my battery is pure love

Helen's Simard's work NO FUN is brash, loose and incomprehensible and all of those things in the most intriguing, fun way.  NO FUN is coming to Toronto next week as part of the dance portion of Summerworks Festival, curated by Jenn Goodwin.  Helen is one of the spunkiest, coolest ladies I have met in the course of my career. On stage she has an infectious and beguiling presence, a riot of ease, smarts and spontaneity. As she answered my questions on her voice as a choreographer, you can also witness the considered thought that goes into crafting her fast and loose work. LR: "Brash" is a word used in your promotional material for NO FUN. What does brashness mean to you? HS: First thoughts: raw, shameless, unforgiving, uncompromising, self-confident, perhaps even rude.  Beyond this: not being concerned with what one should be or do, just being and doing what one is, unashamedly. LR: What was the trajectory leading to making NO FUN? How did t...

Blue Ceiling dance is thrilled to announce a partnership with the High Park Nature Centre for a new dance production in April 2017. Blue Ceiling dance will be staging and premiering Animal Vegetable Mineral in the historic Forest School, the High Park Nature Centre's new home on the grounds of High Park. Animal Vegetable Mineral is an ensemble dance work in which the dancers' bodies are ecosystems built on imagery related to the basic building blocks of life: animal, vegetable and mineral. These embodied ecosystems interact and collide, highlighting the interdependence of all life on earth. The cast includes choreographer Lucy Rupert and a diverse range of Toronto's most compelling contemporary dancers. Blue Ceiling dance aims to enrich audience experience through imaginative staging, setting dance works in unusual ways and places that are integral to the source of inspiration. The High Park Nature Centre is an exquisite and historic building set in a beautiful enviro...

The second instalment of ps: We Are All Here Festival artist interviews is a compilation of Q&As with Jenn Goodwin and Syreeta Hector who share a program with the team of Alexa Mardon and Erika Mitsuhashi tonight July 8th at 8pm. If you are up for an evening of dance in the city you can check their show out, stay for the afterparty and then jet over to Factory Theatre for the 1130pm show of "little fires", the Polynomials/Blue Ceiling dance production that is part of the Toronto Fringe Festival. You will not be sorry for going to either show. Jenn Goodwin is an artist I've admired for a long time and she was the second choreographer I commissioned through Blue Ceiling dance to make a solo dance for me. During the process I broke my arm and Jenn, in her usual quick-thinking and apparent love of accidents and minor, mundane catastrophes reshaped her work to acknowledge the broken bones in a way that freed us both as collaborating artists and made an unforgettable co...

Ps: We Are All Here is the Toronto Dance Community Love-in's performance festival with an aim, it seems to me, of exposing we lovers of contemporary dance/performance to a range of approaches, to artists with innate freshness to their work whether emerging or established creators. Overlapping with the Toronto Fringe Festival, (which can be an artistic crapshoot, although this year's dance at the Fringe seems to be doing exceedingly well critically!), ps: We Are All Here offers a curated, well-crafted view of dance performance in the summer. As I am involved in the Toronto Fringe Festival in the "little fires" production at Factory Theatre, so I could only cover a few of the imaginative artists included in the the TO Love-In's offerings this year. It might go without saying, but I'll say it anyway, they all have sparked my curiosity. There is an embarrassment of riches to choose from in dance performances this week so indulge yourself!! Info on the festiva...