Site-Specific Series
Where the audience is lead from site to grassy site throughout Exhibition Park.  Four professional choreographers will showcase works that use the "space"-the grass, the trees to tell their stories. Inspired family fun in a refreshing venue.

Thursday June 4th

Performance | 7pm
new twilight performance!

pay-what-you-can
suggested: $15

Saturday June 6th

Performance | noon

pay-what-you-can
suggested: $15

Sunday June 7th

Performance | noon

pay-what-you-can
suggested: $15

Exhibition Park (between London and Division, west of Woolwich St)

Inclement weather: Please note that there is no inclement weather location for this performance. Please visit the GCDF website to confirm if the performance will be cancelled.

Kienna Shaw, Jennifer Hellend, Aliyah Hirchberg, Shelly Hering, Raphaella Valeri, Diana Groenendijk, Eva Meyers, Tanya Crowder, Mika Kaeja, Ashley Sanderson, photo by Karen Kaeja

KAEJA D'DANCE [Toronto]
Wedding Threads (2008)
Choreographer: Karen Kaeja

Flooded in white, Wedding Threads brings alive the relationship between women and their daughters. Karen Kaeja of Kaeja d'Dance is known as a choreographer who "paints portraits with moving bodies" Toronto Star. In this picturesque work, she threads a glorious intergenerational cast of six women and five youth including Karen's daughter, through spectacular imagery that captures the hearts of many, revealing the inevitable hopes, dreams and magical ties between these generations of women. Original composition performed live by Sue Smith.

Karen Kaeja is co-artistic director of Kaeja d'Dance with Allen Kaeja, performing and choreographing for stage and film. She holds an Honours BFA from York University. Noted as "One of the city's most watchable performers" NOW Magazine, Karen is included in the Canadian Who's Who encyclopedia, won the Moving Pictures Award for Best Performance, the 2005 Paul D. Fleck Fellowship as one of Canada's innovative artists of excellence, nominated with Allen for the 10th annual American Choreography Awards and was featured in NOW Magazine's top ten artists and 25th anniversary issue as a "champion of contact dance". She is on faculty at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre, was the first teacher of Contact Dance at Canada's National Ballet School and teaches at conferences and Universities in North America. www.kaeja.org

CanDance Touring Exchange / CanDanse: échanges-tournées*

Photo by Jim Allen.

AKA DANCE [Toronto]
In a Single Bound (2008)
Choreographers: Amy Hampton and Keiko Ninomiya

In A Single Boundis an exciting journey into the larger-than-life world of comic book heroes. Fun, funny, visually stimulating and physically exciting, the piece features the talents and live interactive score of DJ Gerald Belanger. The choreography is inspired by Japanese and North American superheroes and incorporates gestures and postures with contemporary dance, contact improvisation, stage combat, hip hop, martial arts and capoeira. Suspenseful and daring, the piece explores violence and good deeds. "Boom", "pow", and "bam" fuze with classical music, Japanese pop, hip-hop and electronica, in a work that audiences of all ages can enjoy.

In a Single Bound was created with the support of the Dance Ontario Creative Partnerships Commission and the Toronto Arts Council.

AKA Dance is a new dance company founded in 2007 by dance artists Amy Hampton and Keiko Ninomiya. Blending Canadian and Japanese traditions and drawing from dance forms as diverse as butoh and ballet, AKA's work is physically exciting and visually stimulating. AKA Dance debuted with a street theatre work, Ura, based on traditional Japanese ghosts, at the Junction Arts Festival in September 2007. AKA Dance was the recipient of a Dance Ontario Creative Partnership Commission and premiered the commissioned work, In a Single Bound, at Dance Ontario DanceWeekend in January 2008. In a Single Bound has since been presented at Hamilton's Downtown Arts Centre, the University of Guelph, and the Luminato Festival. AKA Dance created a children’s version of the piece along with corresponding workshops that toured to ten Toronto schools with the support of the Ontario Arts Council and was presented at the Bloorview Rehab Centre for Children on International Dance Day. The company's newest creation, Faint Light, along with In a Single Bound toured to Tokyo, Japan, this summer and were performed to packed houses at the Dance Ga Mitai International Dance Festival.

DANNY GROSSMAN DANCE COMPANY [Toronto]
Bella (1977)
Choreographers: Judy Jarvis and Danny Grossman

Bella was inspired by the divine paintings of lovers by Marc Chagall.

Danny Grossman was born in San Francisco in 1942. As a teenager, his first modern dance teacher was Gloria Unti who inspired him to continue in dance. In 1963, he joined the Paul Taylor Dance Company in New York and spent the next 10 years performing and touring with the company.

In 1973, at the invitation of David Earle, Mr. Grossman joined Toronto Dance Theatre, working as a guest artist and on faculty. The following year he also became a faculty member at York University.

In 1975, Mr. Grossman choreographed Higher to a tremendous praise leading to the formation of the Danny Grossman Dance Company in 1977. He has since created a repertoire of more than 45 works, touring numerous times across Canada and internationally.

His choreography has been in the repertoire of Toronto Dance Theatre, The Paris Opera Ballet, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens and The National Ballet of Canada and has also been performed by modern dance training institutions such as Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, New York State Summer School of the Arts, York University, Adelphi University (Long Island), School of Toronto Dance Theatre, Brock University and DanceEast (Moncton).

Mr. Grossman has been the recipient of the Dora Mavor Moore Award, the Jean A. Chalmers Award, The Dance Ontario Award, The Toronto Arts Council Foundation’s William Kilbourn Lifetime Achievement Award, and Muriel Sherrin Award. Mr. Grossman continues in his role as adjunct Professor in the Department of Dance at York University.

In 2008, the company embarked on an exciting new initiative, the Danny Grossman Dance Institute, as a means of preserving, reconstructing, and licensing Mr. Grossman’s remarkable repertoire and thus enabling conservatories, colleges, universities, as well as professional repertory companies to benefit from Mr. Grossman’s vast archive of works.

Born in Ottawa, Judy Jarvis (1942 – 1986) was a true pioneer of modern dance in Canada; a choreographer, solo performer, master teacher and artistic director of her own innovative companies. After graduating from the University of Toronto in 1965, she left for West Berlin, Germany to study with Mary Wigman. She graduated from the Wigman Dance School two years later, but her connection to Wigman remained strong throughout the remaining six years of Mary Wigman’s life. Further studies took Jarvis to Paris, London and New York City. Returning to Canada, she focused her creative energies into choreographing approximately one hundred dance works over the next twenty years, winning the Chalmers Choreographic award in 1974. Judy not only made her unique mark in the performing world, but also as a teacher. Former dance students in numerous universities and secondary schools across Canada will remember Jarvis’ inspirational approach to improvisation, composition, technique and choreography. Dying suddenly in 1986, her life was like her dances… "brief and beautifully to the point".

MEREDITH THOMPSON & KATE FRANKLIN [Toronto]
Get on Board (2008)
Choreographers: Meredith Thompson & Kate Franklin

Get on Board is a contemporary tap quartet co-choreographed by Kate Franklin and Meredith Thompson, and performed by Franklin, Thompson and exceptional male dancers Robert Halley and Matthew Waldie.  Set to a trio of contemporary jazz tunes, Get on Board takes place on, under and around four picnic tables and is a lively, playful and energetic piece made for the outdoor setting.

Kate Franklin and Meredith Thompson were commissioned by Dusk Dances to create a contemporary tap quartet for the 2008 Toronto season at Withrow Park.  Based in Toronto, all four dancers enjoy successful independent contemporary dance careers, but for each of them ... tapping runs deep in their blood.