Toronto Dance Theatre has announced a far-reaching and dynamic program for the 2024/25 season that will see the company expand beyond the walls of the historic 80 Winchester Street Theatre and plan a season that focuses on site-specific work, long-running performances and interconnectivity.

Building on the successes of the past two seasons, TDT’s 2024/25 season brings back an audience favorite, introduces new works and new ensemble members, and includes major partnerships with Nuit Blanche, the Toronto Biennial and The Bentway, as well as the resumption of touring.

“This season at TDT, you will notice overarching themes of place, duration and interconnectedness running throughout the program,” says Artistic Director Andrew Tay. “Several projects will interact with unique sites and environments outside our theater, and new stagings of two current productions will be performed outside the city for the first time since I arrived as Artistic Director. This season’s choreographers also ask audiences to engage with particular notions of time, manifest in part in lengthy performances that break away from traditional concert dance formats.

“Finally, all the work for 24/25 deals with the idea of ​​collectivity and the collective body and how to connect with each other through performance. This is reflected in the many artistic collaborations and community partnerships we have built. I see this as an important statement about how we can support each other in these difficult times when the cultural landscape is in a process of great change. It shows that by working together we can realize artistic ideas in ways that would not be possible if we were doing things individually.”

The season begins in early October with a major presentation in collaboration with Nuit Blanche Toronto: Coalescing Towards by Italian choreographer Michele Rizzo. An international partnership, Coalescing Towards is a 12-hour performance in a unique industrial space near Toronto’s waterfront. Revealing the hidden yet dynamic space surrounding emotions such as ecstasy, euphoria and anticipation, Coalescing Towards evolves through repeated sequences of simple pedestrian movements executed by groups of performers in unison as they move through their environment. This one-off performance featuring 15 dancers is a gradually escalating dance performance that explores the concepts of repetition and unison, and explores the ability of movement to create togetherness. It runs from October 5 at dusk to October 6 at dawn.

Michele Rizzo is a Milan-based choreographer whose work explores processes of transformation and transcendence. His piece HIGHER has been touring internationally since 2015 and the expanded version HIGHER xtn was recently added to the collection of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Since 2020, Rizzo has collaborated with fashion brands such as MARNI, Off-White, Magliano and Moschino.

The mainstage season begins in November with a new production of Ashley ‘Colours’ Perez’s crowd-pleasing hit The Magic of Assembly, starring Andrew Tay and LAL. After five Dora nominations, including Best Outstanding Production in 2023, TDT is reviving The Magic of Assembly with four performances in Toronto before heading to Montreal for the international dance platform CINARS. A choreographic dialogue between street dance and punking/whacking artist Ashley ‘Colours’ Perez and TDT’s artistic director Andrew Tay, The Magic of Assembly blends elements of punking/whacking and unapologetically queer performance, and is set to a striking electronic score by Polaris Prize-nominated duo LAL (Nicholas Murray and Rosina Kazi), performing live alongside eight members of the TDT ensemble.

Later in November, TDT will re-join visual artist Ness Lee for a new performance work with the company’s ensemble, presented as part of the Toronto Biennial of Art’s “Your Timing is Perfect: Moments and Movements of Inquiry” program, curated by Jenn Goodwin.
This ongoing event will be performed at 32 Lisgar Street on 23 November, 27 November and 1 December 2024.

After first collaborating during Performance Clash in 2020, TDT and Ness Lee have come together to conceive a performance that moves gently through the Biennale’s exhibition space, with seven performers interacting with Lee’s distinctive sculptures and objects. Finding moments of intimacy between their bodies and the plush figures created by Ness, the dancers enliven the gallery through a delicate parade where they embody the breath of the space as a momentary feeling for each other.

Ness Lee is a Toronto-based artist whose work draws on personal history and narratives from his diasporic cultural upbringing and relationship to the body as a vehicle of felt language and lived emotion. His work has been exhibited at institutions such as the Art Gallery of Ontario, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Gardiner Museum, Art Gallery of Hamilton, as well as galleries in New York, Los Angeles, India, Mexico, Tokyo, and Taiwan.

Back at Winchester in the new year, TDT presents a new performance project led by Affiliate Artist Aisha Sasha John with the ensemble The Pool. In three different suites, The Pool celebrates the patterns that emerge in a group when individual members display different qualities and agency. The first suite is inspired by the movement patterns of animal groups – flocks, herds, swarms, swarms. The second suite dances relationality, exploring the boundary between listening and expression, hearing and noticing. In the third and final suite, percussion, juxtaposition and reflection create a foundation for the most beautiful breathing.

In June 2025, TDT will premiere a site-specific dance piece in collaboration with The Bentway that engages with The Bentway’s unique location beneath the Gardiner. This significant work has been created by a leading international choreographer whose work is understood as a format of speculative fiction that can communicate complex and diverse understandings of body, gender, species, ethnicity, knowledge and history. The project will culminate with public performances. Further details and the artistic team will be announced shortly.

Also in June, TDT is excited to bring an expanded version of Fran Chudnoff’s FACE RIDER, which first premiered at TDT in the 2023/24 season, to MAI (Montréal, Arts Interculturels). Created by Chudnoff in collaboration with multimedia artist Driftnote and fashion designer Angela Cabrera, FACE RIDER builds on the iconography of the hermit, the pig and the himbo. The performance is a queer indie sleaze swamp that celebrates gender non-conformity, glittery resurrection and the messy joy of being together. It played to sold-out crowds and received rave reviews at TDT’s Winter Double Bill in February 2024.

Residencies and support programs for artists in the community

Beyond performances with the ensemble, TDT remains committed to supporting artists in their work and professional development through programs that provide space for a diverse range of artists and perspectives to create new work at the Winchester Street Theatre.

In the fall and spring, TDT will once again offer artists the opportunity to present 10 minutes of new material as part of the EYES ON BEGINNINGS works-in-progress series. Audiences can play a role in developing new creative ideas and artists benefit from moderated audience feedback sessions.

The PILOT EPISODES residency program returns for a fifth edition, where six choreographers or artists will gain their first experience working with TDT company dancers during a week-long intensive residency in the spring. TDT is also bringing back its popular PLUG-N-PLAY RESIDENCIES, which consist of week-long, half-day free residencies in the studio. The call for artists will launch in September, inviting choreographers and artists of body-centered practices to apply for free studio time. This program offers artists the opportunity to deepen their ideas and experiment with collaborators in TDT’s studios.

New this year: TDT is excited to announce a new partnership with CanAsian Dance. EntryWaves is a pilot project that will provide free rehearsal space during six residencies in the fall season – open to all artists who identify as being from the Asian diaspora.

TDT also welcomes two project-specific residencies this season: “From The Back,” a three-city Kiki Ball initiative connecting the vogue and ballroom dance scenes across Canada and hosted by Danah Rosales, and “Niswa,” a new full-length choreographic creation by Meryem Alaoui of Jasad Dance Projects featuring female performers from the Middle East and North Africa.

Tickets for the relevant programs will be available in the coming weeks. To ensure that cost is not a barrier, TDT continues to offer tiered pricing and the opportunity to pay as much as you can for groundbreaking contemporary dance, live performances and like-minded activities.

For more information, visit www.tdt.org or call 416-967-1365, x123.

Comments

To post a comment, you must register And Login.