Catrina: This year is a significant year for the GCDF as
it marks our 15th anniversary! Over the
years, the local dance scene has grown significantly, as have our partnerships
with the Guelph Fab 5 (GCDF, Hillside Festival, Guelph Jazz Festival, Festival
of Moving Media, Eden Mills Writers’ Festival) and other local arts
organizations. We’re being asked now to curate dance events with local artists for
more events than ever.
In turn, local dancers are requesting more opportunities
and asking for more ways to become involved. This is incredibly encouraging as it was our dream from the first year
that dancers could live, train and perform in Guelph as professional artists. Now
that we’ve achieved this goal, we’re looking at how our organization can
support the current needs of local dance artists.
As this is our 15th anniversary year, we want
to shake up the festival format to include community celebration and
engagement in a whole new way. As a
contemporary dance festival, we want to always stay current and exciting. As a Guelph-based festival, we want to
support our local dance artists and engage our audiences.
This year we’re offering a new community-based initiative:
a chance for local, professional dance artists to create their own Festival
event!
Artists are encouraged to dream, scheme, and create
innovative and cutting-edge ways to perform dance in Guelph.
This new program will be presented during the 15th
Guelph Contemporary Dance Festival, May 30th-June 2nd.
Call for submission deadline is November 1st!
Artists have complete freedom to present site-specific dance ideas in
any way they choose—the only limitation is your imagination. Ideas might include presenting dance in a bar, a storefront,
a church, in Market Square, etc., etc.
We want to bring dance to a new and possibly unsuspecting public in a variety of settings in the downtown core. We
want our regular dance patrons to view dance in surprising, sometimes intimate,
sometimes shocking ways. We’re looking for vision,
integrity, skill, and passion. We want you to freely explore audacious
perspectives, like presenting dance to one audience member at a time, or
presenting dance on the side of a building, and so on.
Janet: I look forward to honouring, celebrating and nudging
forward some of the committed, skilled and passionate dance artists of Guelph. It excites me greatly to be able to help facilitate more dance creation
in Guelph. The time is ripe as there are many different Guelph-based
dance voices, all propelling themselves forward, all deserving of more
opportunities to engage in their dance forms. This new event will be a
great made-in-Guelph dance event for our community to observe and celebrate!
FYI:
The GCDF will provide our Festival infrastructure, staffing, and
promotion to support your ideas, along with an artist fee and production costs.
Please note that although performing artists do not have to be local, local
contemporary dance artists will be given preference.
You will find the call for submissions form here.
You will find the call for submissions form here.
A huge thank-you to the Guelph Community Foundation for partially
funding this new initiative.
We can’t wait to see what you dance up!
