2022 Dance Days Rough Cuts

Inspired by embodied experiences of physical and imagined adventures, A Hidden Playground examines the position of a “rogue traveler.” By placing the interpreter in various literal and figurative images, the work has a silent, momentous strength, intentionally provoking the imagination to navigate surreal or supernatural experiences.

Kayla Henry’s new contemporary dance duet is inspired by mycelium, a network of underground fungal threads which act as a communication system for mushrooms. Mycelium is analogous to our own mammalian nervous system. As the two are inherently linked, our survival depends on them.

Visible Bodies Collective enacted a collaborative process of performance creation that expresses and honors Indigenous and racialized women’s bodies, as sacred sites of memory, archives, knowledge, and wisdom. The collective created a 20-minute improv and somatic performance that was witnessed and held by audience and atmosphere.

Piña is an interdisciplinary dance work that brings together a carefully chosen collaborative team of costume designers, weavers, musicians and lighting designers. As a way to dissect and express Escamillan’s background as a first-generation Canadian-born Filipinx, this new work contemplates the parallels between the body and piña—a traditional Philippine fibre derived from pineapple leaves.

the space between is a multi-sensory performance layered with dance, analogue film and digital projection mapping. Local BIPOC dancers express lived experiences based on projections that people and systems place on our bodies as well expressions of what we are trying to project and how we want to be seen.

High Tide Low Tide examines the erosive processes that shape and change objects and is embedded in a fervent curiosity of the idea of being adrift.

How are we shaped by the erosive processes of our own lives? How do we find a home in the tide?