,000 refugees in Canada since 2015 provides the backdrop to this timely work that explores our relationship to our Canadian identity; to our individual identities; and how we relate to "the Other."
In Dis Merci, four neighbours are getting ready to throw a party for a refugee family arriving in Canada. Despite their best intentions to accept the newcomers into their lives with genuine warmth, they quickly veer into prejudice, stereotypes, and dysfunction. Through dance, theatre, knitting, and inflatable objects, this deliciously awkward devised piece cracks open complex issues around how we treat anyone who deviates from the norm.
Having charmed audiences at home and abroad, one of Montréal’s most disarmingly adventurous companies, Joe Jack et John, make their Toronto premiere with a signature work tackling the realities of the society in which we live with grace, honesty, and dark humour
About Volcano
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, exploring 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. (volcano.ca)
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minor matter (Dominican Republic / USA / Germany)
Concept and Choreography by Ligia Lewis
With Corey Scott-Gilbert, Ligia Lewis, Tiran Willemse (in creation with Hector Thami Manekehla, Jonathan Gonzalez)
Produced by Ligia Lewis in co-production with HAU Hebbel am Ufer
Curated and presented by Toronto Dance Community Love-In
Runtime: 60 minutes, Presented in English
Tactile Audio Display seating available at all performances
* Canadian premiere
Franco Boni Theatre
In minor matter, two apparatuses are at play - blackness and the spectacle. This is the second work by Dominican-born Ligia Lewis from her trilogy (BLUE, RED, WHITE). Three dancers push against the boundaries of the stage, while illustrating a humble relationship between their bodies and the space that encapsulates it.
Lewis turns to the colour red to materialize thoughts between love and rage. Built on the logic of interdependence, the theatre’s parts—light, sound, image, and architecture—become entangled with the performers, giving life to a vibrant social and poetic space.
minor matter (2017 Bessie Award for Outstanding Production) unfolds multi-directionally, creating a poetics of dissonance from which questions of re-presentation, presentation, abstraction, and the limits of signification emerge. The performers get exhausted as their bodies strip the stage of its formal mystique to approach its matter—black.
“It turns out utopia is going to have to coexist with apocalypse and that both have been with us all along. Lewis’s work offers a kind of oblique blueprint for how joy, hope, anger, and despair are all always the case, using the paradigmatic fact of blackness.” - 4Columns, New York City
Canadian tour developed in association with Montréal, arts interculturels.
About Toronto Dance Community Love-In
Toronto Dance Community Love-In is home to the love revolution, taking place in Canadian dance. Dedicated to the radical and rampant cultivation of tomorrow’s badass leaders and lovers, we promote democratic pedagogy, anti-competition and wild creative abandon through our programming and our presence in the Toronto dance community. By connecting, supporting and welcoming artists locally and across the planet, the Love-In is making Toronto a destination for revolutionary artist-run dance activity. We are building better making; we are radicalizing movers; we are building a dance house of LOVE. (tolovein.com)
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About Progress
Progress is an international festival of performance and ideas presented in partnership by SummerWorks Performance Festival and The Theatre Centre. The festival is collectively curated and produced by a series of Toronto-based companies, operating within a contemporary performance context. This year’s collaborating companies are Anandam Dancetheatre, FADO Performance Art Centre, Little Black Afro Theatre Company, SummerWorks Performance Festival, Toronto Dance Community Love-In, The Theatre Centre and Volcano. #progressTO
2017-12-19
Toronto: PROGRESS, an international festival of performance and ideas, returns February 1-18, 2018