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Tickets for the evening performances will be on sale at the LSPU Hall Box Office (709) 753-4531.
Tickets for the Newfoundland Showcase will be available at the Arts and Culture Centre.
The film series at The Rooms is free with admission to the Rooms, ($5 general/$4 seniors)
Purchase a Festival Pass ans Save 15%
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Welcome to Neighbourhood Dance Works' 18th annual Festival of New Dance!
It's hard to imagine that it is eighteen years since the Festival of New Dance was first celebrated in St. John's. In this, the 18th Festival, we are bringing to St. John's a truly fantastic line-up of choreographers for a full week of exciting dance events. To add to our already full program, St. John's is also hosting the Conference of the Society for Canadian Dance Studies during the festival week, making for a full out week of dance. There will be performances, workshops, master classes, presentations, academic papers and panel discussions, films, galas and more.
This year's Festival program will include the internationally acclaimed Toronto Dance Theatre, featuring the award winning choreography of native Newfoundlander Christopher House; a full length work by Nora Chipaumire, a self exiled artist born in Zimbabwe during the war of liberation, whose immensely powerful work is inspired by artistic movements from her native country and the music of the revolution; Fujiwara Dance Inventions from Toronto with No Exit, based on the play by Jean Paul Sartre, choreographed by Denise Fujiwara. A must see for St. John's theatre loving audience; Chanti Wadge from Montreal bring us One Hundred Returnings, an exquisite solo performed by one of Canada's most expressive dance artists. A Newfoundland Showcase will feature eagerly anticipated work by Sarah Joy Stoker, Louise Moyes and Calla Lachance.
Neighbourhood Dance Works offers a multitude of dance experiences throughout the year. Our most recent productions were
Broken Accidents, a co-production with RCA Theatre Company directed by Lois Brown, written by Joel Thomas Hynes with choreography by Louise Moyes and Sarah Joy Stoker;
Ame Henderson (Toronto) /DANCE/SONGS/ "a dance in the shape of a rock show", which we co-produced with Live Art Dance Productions of Halifax. As well as presenting some of Canada's finest contemporary choreographers, we are also building the dance sector in this province through providing opportunities for emerging artists, outreach programs, workshops and classes, school visits, etc. Each year, we reach more people and provide more opportunities for people to experience dance.
Robbie Thomas, Manager
Neighbourhood Dance Works
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 Toronto Dance Theatre (Toronto)
Chiasmata
Choreographer Christopher House
June 17 and 18, 8 pm, LSPU Hall
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Chiasmata takes us on a strange and beautiful journey through time, space and the portals of memory. In Christopher House's masterly follow-up to the physical and technological virtuosity of Timecode Break (2006), the dancers inhabit a cryptic world that ranges in tone from playful to percussive to sublimely vulnerable.
Produced in collaboration with Gemini and Dora Mavor Moore award-winning sound designer Phil Strong, Dora Mavor Moore award-winning designer Cheryl Lalonde and veteran lighting designer Roelof Peter Snippe, Chiasmata is a deeply humanistic response to the complexities of modern life.
Chiasmata was nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Choreography in 2007.
"[Here] the body has become an instrument where every part contributes to the movement language. The dancers speak with their elbows, knees and ankles. I could instinctively understand everything the dancers were saying to themselves, each other, or to the audience. That is the marvel House and his dancers have created." Paula Citron, Globe and Mail. |
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 Nora Chipaumire (New York/Zimbabwe)
Chimurenga
musings out loud about the revolution, convoys, curfews and roadblocks and kaffir make up this 70 minute trilogy, collectively entitled Chimurenga, meaning struggle.
June 19 and 20, 8 pm
LSPU Hall
Photo: © Najib Joe Hakim |
Relevant and timely, this work weaves historical as well as personal recollections about Zimbabwe's chimurenga, moving from childhood recollections to a celebration of womanhood. Word, gesture, song, stillness, music, shouts, screams and filmed image converge and collide in this artist's solo dance-works.
Chipaumire is part of an urgent and explosive African contemporary modern dance movement. She is a remarkable solo artist who investigates the collaborative process within cultural, political, economic and technological identities of African contemporary life. Her work is transnational, unafraid and eager to burn cultural, creative, and geographic boundaries while illuminating what it means to be Zimbabwean / woman/ black / human in an increasingly borderless world.
"Color-blind expression. Unique to humanity" Philip Szporer; HOUR, Montreal |
 Fujiwara Dance Inventions (Toronto)
No Exit
Choreographer Denise Fujiwara
(in a shared program with Chanti Wadge
June 21 and 22, 8 pm
LSPU Hall
Photo: John Lauener |
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No Exit is a compelling dance-theatre work inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre's play of the same name. The narrative follows three strangers as they arrive in an unlikely hell, a sitting room with a locked door. With exasperating provocations, humour and pathos, the characters exemplify the dilemma that Sartre has put forward through his proposition, "Hell is other people". The work is performed by the talented Sasha Ivanochko, Rebecca Hope Terry and Miko Sobreira, with a live musical score by Phil Strong.
