FESTIVAL FILMS
July 19-21
A showcase of six short dance films by Canadian choreographers.
Each film is between 5-10 minutes and will be played on a loop each day.
Admission is free.
Donation to the Arts Centre is encouraged!
20 Peel Plaza, Saint John, NB
10:00am-5:00pm
FOR YOU
JULIA APLIN
Julia is an award-winning choreographer and has created dances for theatres, rivers, boxing rings, wading pools, cyberspace, neuroscience labs and forests. She works with a wide range of people from elite performers to beginners. She continues to explore movement through her artistic collaborations and her teaching and healing work. Julia is currently focusing on following her life long love of trees and exploring ways to appreciate our kinship with the non-human world.
FOR YOU
This film was conceived as an antidote for isolation-- a movement into knowing that we are all, human and non-human, deeply connected on this planet. The work is conceived by dance artist Julia Aplin and performed by senior community dancers and senior professional artists Terrill Maguire and Tory Emery Twigg with an urban forest in Toronto. Aplin offered the dancers a series of movement frameworks and relational practices with trees. The group then gathered together in the forest to dance these ideas in community with the forest. The work aims to gather the unique wisdom of each individual dancer. The film captures both spontaneous moments of interaction and choreographic ideas. Film maker and queer arbor artist Kim Farris-Manning worked with Aplin to create a fluid and imagistic film that aims to bring the viewer into a visceral experience of the dance. For You was commissioned by MOonHORsE Dance Theatre.
prosopa
"Prosopa" is a 6 minute film that explores Prosopagnosia which is the inability to recognize faces. This work has 4 interpreters with an original score by Larry Graves, exploring the concept of face recognition and how we "fill in the blanks". It is about mapping and finding meaning even when things are missing.
DARRYL TRACY
Darryl Tracy (Choreographer/Producer) is a Toronto-based independent dance artist (choreographer, interpreter, teacher and producer). He was a senior faculty member and Resident Choreographer at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre for 18 years. As a dancer has created many roles by most of Canada's leading choreographers. He and Heidi Strauss were co-artistic directors of four chambers Dance Projects from 1998-2006. He has created over 42 of his own works through commissions and self-produced productions. Most recently, he has choreographed for Connection Dance (NB), L’Ecole de Danse Contemporain du Montreal, The School of Toronto Dance Theatre and Sawdon Dance (Winnipeg). He was nominated for the K.M. Hunter award in 2013. He is also a neurological rehabilitation physiotherapist and works in a private clinic in Toronto as well as Toronto Rehab-Lyndhurst Centre. He teaches anatomy at the Teacher's Training Program at the National Ballet School (Toronto).
DANSE VAGABONDE / WANDERER DANCE
Danse Vagabonde / Wanderer Dance is a choreographic exploration of the impact of the place as a setting and as a material of influence on our bodies and on movement. A silent videodance where we follow a vagabond couple wandering around to discover a new village. A videodance created as part of FreshAIR New Brunswick outdoor artists in residence, on the site of the Village Historique Acadien de Bertrand, August 2021.
MONELLE DOIRON
Monelle is originally from Rang-St.-Georges in New Brunswick. She began studies in Dramatic Arts at the Moncton university before completing her bachelor’s degree in contemporary dance at the Université du Québec à Montréal. She had as creative teachers Martine Époque and improvisation Andrew de Lotbinière Harwood who were very significant for the young student of the time. And today, their teachings have a great influence on his choreographic research. After graduation, teaching dance is at the forefront of her career. It was upon his return to New Brunswick, starting in 2009, that creation manifested itself. In 2015, Monelle created the collective Les Drôles de Moineaux with her life partner, visual artist Denis Lanteigne. The collective has the desire to explore the presence of the moving body in space through choreography and video.
RIVER DREAMS DANCE FILM
"River Dreams Dance Film'' was created during a residency at the Fredericton Playhouse during the summer of 2021, funded by Artnb and the InterMISSION program. The project was born out of a connection made between songwriter Beverly Glenn Copeland, the Playhouse, and choreographer/performer Sydney Hallett when Beverly Glenn voiced that he would like to see a dancer work with his music and suggested the song "River Dreams". It was decided that the piece would take the shape of a film, which would allow for a deeper exploration of world building, and how one soloist can fill a space and create different tonal atmospheres through film in a way that would be impossible onstage. Strike Pictures came on board as collaborators in order to make this vision take shape. The piece breaks away from one linear dance, and jumps between storylines that each explore a different element within the music.
SYDNEY HALLETT
Sydney Hallett (she/her) is a dance and theatre artist based in Fredericton, New Brunswick. She is a graduate of St. Thomas University where she studied English (Drama) and Fine Arts (Performance Art) and is the current choreographer for STU Musical Theatre. She is also a current member of Solo Chicken Productions' "The Coop"--a professional physical theatre company for emerging artists. She uses her theatre and dance training to create art that blurs the lines between the two forms and evokes thought, feeling, and tells stories through the physical body. Her work often explores themes of nature, feminism, bisexuality, and human connection. She aims to continuously explore and evolve her perception of performance and to widen her parameters for what is possible within her art forms.
SEA OF MY TOMORROWS
The sea of my tomorrows was created with dancers from the Pacific and Atlantic Coast, taking its inspiration from these distant seascapes coming together to narrate an onerous journey across the water. This piece is ignited by the body's capacity to hold and translate memories through water and the emotional and psychological role water plays in our lives. This work was created as an honouring of the land, which we are visitors on and in recognition of the water: the womb of the earth. We acknowledge that this film was created on the ancestral home and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq people and the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) People.
MEREDITH KALAMAN
Meredith Kalaman - is a two time Chrystal Dance Prize recipient who has created pieces about; giraffes, girl guiding, exploring constellations, superheroes, female identity and the impacts of gender socialization. Choreographers that have left a particular influence on her include; John Ottmann, Noam Gagnon, Farley Johansson, Karen Jamieson, Peggy Baker, Judith Marcuse, Judith Garay, Julie Lebel and Kate Franklin. Her first full length work Femme Fatales toured to Victoria, Edmonton and and was presented at Ufertstudios in Berlin in 2017. Presentation highlights include sharing the stage with the Good Women Dance Collective, Dance in Vancouver 2017, Dancing on the Edge and New Works. Meredith is a graduate of the Ballet BC Mentor Program. She is interested in shifting the context of how ballet relates to our 21st century bodies and inviting bodies to be in dynamic movement. Companies worked with: MovEnt, Judith Marcuse Projects, Dancers Dancing, Joe Ink, Foolish Productions & Mocean Dance.
wintering
The snow crunches and fluffs. Squishes and folds.
The wind returns. It always does.
The snow drifts over. The lights change.
There are visions. Of our grandparents. Of our children.
The sun falls away.
And we reset.
CONNECTION DANCE WORKS
Connection Dance Works was founded in 2010. The company's efforts and initiatives have engaged a growing audience in an active discussion about contemporary dance. Their multi-disciplinary collaborations — with musicians, choreographers, writers, composers, visual artists, and multi-media creators — affirm a new era of cross-pollination and a profound commitment to the notion of community.
