There is a huge influx of dance events, manifested in myriad forms, at this year’s Nuit Blanche. I’ve already published my picks for Zone A, Zone B and Zone C, but if you’re a fan of dance — be it watching or participating — be sure to check out the programs highlighted below. (Images and descriptions lifted from the Nuit Blanche website.)
ZONE A
Dead Philosophers’ Limbo, 2009
Susie Burpee
Court House
361 University Avenue (Outdoor rotunda underpass in the Garden of Justice)
Click here to view this location on a map.
Dead Philosophers’ Limbo is a twelve-hour dance to the life of ideas and the death of philosophers as told by the living philosopher Simon Critchley in his, The Book of Dead Philosophers. Each dancer’s boombox emits passages from the book, broadcasting epitaphs as the score for the performers who literally and figuratively use dance to break into that space between life and death, between mind and body and between the here and the now. Find your place in this limbo as twenty-four dancers dance and nearly two hundred philosophers die. Witness the wonder and amazement as these bodies describe a philosophical dictum for the ages. Dance all you dead philosophers – dance!
Le Grand Peep Show
Casa Loma presents Corpus Dance
The Stables of Casa Loma,
328 Walmer Road
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A large Peep Show tent, a presence in the Casa Loma Stables, the sound of carnival music. Inside, two marionettes perform an unusual courtship ritual. Dressed in PVC black bodysuits, they communicate only by touch. Their language, at once comedic and sexy, embodies the infinite complexities of the relationship between men and women. For the really curious, a private Peep show is also available at the back…
Bert and Tony’s Block Party
Jenny-Anne McCowan
John Innes Community Centre
150 Sherbourne Street (at Queen Street East)
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Shaped by the social dance movements of the 1930s and inspired by the history of the Ward, home to the city’s most dangerous slum at the time as well as some of Toronto’s most famous dance parlours, Bert and Tony host an open invitation dance-off. Dancers from all disciplines take partners and compete while audience members dance the night away.
move
Peggy Baker, Debashis Sinha (Peggy Baker Dance Projects and Canada’s National Ballet School)
Canada’s National Ballet School,
400 Jarvis Street
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Twenty-four dancers advance across the floor in a rolling, meditative pattern. Their spiralling movements evoke the raked sand of a Zen garden. After each cycle of the dance, an audio-visual installation by Debashis Sinha energizes the room.
dance like no one is watching
Stand Up Dance and York Dance Ensemble
This is a mobile project. See Zone A Info Centre (at Yonge-Dundas Square) for Schedule
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Contemporary dance meets mobile clubbing. Four teams of dancers perform in relay to portable music across the city. Follow along and listen in. Surprise and spectacle erupt in unique locations as dance celebrates and illuminates pedestrian places. Dancers perform choreography and improvisation travelling from the Distillery District, through downtown, up to Casa Loma and Wychwood Art Barns, back down to Queen West and into Liberty Village.
ZONE B
Dances Distilled
Dance Ontario
55 Mill Street, Case Goods Building
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Works by five fresh, fabulous,urban dance groups: AX-S Dance’s Break Time, for 6 performers, inspired by a 15-minute shift; Eroca Nichols’ interactive Made To Order, for 10 performers who solicit ideas from the crowd and make dances on the spot; Infestation, HerciniArts’s timely guerilla aerial that compares an out of control pest situation with corporate greed; Gadfly’s street style fusion inspired by sleeplessness (NOW Magazine‘s “outstanding ensemble” at Fringe Fest 2008); and Jay9′s travelling piece, Affects/Effects for 3 performers and drummer Al Bee that takes full advantage of The Distillery’s alleyways. Performance schedule online at danceontario.ca.
The Eros Boulevard Cabaret
Sion Irwin-Childs and Eros, Thanatos & the Avant-Garde
The Rivoli
332 Queen Street West
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In celebration of Nuit Blanche, The Eros Boulevard Cabaret will present a multimedia experience for the senses live on the front Patio of the Rivoli at the corner of Queen and Spadina. Drawing on the artistic, cultural, comedic and musical heritage of the Rivoli, The Cabaret features a diverse array of short works created in video and all disciplines of dance, choreographed and performed live by emerging and experienced artists from across Canada. Connected by the epic themes of sex, love, light, death, passion and the avant-garde, these themes have been collected from the performing arts and are universal to all cultures, dance forms and modes of creative expression. This broad spectrum of work accurately reflects the vast cultural and artistic resources that co-exist in Toronto today.
ZONE C
Dance of the Cranes, 2009
Brandon Vickerd
Liberty Towers Construction Site
East Liberty Street and Pirandello Street
Click here to view this location on a map.
Dance of the Cranes is a collaborative performance piece consisting of a 13-minute choreographed dance performed by two high-rise construction cranes. The dance will be performed at the beginning of every hour, from 7 pm to 3 am, on the night of Nuit Blanche. At designated times, two tower construction cranes standing on the same site and visible above the Toronto skyline, will come to life in a synchronized spectacle of motion. In the darkness they will slowly begin to pivot, rotate and sway in harmonized gestures, each crane performing delicate motions hundreds of metres above the audience on the sidewalk below. This work is a meditation on the movement and labour that takes place on a colossal scale in the physical building of our urban landscape. It is an attempt to draw the audience’s attention to the massive machines that build our city above our heads and the skill of the individuals that operate the cranes. The dance will be performed at the beginning of every hour, from 7 pm to 3 am. From 4 – 7 am, video projection of earlier performances will be screened.
So, there you have it. Dance in its many forms are abundant at this year’s Nuit Blanche, and each project embodies an innovative take on movement and expression.
Zone A recommendations here. Zone B recommendations here. Zone C recommendations here.
