First-Ever Dancemakers Minifest Announced!

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 2017 MiniFest Biographies
Amanda Acorn

Amanda Acorn is an award winning choreographer based in Toronto, Canada. As a dancer she collaborated as a company artist with Dancemakers from 2011-2015. Independent engagements include projects with Dana Michel, Brendan Fernandes, Helen Husak, Lady Janitor, Benjamin Kamino, Isabel Lewis, Lemi Ponifasio and Andrea Spaziani. Her own works are intimate sensorial encounters for the theatre and unconventional spaces, constructing responsive environments using a choreographic frame. Minimally abstract, her choreographies captivate with raw poetry and unwavering rigor. Using the performative event as a place to question ways of seeing, the work offers space to consider our habitual and conditioned assumptions. Her first group work multiform(s) was awarded the Canadian Stage Award for direction at SummerWorks Performance Festival (2015) and was recently presented at Festival TransAmériques in Montréal (2016). Her most recent work, a site responsive, immersive performance for 6 dancers and a live DJ, Leisure Palace premiered as part of the In/Future Festival at the abandoned amusement park, Ontario Place along Toronto’s waterfront. She is the emerging artist in residence at Dancemakers (2016-2018). Acorn’s work has  been supported through generous residencies at Dancemakers, Hub 14 and Videofag in Toronto, Studio 303 in Montréal, Stone Boat Artist Retreat in rural Ontario and at EarthDance in MA, USA. 

Amelia Ehrhardt

Amelia is a Curator and Choreographer based in Toronto. Her work approaches the mediums of dance and choreography through curation, creation, performance and teaching. Her practice seeks the parameters of how we watch, understand, and make dance, and ways to re-contextualize the form and trouble these parameters. Amelia’s work has been supported through residencies at HATCH, Toronto Dance Theatre, and Studio 303, and has been presented at OFFTA Montréal, SummerWorks Performance festival, AGO’s First Thursdays, and other itinerant artist-run spaces such as Doored/Double Double Land and Halo Halo Village. As a dancer she works predominantly in multidisciplinary contexts, having interpreted works for Zeesy Powers and Suzy Lake as well as choreographers Carol Anderson, Susie Burpee, and Julia Sasso. An active arts advocate, Amelia has extensive experience in creating, fostering, and developing artist-led and artist-run platforms and initiatives. She is the founder of Flowchart: a Series of Performance, a former Lover at the Toronto Dance Community Love-In and was the inaugural Dance Curator at Summerworks Performance Festival (2015). From 2013-15, she was the Administrative Director of the Canadian Alliance of Dance Artists – Ontario Chapter. Amelia holds an honours BA in Dance Studies from York University (2012). In 2013, Amelia attended Impulstanz Vienna International Dance Festival through the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Amelia is a 2016 fellow of the Toronto Arts Council Leaders Lab and a participant in 8 DAYS: a Gathering of Choreographers. 

Antony Hamilton

Antony Hamilton is an independent choreographer. His award winning creations involve a sophisticated melding of movement, sound and visual design. His major works include the seminal Black Project 1 (2012), critically acclaimed MEETING (2015) and NYX for the 2015 Melbourne Festival. He has created numerous national and international commissions including Keep Everything and I Like This for Chunky Move, Black Project 3 for The Lyon Opera Ballet and Sentinel for Skanes Dansteater. Antony was the inaugural recipient of the Russell Page Fellowship in 2004, Tanja Liedtke Fellowship in 2009, a Creative Australia Fellowship in 2012, and Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship in 2014. He was guest dance curator at The National Gallery of Victoria in 2013-14, honorary Resident Director at Lucy Guerin Inc in 2014, inaugural Resident Artist at Arts House in 2015, and is Dancemakers (Toronto, Canada) International Resident Artist, from 2015 to 2018.

Dana Michel

Dana Michel is a choreographer and performer based in Montréal. Before obtaining a BFA in Contemporary Dance at Concordia University in her late twenties, she was a marketing executive, competitive runner and football player. She is a 2011 danceWEB scholar (Vienna, Austria) and is currently an artist-in-residence at Dancemakers (Toronto, Canada) and at Usine C (Montreal, Canada). An amalgam of choreography, intuitive improvisation and performance art, her artistic practice is rooted in exploring identity as disordered multiplicity. She work with notions of performative alchemy and post-cultural bricolage – using live moments, object appropriation, personal history, future desires and current preoccupations to create an empathetic centrifuge of experience between her and her witnesses. Yellow Towel, was featured on the “Top Five” and the “Top Ten” 2013 dance moments in the Voir newspaper (Montreal) and Dance Current Magazine (Canada) respectively. In 2014, she was awarded the newly created Impulstanz Award (Vienna) in recognition for outstanding artistic accomplishments and was highlighted amongst notable female choreographers of the year by the New York Times. The year concluded with Yellow Towel appearing on the Time Out Magazine (New York City, U.S.) “Top Ten Performances” list. Her new solo Mercurial George was premiered at Festival TransAmériques in June 2016 and is now on tour. In October 2016, within the framework of the WITCH dance project of Sophiensaele, Berlin, supported by Tanz Fonds (Germany), she was invited to present is newest short form (20 minutes) untitled Palna Easy Francis.

