Dance Illuminations Lights Up the Stage
Reinventing John takes Saturday Night Fever to New Heights 

TORONTO, March 12, 2007 --  TORONTO, March 12, 2007…York University’s Faculty of Fine Arts celebrates its resident talent and the next wave of outstanding young visual artists, filmmakers and performers with the York Fine Arts Festival, featuring more than 40 public events packed into a three-week period running March 9 – April 1, 2007.  All the fine arts are represented: dance, design, film, music, theatre, visual arts and interdisciplinary fine arts cultural studies. Events take place at York’s Keele campus.

 

York University's Department of Dance is the oldest and largest university-level dance program in Canada. For the festival, it is mounting two ambitious productions: Dance Illuminations, featuring original choreography by upper-level students, showing March 21-24 and Reinventing John, a bold new ensemble piece inspired by John Travolta's iconic dance in the film Saturday Night Fever, running March 28-30.

 

For Dance Illuminations, artistic director and York dance professor Holly Small has assembled a collection of 16 provocative new works choreographed by fourth-year and graduate students, and performed by outstanding young dancers in the department. The pieces, showcased in a two-part program (7 & 8:30pm), are linked by a common theme: the literal or metaphorical interplay of dance and light.

 

Alicia Grant’s wryly humorous Shedding Secrets configures four performers and 20 household lamps into surprising and visually arresting movement patterns, while two dancers and two dozen black umbrellas channel a stylized, Gallic flair in Balance Behaviour, choreographed by Nicole King.

 

In Sally Morgan’s edgy solo, The Far Field, the dancer, hobbled with a wooden block, travels through the light-etched architecture of an urban landscape. Judith Winslow contributes a haunting duet that recreates the geometric play of light from a series of windows, set to an original cello score performed live by York graduate music student Nick Storring.

 

Gabrielle Coulter’s Blinded by the Light offers an elegiac meditation on the moment of death, while the agitated dance sequences in Elizabeth Vecchio’s quintet, Buried Above, prove that “there is no such thing as a peaceful night’s rest”.

 

Cara Spooner’s mysterious duet Womoon & Son explores the association of male and female roles with the sun and moon, as one eclipses the other. Allison Blight’s In my Place delves into the raw emotions of childhood, setting a live solo dancer against a backdrop of filmed footage of schoolchildren. And Ashley Burton’s daring work, Ready… Set… GO! is presented entirely on film. Set in a busy Toronto intersection, it features a trio of performers dancing in traffic, cued by the changing traffic lights.

 

Conceived and directed by indie choreographer and York professor Darcey Callison, Reinventing John invests John Travolta's solo from Saturday Night Fever with highly original, contemporary choreographic inventions. The result is a kinetically intricate dance for large ensemble that is both subtly nostalgic and dynamically unpredictable.

 

Created with and interpreted by 25 dancers, Reinventing John is set to an original score by music student Nick Storring, with lighting design by York theatre student Joanna Yu and costumes by fashion designer Barb Starr. The performance includes a lecture-demo and the opportunity for audiences to learn Travolta's popular solo.

 

York's dance department has been the seedbed for many of Canada's leading dance artists for a generation. Graduates include Debra Brown, choreographer of nine Cirque du Soleil productions; Christopher House, artistic director of Toronto Dance Theatre;  Patrick Parson, founding artistic director of Ballet Creole; Denise Fujiwara, artistic director of Canasian Dance Festival; Karen Kaeja of Kaeja d’Dance; Shannon Cooney of Dancemakers; and leading independent dancers and choreographers Santee Smith, Andrea Nann, Yvonne Ng and  Lata Pada.

 

The Faculty of Fine Arts, York University presents the

York Fine Arts Festival March 9 - April 1, 2007

Events take place at York’s Keele campus, 4700 Keele St., Toronto

 

DANCE PERFORMANCES

Dance Illuminations, directed by Holly Small, runs March 21-24 in a two-part program: Part A at 7pm, Part B at 8:30pm.  Admission $12

 

Reinventing John, directed by Darcey Callison, runs March 28-30 at 7pm. Admission Pay-What-You-Can

 

Location:  McLean Performance Studio, Accolade East Building.

BOX OFFICE: 416.736.5888  or www.yorku.ca/perform/boxoffice

 

For a detailed York Fine Arts Festival schedule visit
www.yorku.ca/finearts/festival

 

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York Fine Arts Festival: Meet the arts in the heart of the GTA

The Faculty of Fine Arts at York University is spotlighting its resident talent in a three-week festival packed with more than 40 exciting and entertaining events. Running March 9 to April 1, the York Fine Arts Festival features exhibitions, theatre and dance productions, film screenings, multimedia shows, and a wide variety of classical, jazz and world music concerts. Events take place in state-of-the-art facilities at York University’s Keele campus. Join us for this showcase celebrating the next wave of outstanding young talent in the visual and performing arts.

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The Faculty of Fine Arts at York University is one of North America’s leading and largest centres for fine arts education. A vibrant community of some 3,200 students and 280 faculty working at the leading edge of fine arts practice and scholarship, it offers academic studies and professional training in dance, design, film, music, theatre and  visual arts as well as interdisciplinary cultural studies in the fine arts. For more than 35 years, York Fine Arts has been a premier launching pad for outstanding young talent and a major contributor to the arts and cultural scene in Toronto, Canada and beyond.

 

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York University is the leading interdisciplinary research and teaching university in Canada. York offers a modern, academic experience at the undergraduate and graduate level in Toronto, Canada’s most international city. The third largest university in the country, York is host to a dynamic academic community of 50,000 students and 7,000 faculty and staff, as well as 190,000 alumni worldwide. York’s 11 faculties and 23 research centres conduct ambitious, groundbreaking research that is interdisciplinary, cutting across traditional academic boundaries. This distinctive and collaborative approach is preparing students for the future and bringing fresh insights and solutions to real-world challenges. York University is an autonomous, not-for-profit corporation.

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Media Refer: Dianne Weinrib/Amy Stewart, DW Communications, 416-703-5479 dw@dwcommunications.net