Get Up and Dance at Hillside Inside!

The countdown to Hillside Inside is definitely on! With headliners like STARS and Hey Rosetta!, this mid-winter festival is not to be missed. We are so happy that this action-packed weekend can also include some dance!

On the blog today, we hear from Guelph Dance Co-Artistic Director Catrina von Radecki and Hillside Festival Executive Director Marie Zimmerman on the groovy ways that dance will be woven throughout the weekend-long festival.

Marie: We've been co-presenting dance at Hillside Inside since 2011 when the Fab 5 had the idea that we would do a collective "Art Attack" at the River Run Centre in the lobby. The aim was to take people completely off-guard, and it worked beautifully: 700 or so people entered the lobby at intermission and were suddenly surrounded by music, dance and spoken word. It was the buzz around town for weeks afterward!  

Now, five years later, we are thinking that since people are used to us taking this surprise approach that we should now shift toward more formal introductions of the performances. So, this year, we have advertised both intermission performances instead of just springing them on people. We are excited about the intermission pieces because they mark our fifth year of getting contemporary dance in front of Hillsiders, who are well known for their love of movement and their veneration of the body.  Most Hillsiders are familiar with African, Middle Eastern, Celtic, and Afro-Cuban dance styles because we have a Drum & Dance program at the summer festival. But contemporary dance is less familiar, and yet it is so overwhelmingly gorgeous.

The piece for intermission at the Oliver Mtukudzi and Alex Cuba show is choreographed by Megan O'Donnell, a Guelph dancer. I have seen her work in the Guelph Shebang and I was really impressed by how grounded her poetry is. 

Catrina: Her piece entitled A Time to Come Home will be performed by an amazing line-up of local dancers: Suzette Sherman, Georgia Simms, Kristine Muth, Jordana Deveau, Lisa Bush, Susan Oxley, and Jenna Oxley. The dancers will sweep through the Canada Company Hall, bringing the audience into the woods with them until...it is time to come home... and to go back into the theatre for the rest of the show. 

Marie: When I saw Frog In Hand perform Cafe Noisette at Guelph Dance's CSA Nooner at the University of Guelph, I knew the piece would work well for the STARS and Hey Rosetta! show. It's got the kind of high-energy cheekiness and rebellion that STARS has played with in the past - flirting with gangsterism as it clashes with innocence.  The piece will contrast just enough with the music on the bill that it will seem like a breath of fresh air.  I hope it sparks lots of questions about the Dance Festival. It would be great if people could glean from this performance that contemporary dance is not the brooding, highfalutin' stuff that mainstream culture makes it out to be. It's relevant; it's athletic; it's in-your-face; and it's exciting.

For the first time ever, the Guelph Dance Festival is ​offering a dance workshop at Hillside Inside. We are glad that they can keep it alive, as it is an audience favourite. The Dance Festival has stepped in with Frog In Hand who will do a swing workshop on Sunday Feb 8th at 2pm at DanceTheatre David Earle Studios on Quebec Street. We are thrilled. Imagine: swing in the winter! We can't wait for this one!

Catrina: It is not often you get to let it all out on the dance floor, so don't miss this chance! We know Hillsiders love to have fun, and performers/teachers Mayumi Lashbrook and Mateo Galindo Torres will bring it!

The Guelph Dance Festival is able to program dance at other performing arts festivals thanks to the Guelph Fab 5, a partnership between the Guelph Dance Festival, Hillside Festival, Guelph Film Festival (FOMM), Guelph Jazz Festival, and Eden Mills Writers' Festival, and thanks to support from the Ontario Trillium Foundation.  

It is our belief that our audiences share our passion for the arts and that by presenting dance at Hillside, we will expose new audiences to our incredible art form and we will be able to support more local and national artists. We also hope you will be enthralled by what you see and will come join us at the Guelph Dance Festival this June 4-7th, 2015. Not only will you see Frog In Hand perform in our In the Park series, you will also see artists from across Canada and many artists from right here in Guelph, perform in our parks, streets, studios, and theatres!

Celebrating the Success of the Fab 5 Cabaret

The Fab 5 Festivals are thrilled with the success of our first cabaret project. We are proud of the fact that the programming offered a diversity that showcased the talent, humour, and generosity of our community. We all benefit from collaboration across disciplines, which leads to new possibilities as we celebrate the arts. 

For this week's blog, we caught up with Marie Zimmerman, the Executive Director of the Hillside Festival, about this great way of opening Hillside Inside 2014.

Marie:  From my perspective, the event went supremely well. Each Festival organization has copious talent at its disposal and each representative is a creative planner par excellence. The artists we pulled together for the evening were remarkable, and their pieces were by turns soul-searching, quirky, strange, beautiful, and heart-swelling. It was a night of contrasts: in music alone, we had Tony Dekker’s quiet meditations on life, GUH’s playful and unpredictable meanderings, and Maestro Fresh Wes’s flamboyant affirmations. In film, we had Georges Méliès’ bizarre sci-fi fantasy from 1912. In dance, we had Kelly Steadman’s feisty celebration of impetuosity and Janet Johnson’s courageous exploration of the dark-light continuum. So, you were never bored. And you never knew what to expect.