Denise Fujiwara is a choreographer, dancer, actor, dance impresario and teacher. In 1991 she formed her own company to house the development of her exquisite solo concerts. Her approaches to the disciplines of dance technique, improvisation, performance and choreography have developed over a life-time of intensive research, practice and performance. She is the winner of numerous awards for film, performance and choreography.
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 Chanti Wadge (Montreal)
One Hundred Returnings
Choreographer Chanti Wadge
(in a shared program with Fujiwara Dance Inventions)
June 21 and 22, 8 pm, LSPU Hall
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In this short solo, Montreal dance and multi-disciplinary artist Chanti Wadge continues her study of moving through various states and stages of 'becoming and unbecoming human being'. One Hundred Returnings looks at the evolution of physical and emotional expression in the context of a human lifespan - birth, aging, death - and draws inspiration from the myriad mirrors of the natural world. |
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 Solid State
Take it Back
Choreography Helen Simard and JoDee Allen
(late night show and closing party)
June 22, 10 pm
Masonic Temple
Photo: Melissa Gobeil |
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Take it Back is a dance that crosses boundaries, re-sourcing the language of hip hop and the Lindy, presenting elements of street dance and swing in a theatrical setting. A high energy, fun show, Take it Back entertains the performers as much as it does the audience. A great choice for the closing party of the Festival. |
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 A Newfoundland Showcase
Choreographies by
Louise Moyes, Sarah Joy Stoker and Calla Lachance
June 20 and 21, 6:30 pm
Arts and Culture Centre, Basement Theatre
Photo Louise Moyes (Photographer Justin Hall) |
The Newfoundland Showcase highlights three unique dancers living in St. John's.
Louise Moyes (photo above)
Louise is performing a new work choreographed by Eryn Dace Trudell with an original score by Romano Di Nillo.
 Calla Lachance
7 dances for my mother
combines live performance and film to explore the experience of loss and the act of remembering. Photographer Brendan Turner
Sarah Joy Stoker
Sapiens lay here (excerpt)
Original score by Lori Clarke
a poignant exploration of that which has been and is human inhabitancy on earth, a physical, mental and spiritual journey, a meditation on our history and future. Sapiens lay here was created as a full length work that was premiered at the Festival of New Dance in 2007 and has been presented in Italy and New York. Photographer Stephanie Stoker |
 Alicia Grant and Cara Spooner
Mourning Sunshine
June 18 to June 22, Time TBA
Various locations around town
Photographer - Andy Schmidt |
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MOURNING SUNSHINE is the first installment of a site-(un)specific, guerilla performance project. It has been performed across the city of Toronto on various benches in public libraries, malls, food courts, art galleries and schools. Using the postures and social interactions associated with winter in Canada, Mourning Sunshine depicts the isolating nature of our months during daylight savings. The site of each performance defines the soundscape, mood and audience as it questions the nature of performance. Mourning Sunshine has been adapted into a film by Daniel Cockburn which has been screened as a part of Ladyfest, the 2008 Toronto New Work show (as an installation/performance) and as a part of Idaho State's Gender and Everyday Living Conference.
IT/OUT/INis the second installment of the site-(un)specific, social experiment projects choreographed and performed by Alicia Grant and Cara Spooner. Using the conceptual groundwork developed during Mourning Sunshine, IT/OUT/IN is a performed ritual that will be debuted in various restaurants, bars and cafes in St. John's Newfoundland as a part of The Festival of New Dance. The piece uses gestures and scenarios associated with eating in public and raises questions concerning the performative nature of consuming food in public establishments.
Dancers/Choreographers: Alicia Grant and Cara Spooner |
 Movement (R)evolution Africa
A story of an art form in four acts
Presented in collaboration with The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery
June 18 and 19, 6:30 pm
The Rooms Lecture Theatre (65min)
Photographer - Alla Kovgan |
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In an astonishing exposition of choreographic fomentation, nine African choreographers from Senegal to South Africa tell the stories of an emergent art form and their diverse and deeply contemporary expressions of self. Stunning choreography and riveting critiques challenge stale stereotypes of "traditional Africa" to unveil soul-shaking responses to the beauty and tragedy of 21st century Africa. Among the artists appearing in the film are Company Kongo Ba Téria (Burkina Faso), Faustin Linyekula and Studios Kabako (Democratic Republic of Congo), Company Rary (Madagascar), Sello Pesa (South Africa), Company TchéTché (Côte d'Ivoire), Company Raiz di Polon (Cape Verde), Company Jant Bi (Senegal) and Kota Yamazaki (Japan), Nora Chipaumire (Zimbabwe), Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and members of Urban Bush Women (USA). This feature-length documentary is produced and directed by Joan Frosch and co-directed and edited by Alla Kovgan. | |
