With a new team, the big news, the big move, our new home, and all the growing pains that have ensued...well! We're not quite out of the woods yet and some of our best laid plans have not quite come to fruition. Did we mention this is a volunteer-run organization?! It's been real, friends, really friggin' real.

Because of this, we've been holding off announcing our 2018/19 residencies since, oh you know, September. Seeing as it's now April and the raccoons are gearing up for BBQ season and another residency call is just around the corner...we thought it was round about about time we let you know what's up!

research

Augusto Bitter Both cooking and theatre nourish my soul. I'm interested in exploring the storytelling opportunities inherent in both, while also teasing out their differences, their colonized histories, and what they reveal about our human interaction. Like sharing a meal, I want to create this same kind of intimacy, care, and immediacy in performance. I would like to focus less on a conventional development of plot and character (for now) and more towards an associative sequence of images, actions, and motifs. These exercises will focus on the sounds and movements of the kitchen, while eventually finding entry points into the food scarcity emergency in Venezuela.
hub's note: This residency happened! Yahoo!

Allison Cummings I have so many conflicted questions within the multiple shifts of perspective when living solely for ones self is abandoned to living completely for another. My residency will focus on exploring the battle between contemporary feminism with the role of servitude. I seek to disentangle the fabric that binds a female dancer to her body in the aftermath of having completely given up said body to another being. I aim to examine the dark recesses and taboo surrounding loss of self when juxtaposed with the greatest love. I am not consumed in the personal and hope to passively confront an isolation that occurs once a creator enters the world of parenting. I often question the lack of voice in artistic spaces that examine motherhood. I am curious to unpack the why of this conundrum.

hub's note: This residency is in progress! Hey-o!

Michelle Urbano Historically, masks and rituals were a way to connect people to the spiritual realm, to the natural world, to one another. Today, our masks keep us hidden and disconnected. My goal is to examine modern masks in an attempt to confront my own insecurities that keep me hidden behind one. As a metaphor for the waste and resource abuse resulting from consumer culture, I will build masks and ritual objects out of discarded things. These objects will be the starting point for a physical exploration of the daily rituals and consumption we partake in.
hub's note: Also in progress! Woot!

Jesse Wabegijig and Maria Wodzinsky Jesse and Maria are searching for new metaphors to understand a transhumanist future, where human/machine hybrids challenge our sense of identity. We are interested in stories of hybridity where there is no Cartesian mind-body divide. This search pulls us away from the Judeo-Christian canon. We are doing away with notions of transcending the body – ideas of downloading consciousness into the cloud, and other popular disruptions in our zeitgeist, from Black Mirror to Westworld. Our investigation looks to models in the natural world for hybrid identities, where collectives can form an individual mind … this brings us to ants and ant colonies as the central theme!

hub's note: This residency starts Saturday! *high fives a stranger*

launchpad

Decades Collective Decades Collective is choreographer/performers Mi Young Kim, Maxine Heppner, Sashar Zarif, Mafa Makhubalo, Jennifer Dallas, Atri Nundy working in collaboration with Banuta Rubess, Jill Carter and Troy Emery Twigg. They are an ad hoc dance ensemble that spans generations (7 Decades). They work within a variety of ancestral influences, their inherited forms, and at the same time the diversity of the contemporary world they live in. Together across decades to dance this earth, Decades Collective is collaboratively questioning ideas of ownership v.s. relationship, here and now. This is their first creation.

hub's note: Decades managed to fit in half their residency hours before our space closed. As they were working towards a January premiere at Dance Ontario's Dance Weekend, we were unfortunately unable to support them beyond that. We were so happy to have had them in the space when we could.

David Norsworthy Working towards a premiere in Fall/Winter 2019, I will embark on two separate explorations: The first involves two dancers caught inside an eternal embrace that is simultaneously loving and oppressive. I will offer each dancer a task that is unknown to the other; challenging them to non-verbally negotiate and compromise on their journey of understanding what the other wants, while also working towards accomplishing their own task. The second exploration involves a choreographic contraption that I’m naming the “Interdependency Suits”, which can be activated by one dancer and one audience member. Both people will step into their own jumpsuits that are connected via ropes, poles, wires and bungee cords. I am interested in how these ‘tethers’ will disrupt the autonomy of both individuals.

hub's note: Like Decades, we happily managed to have David in the old space for part of his residency prior to closing. By the time the new space was up and running, the project David had applied with (a choreographic response to Hajra Waheed’s upcoming Power Plant exhibition) was unfortunately no longer happening due to budget constraints. David has a show opening this week at the Toronto Centre for The Arts.

gallery

Claudia Edwards Hotwire is a monthly live art series spotlighting excellence by artists who are 2-Spirit / Queer / Trans / Black / Indigenous / People of Colour (2QTBIPOC). This event series queers lines across disciplines, amplifying our voices in order to draw out new connections and experiences. Come and you may see: performance art, live music, poetry, experimental scores, dance, cabaret, theatre, drag, comedy, puppetry, socially-engaged works, and anything betwixt! Proudly presenting artists from Tkaronto and beyond, 2QTBIPOC experience takes centre stage to be further cultivated, appreciated, and exchanged. Claudia Edwards is a maker and curator of contemporary performance.

hub's note: THE GOOD NEWS: Hotwire kicked off on March 8th and was SO EFFING RAD!!! THE BAD NEWS: 901 Queen St. W. is a great new home for us but unfortunately we have learned/are learning it might not be such a great home for our more *energetic* (aka hype AF) events. Never fear, we are keeping this residency going as planned through June...but are on the lookout for a new space to house it in! Free/by exchange or cheap - if you know of such a space, get at us! 

live-in

Angie Cheng/Winnie Ho/Chi Long We are a newly formed dance collective based in Montreal, working through choreography and performance to reconnect with our cultural values as persons of color (POC) from the Asian Diaspora. We are examining our perspectives as distinct from the Eurocentric lens of the contemporary arts milieu. We reclaim and de-shame the use of our own ethnicity and culture in our artistic practices, having it valued and not subcategorized as tokenism or "other" art.The three of us have previously worked together on other people’s projects, but have now been drawn together for mutual support through a collective process. Growing up in Canada as members of Asian diasporas, with different degrees of connection and confusion to our respective cultures, we will use an open process in the space for co-exploring, co-creating and co-habiting. Our practice will be rooted in lived, familial experiences of plural Asian heritages. As members of diasporic groups, our dominant experiences of our respective cultures have been rooted in the home: food we grew up with, language spoken at home but not at school or work, holidays celebrated separately from our peers.

hub's note: Beyond the little white box on Markham St, the biggest casualty of our move was our live in residency. Sadly, the conditions of our new lease prevent anyone from sleeping in the space. As such, Angie, Winnie, and Chi's residency - WHICH WE WERE SO EXCITED FOR - is a no go. Because these are remarkable humans, they are still making a go of it and finding a way to be in Toronto in a live/work environment to make this project a reality. For our part, hub is committed to helping support any ancillary activities that come with that work as it progresses...stay tuned.

Visit www.hub14.org.