Exploring ‘personal geographies’, these provocative new works are sourced from the rich terrain of each artist’s life. Choreographer/performers Olga Barrios, Susan Lee, Tracey Norman and Alejandro Ronceria highlight their varied histories while investigating their own desires to transcend the influences of the past. Their individual journeys intersect in Cuatro, running October 28-30 in York’s McLean Performance Studio.

"This is an exciting time in the program, as our first MFA students prepare for their biographical thesis concert,” said Professor Holly Small, the artistic director of the production. “They are asking poignant questions, challenging themselves and the art form. Coming together in this show, they present a diversified fabric of aesthetics and cultural perspectives, from South America to Halifax, Asia and Toronto. They are urban artists mapping their personal dance."

Barrios’ Behind windows brings dance, theatre, video and music together in an exploration of the dehumanization of violence through acts of war. It is the first piece of the series Sangre (Blood) by this up-and-coming Colombian choreographer.

Barrios, who studied dance at the Academia Superior de Artes in Bogotá, Colombia, has worked as performer, choreographer and dance teacher throughout North and South America.  She was a company member of Marc De Garmo and Dancers (New York, USA), L’Explose Contemporary Dance (Colombia) and The MT Space (Kitchener, Canada), among others. Her recent credits include serving as choreographer for Aluna Theatre’s Nohayquiensepa at Toronto’s Summerworks festival.

Lee’s work, Jook-sing, combines projected images and dance to explore issues of identity and the emotional friction the choreographer feels between her Chinese ethnicity and identification with Canadian culture. Fluidly layering images of bamboo groves and birch trees with poetic choreography and haunting music, Jook-sing resonates with complexity and depth as it reveals the process of identity within a multicultural world.

A Dora-nominated dancer, Lee has originated roles in more than 50 world premieres by some of Canada’s most acclaimed choreographers. A company member of Kaeja d’Dance since 1997, she has been a featured dancer in their stage works and award-winning dance films.  Her recent work includes Oceanids (2008) and Evocation (2009) for the York Dance Ensemble and The Gathering for the Scotia Festival of Music in June 2007.

Norman’s imprinting territories looks at aspects of body-memory. The choreographer/dancer navigates inward, linking landmarks in her body to events in her history, as a cartographer or archaeologist might do. Associating memory with geography, she develops a specific movement vocabulary to communicate with the viewer.

Norman’s choreography has been commissioned by many organizations and series including: Dance Ontario, DanceWorks, Canadian Children’s Dance Theatre, York Dance Ensemble, Season Finale of Series 8:08, Kinetic Studio (Halifax), and Dance Matters. She has interpreted works by Larchaud Dance Project, Leah Archambault, Suzanne Miller, Jesse Dell, and others.

Ronceria’s dance, titled My Hundred Years of Solitude, addresses his parents’ forced migration from their rural lands in Colombia. Though it happened many years ago, it is part of a process that continues today for victims of political violence in rural areas around the world. Exploring concepts of history, identity and the relationship between land and people, the work is inspired by stories of hardship, tenacity, survival and – possibly − transformation. 

Ronceria is a Colombian-born choreographer, director and film artist now based in Toronto. An influential figure in indigenous dance, he was the first director of the aboriginal dance program at the Banff Centre for the Arts. In 2004 he was nominated for a Dora Award for The Artshow by Native Earth. His film, A Hunter Called Memory, premiered at Toronto International Film Festival in 2003 and went on to such prestigious festivals as Sundance and Clermont-Ferrand in France.

Cuatro is the first of three MFA thesis concerts being presented this season by the Department of Dance. The next performance takes place January 27-29, 2010 in York’s Sandra Faire and Ivan Fecan Theatre, to be followed by a series of self-produced independent projects later in the spring.

The Faculty of Fine Arts launched the Master of Fine Arts in Dance program in 2008, complementing the department’s groundbreaking MA program in dance history, ethnology and criticism. The MFA program provides graduate students with the opportunity to conduct studio-based research in contemporary choreography and dance dramaturgy, developing their directorial and dramaturgical roles in the creative process and production of theatrical choreography. The research is developed within the context of contemporary dance and its many manifestations as both personal statement and universal metaphor, incorporating political, social, cultural and personal consequences intrinsic to issues in the art form.

Cuatro

When: October 28-30 at 7pm nightly

Where: McLean Performance Studio | 244 Accolade East Building | York University | 4700 Keele Street [map]

Admission: $15

Box Office: 416-736-5888 | www.yorku.ca/perform/boxoffice

Media Contact:
Amy Stewart, Communications, Faculty of Fine Arts, York University
416.650.8469 | amy.stewart@yorku.ca