In Touch – 1976 & Recent Future

January 22–24, 2015 @ 8pm

Dancemakers Centre for Creation
9 Trinity Street
Toronto’s Distillery Historic District

This program is a first contact with our incoming Resident Artists as they springboard into the beginnings of their research at Dancemakers.

Premiered in 2010,1976 is a constantly mutating solo by Impulstanz Prize winner Dana Michel. Michel casts a new light on the feminine/masculine duality by drawing on her own physical strength, love of sport, obsession with popular symbols of femininity and a deep sense of connection to the power possessed by divas such as Tina Turner and Beyoncé. Incredibly personal and slyly subversive, 1976 explores gender and identity through the prisms of high fashion, pop, hip hop and athleticism.

Dana Michel, 2015-17 Resident Artist, in 1976. Image by Camille McOuat.
Dana Michel, 2015-17 Resident Artist, in 1976. Image by Camille McOuat.
Zoja Smutny, 2015-16 Resident Artist, in Recent Future. Image by Guntar Kravis.
Zoja Smutny, 2015-16 Resident Artist, in Recent Future. Image by Guntar Kravis.

For this presentation, the charismatic Zoja Smutny will be reinterpreting her film work Recent Future (created in collaboration with Gunter Kravis) for the stage. Tearing apart notions of performance and spectatorship to re-imagine the audience experience, Smutny questions the role of the performer and finds unique ways to draw attention to the act of watching.