Stage Door News
Stage Door News
Citadel + Compagnie (C+C) is delighted to unveil its electrifying 2018/19 Bright Nights season. The company’s signature performance series, Bright Nights is curated by C+C Artistic Director Laurence Lemieux to encourage established and emerging Canadian dance artists to take risks and push the boundaries of their craft. Accordingly, this season showcases six world premieres from Toronto-based artists including a solo choreographed and performed by Lemieux herself, a work by resident choreographer James Kudelka featuring the venerated ballet great Evelyn Hart, a Bright Nights-commissioned quartet by Ryerson University graduate Tori Mehaffey, a solo choreographed by daring dance artist Allison Cummings, a work by award-winning choreographer William Yong, and a collaboration between contemporary-dance company Social Growl Dance and vocalist Blunt Chunks.
“The Canadian dance scene is a veritable wellspring of artistic innovation,” says Artistic Director Laurence Lemieux. “The 2018/19 Bright Nights season features an exceptionally vast and varied selection of contemporary dance artists who are fearlessly testing their limits with inexhaustible curiosity and ingenuity.”
The Bright Nights season will also present the Toronto premiere of Quebec City-based Alan Lake’s ambitious Gratter la pénombre along with the hotly anticipated return of Toronto-based art activist DA Hoskins Lady Baby and BC-based choreographer Sarah Chase’s captivating solo for the incomparable Peggy Baker, entitled unmoored. In addition to his new work, James Kudelka will be remounting his 2016 Dora Mavor Moore Award-nominated production Against Nature.
2018/19 BRIGHT NIGHTS SEASON
Tickets on sale now at citadelcie.com
Love me out of it
October 11-13 & 17-20, 2018
World Premiere
Choreography: Laurence Lemieux
Set to the iconic album Frantic City by Canadian punk band Teenage Head, Love me out of it is the anticipated world premiere solo choreographed and performed by Citadel + Compagnie Artistic Director Laurence Lemieux. This work will explore Lemieux’s longstanding relationship and her deep respect to the art form of dance through the eclectic range of characters that come to life with every song on this platinum album.
CITADEL DANCE MIX 2018
Nov. 21-24 & Nov. 28 – Dec. 1, 2018
Triple Bill: Includes Two World Premieres
Choreography: Allison Cummings, DA Hoskins, and Tori Mehaffey
This inaugural seasonal triple bill features some of Toronto’s most daring and provocative dance creators, including two world premieres.
Hailed by NOW magazine as “a heartbreaking revelation” and an “enormous emotional force”, DA Hoskins’ 2008 work Lady Baby was inspired by DH Lawrence’s best-known novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover. This captivating interdisciplinary dance work follows one woman through an exploration of relationships, self-image, and created personae.
As she shall obtain such command of her mass vein passageways is a world premiere by the fearless Toronto-based choreographer Allison Cummings. Performed by Toronto Dance Theatre alumna Kaitlin Standeven, this is an unraveling and despairing duet between a dancer and the desire to control.
Citadel + Compagnie has eagerly commissioned emerging Toronto-based creator and dance artist Tori Mehaffey for an as-yet-untitled quartet. Mehaffey brings a fresh voice and unbridled energy to this audacious programme.
Larry’s Christmas Cabaret
Choreography: Laurence Lemieux & others
Larry’s Christmas Cabaret is Citadel + Compagnie’s hot & quirky annual holiday tradition, which sells out each year! This one-night only audience favourite celebrates the season with a not-to-be missed variety of local acts, festive cheer and a late-night bar to toast to the magic & merriment of the Christmas season.
SKOW
World Premiere
Choreography: William Yong / Zata Omm Dance Projects
Award-winning, Toronto-based choreographer William Yong makes his Bright Nights debut with SKOW - an acronym derived from “Some Kinds Of Wonder.” Performed by Swedish-born dancer Johanna Bergfeldt, this innovative solo work is inspired by those things in Bergfeldt’s life that inspire a sense of wonderment and fascination. Praised by critics for his gift for “transforming the familiar into something fresh and provocative,” Yong offers an imaginative, theatrical and visually intense choreographic journey that reframes the quotidian as transcendent.
Gratter la pénombre
Toronto Premiere
Choreography: Alan Lake (in collaboration with the dancers)
In his first appearance in Toronto, acclaimed Quebec City-based choreographer Alan Lake’s Gratter la pénombre ventures into the intimate territories of his performers through a series of portrait solos. At once dark and luminous, the moving layers of the dancers interior landscapes crystallize into mythological archetypes, which magnifies their humanity.