In October 2016, within the framework of the WITCH dance project of Sophiensaele, Berlin, supported by Tanz Fonds (Germany), she was invited to present is newest short form (20 minutes) untitled Palna Easy Francis.

Andrea Spaziani

Andrea Spaziani has been making dances in Toronto for the past eleven years. She generates choreographic scores by moving and talking at the same time in a stream of improvisation. Her movements and words collapse into each other, asserting a new kind of attention that distorts the familiar, and challenges perception. Andrea has collaborated with artists across disciplines, and attended workshops and residencies internationally, most recently at HEIMA in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland. In 2016 she produced SPACEBODIES II for the Transart Triennale in Berlin, Germany as an experiment in choreography as curation, and in 2017 she co-founded the artist lecture series Archaeology of the Frivolous with Allen Ferguson in Marfa, Texas. Upcoming projects include Movement Research at the Judson Church, performance and video collaborations with Alicia Grant, and an exhibition with visual artist Morgan O’Hara in New York City in 2018. Published texts include Nostalgia for the Hadron Collider (2012), www.lonedancer.ca (2014), Exiting, Re-Existing (2015), and Unbecoming Ego (2016). She holds an MFA from The Transart Institute/ Plymouth University.

Schedule at a Glance:

Dancemakers MiniFest: 2 Weeks of Enticing & Curious Works & Events
June 13 to 24, 2017; various times and venues as below.
Dancemakers MiniFest Mainstage Programs:

Double Bill featuring Andrea Spaziani’s Rafters andAmanda Acorn’s Work-in-Progress
Tuesday, June 13 at 8:00 pm
Dancemakers Centre for Creation, 9 Trinity Street, Theatre Studio 313,
Toronto’s Distillery Historic District
Tickets: $15 – general admission; $12 – arts workers/students/seniors

Yellow Towel choreographed & performed by Dana Michel
Toronto premiere presented in partnership with Toronto Dance Theatre
Saturday, June 17 at 8:00 pm & Sunday, June 18 at 3:00 pm
Winchester Street Theatre
80 Winchester Street, Toronto
Tickets: $25 – general admission; $20 – arts workers/students/seniors

Natural Orders choreographed by Antony Hamiltonwith robots and machinery by Alisdair Macindoe; collaborators and dancers: Meryem Alaoui, Michael Caldwell, Jolyane Langlois & Sahara Marimoto
World première co-presented with Luminato
Thursday, June 22 through Saturday, June 24 at 8:00 pm
Dancemakers Centre for Creation
9 Trinity Street, Theatre Studio 313, Toronto’s Distillery Historic District
Tickets: $25 – general admission; $20 – arts workers/students/seniors

Dancemakers MiniFest Outreach Programs:
Morning Class with Antony Hamilton for professional and pre-professional
dance artists
Monday, June 12 to Friday, June 16 from 10 am to 12 Noon
Dancemakers Centre for Creation
9 Trinity Street, Theatre Studio 313, Toronto’s Distillery Historic District
$70 for all 5 days; $15 daily drop-in

Overwhelmica, a performative lecture on the choreographic gesture of “looking up” by Andrea Spaziani
Thursday, June 15 at 9:00 pm
Artscape Gibraltar Point, Toronto Island
Meet at Hanlan’s Point Ferry for 8:30 pm ferry at the foot of Bay St.
Free programming

Is It Utopic To Even Ask? A Conversation moderated by Dancemakers’ Curator Amelia Ehrhardt;  collaborators:  Amanda Acorn, Antony Hamilton, Dana Michel & Andrea Spaziani
Monday, June 19, 7:00 pm
Dancemakers Centre for Creation
9 Trinity Street, Theatre Studio 313, Toronto’s Distillery Historic District
Free programming

Open Rehearsal/ Q & A with high school & post-secondary dance students
Tuesday, June 20 at 2 pm
Dancemakers Centre for Creation
9 Trinity Street, Theatre Studio 313, Toronto’s Distillery Historic District
Tickets: $5 per student; teachers complimentary

Tickets & Information (prices include HST):
Early Bird Ticket Packages      Double Bill, Yellow Towel & Natural Orders
Before May 7, 2017 – 15% discount
$44.20 & $55.25
Available on line at dancemakers.org
Regular Ticket Packages

Double Bill, Yellow Towel & Natural Orders
Until June 12, 2017 – 10% discount
$44.20  & $58.50
Available on line at dancemakers.org

Single Tickets: On sale as of May 15, from $12 to $25
Available on line at dancemakers.org
Morning Class: $70 for the week; Available online at dancemakers.org
$15 drop-in at the door

Free events: Conversation & Overwhelmica
Just show up

        Open Rehearsal for dance students:
$5 per student; teachers complimentary
Call 416-367-1800 to reserve

Dancemakers 2017 MiniFest is supported by BMO Financial Group. Dancemakers MiniFest Media Sponsor: The Dance Current.

ABOUT DANCEMAKERS
Dancemakers makes its home at its Centre for Creation in Toronto’s Historic Distillery District. Curator Amelia Ehrhardt ensures that the Centre is a robust creative space that houses our Incubation Production House, a multi-year and fully resourced Resident Artistinitiative. We also hold classes and workshops and our own presentations and events at the Centre which is now one of Toronto’s finest affordable studio rental spaces.

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