Amorous Playlist
World Premiere
Choreography: Social Growl Dance / Riley Sims in collaboration with Blunt Chunks and the performers
Amorous Playlist marks the third collaboration between two emerging Toronto-based artists, Social Growl Dance’s artistic director Riley Sims and solo singer Blunt Chunks. An intimate, eccentric and stirring new creation for six dancers, it will be performed simultaneously with a live concert by Blunt Chunks. Sims, who has been praised for his “vivid, hilarious and beautifully intelligent” work (The Dance Post), is poised at the beginning of what will surely be an illustrious career.
Four Old Legs
April 11-13 & 17-20, 2019
World Premiere
Choreography: James Kudelka
Citadel + Compagnie’s resident choreographer and Order Of Canada appointee James Kudelka will share the stage with beloved ballet icon Evelyn Hart in Four Old Legs. A performance piece celebrating time, memory and experience, these titans of the Canadian dance scene will explore the premise that growing older is something better practiced by young people.
unmoored
Direction & Choreography: Sarah Chase
Text: Peggy Baker
Recently nominated for three Dora Mavor Moore Awards for outstanding choreographer (Sarah Chase), outstanding performance (female: Peggy Baker) and outstanding lighting design (Marc Parent), this work has been hailed by critics as a work “of total perfection”, (Paula Citron) when it premiered in Toronto in 2018. Finely honed text, action and staging create the framework for a performance of raw and searing emotion that addresses the themes of love, disability, caregiving and death.
Against Nature
May 22-25 & May 29 – June 1, 2019
Choreography: James Kudelka
A remount of the 2016 Dora Mavor Moore Award-nominated production, James Kudelka’s Against Nature is the second in a series of salon-style creations for Citadel + Compagnie. His first salon creation, From the House of Mirth, premiered in 2012 and wove distinct art forms into one. Similarly, Against Nature incorporates one dancer, two singers and three musicians with original composition by James Rolfe and libretto by Alex Poch-Goldin. Hailed as “a must-see” (Toronto Star), Against Nature pulls from Joris-Karl Huysmans novel by the same name. Says Kudelka of the novel, “It is sensuous, celebrating smell, touch, colour, skin, poetry, painting, sex and home decorating; to the point of decadence.”
Tickets for Citadel + Compagnie’s 2018/19 Bright Nights season are now on sale at citadelcie.com or by calling 416 364 8011;1
All performances take place at 8pm at The Citadel: Ross Centre for Dance, located at 304 Parliament Street, Toronto.
Ticket prices: Adults: $25; Student & Senior & Artist: $20.
About Citadel + Compagnie (citadelcie.com)
Citadel + Compagnie, formerly Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie, was founded by Bill Coleman and Laurence Lemieux in 2000. This Toronto-based professional dance company creates, produces and presents works on local, national and international scales from its home base in a former Salvation Army Citadel in the Regent Park neighbourhood of Toronto.
Named in honour of its cherished home at The Citadel, C+C has evolved from a husband-and-wife run company to a distinguished organization with a renewed mandate of fostering cultural participation and nurturing creative excellence. C+C encourages artistic risk and innovation through its performing arts series, Bright Nights, and tours accessible works of contemporary dance across Canada. By demonstrating fearless artistic leadership backed by strong community engagement, C+C has established itself as one of the leading companies of its kind in Canada.
After nine years as artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada (1996-2005), James Kudelka was named C+C’s resident choreographer in 2008. With C+C, he has revisited some of his greatest works and developed challenging new contemporary creations. Kudelka’s presence at C+C has elevated the company’s profile, and offered audiences a new platform to experience the work of one of the country’s finest choreographers.
Under Lemieux’s leadership, C+C has had a marked impact on the local community, offering free studio access to key neighbourhood initiatives: Toronto Police Force 51 Division's youth and hip-hop program, the Regent Park School of Music, and Toronto Council Fire’s Indigenous dance program, First Fire. These collaborations have built lasting ties within the community, and as a result, The Citadel has become a sought-after safe space for youth to gather and explore their creativity.
Photo: Alexander Dobson in Against Nature. ©2016.
2018-06-07
Toronto: Citadel + Compagnie unveils its 2018/19 Bright Nights season