Tony Dekker performing songs from Prayer of the Woods. Photo by Peter Grimaldi.

GUH, composed of Guelph and Toronto musicians, providing a soundtrack to the George Méliès 1912 film, Conquest of the Pole. Photo by Peter Grimaldi.

     Marie: I can't pick out a few highlights, because each piece was a highlight—honestly.  My love for each of these Festivals and their arts and my respect for their curating made the Fab 5 cabaret not only a dream come true—which sounds sappy, I know—but also an awe-inspiring event. Here we had in one room on one night the energy of people who really have something to say: people who have visions of humanity and a sense of purpose that they cannot help but communicate. Their visions were expressed in beautiful and complex pieces of art that kickstarted our imaginations. 

The Guelph Youth Apprentice II Company performing You Can by Janet Johnson in the lobby of the River Run Centre at the intermission.

Solana Del Bel Belluz, Rowen McBride, Brooke Powell, Corinna Shelley, and Ari Zimmerman performing in Young Lions by Kelly Steadman. Photo by Oliver Mercure.

Marie: People can expect to see us at each other’s Festivals. We received Ontario Trillium Foundation funding to develop our co-presentation partnership, so we need experience doing it in order to hone the partnership. Audiences have a lot to look forward to in the coming years!

      Make no mistake: it’s not easy pulling five Festivals together on a single show. It’s a little like asking five conductors to direct an orchestra where each of the musicians has been picked by a different festival.  It can be a sonic Hallelujah but it can also deteriorate into everyone yelling, “do I play NOW?” “What’s the tempo?“  “Can we have a metronome at first?”  The fact that we were so successful is a credit to our ability to step up, get out of the way, or leap when it counts. And it’s lucky we like each other! I look forward to all that will come out of this amazing collaboration.

Katie Ewald, Robert Kingsbury, and Lynette Segal performing in This Side of Light by Janet Johnson and Portal Dance Project. Photo by Oliver Mercure.

Maestro Fresh Wes Williams with his book, Stick to Your Vision (McClelland, 2010). Photo by Oliver Mercure.

Like what you saw?

As part of the Fab 5's new co-presentation model, we can curate a cabaret style show for your event! Contact catrina@guelphdance.ca for more information.

We would like to thank the Ontario Trillium Foundation for all of their support of this Fab 5 co-production.

Upcoming Fab 5 Cabaret: Behind the Scenes with Janet Johnson

On Friday, February 7, 2014, Guelph Dance's Co-Artistic Director Janet Johnson will be taking the stage of the Co-operator's Hall at the River Run Centre with her company, Portal Dance Project. Her piece entitled This Side of Light is the Guelph Dance Festival's contribution to an exciting collaborative event put on by the Fab 5 Festivals, as they announce their grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation. The Cabaret show will be the perfect opener to Hillside Inside. Janet shares with us some insight into her piece and her process:
Janet: The piece is inspired by the desire to find a balance between the dark elements within our life and opposing light elements that are often there for the taking. I am inspired by those who seek light over darkness but am also highly aware that there are many elements in one's life where shadows are present. I have seen up close when darkness takes hold and shakes a person hard. I have also seen an aftermath whereby the desire for light is strong. Creating This Side of Light allowed me a process to express my reaction to living close to a loved one's darkness and to understand the immense desire to not only break a cycle but to gather all of the light I can while understanding that there is also shadow where there is light.

This Side of Light was created as a full-length site-specific piece at Goldie Mill in 2011. 6 dancers and live musicians used the walls, garbage cans, and ruins to help create a world for the piece to live in. I am excited to adapt the piece for the Hillside Inside Cabaret.    

Janet Johnson in center, performing at the 2012 Women's Voices event.

Janet: I am hoping that the sensuality and rawness of the piece can evoke a connection, create a world that is both understood and curious. I am hoping This Side of Light steps into that place that isn't about words but a memory, a sensation, a fragmented place, lucid...all those things that make dance speak to me.

Everything about this event excites me. I love community. I believe in and am highly inspired by and grateful for all of the Festivals within the Fab 5. I want to create dance works for the world I live in and for the people who fuel me, support me, and inspire me - for people whose hearts went into this work without even knowing it. I love the idea of the sharing of art works, creating an evening whereby there are many ways to interpret creativity and expression. I am absolutely honoured to be part of an event such as this.

Janet Johnson, performing in Spontaneous Order by Lynette Segal at the 2013 Guelph Dance Festival.

Janet: Balancing my work at Guelph Dance with being a teacher, choreographer, and dancer is tough at times but utterly rich and relevant. I am a more confident and spontaneous teacher for continuing to explore the challenges and rigour of choreographing and dancing as it allows me to see both sides of the coin. As a creator I need to keep one foot constantly immersed in many aspects of the world I live in. This includes working with all of the brilliant young dancers and movers in my classes.

Being the Co-Artistic Director of Guelph Dance inspires me to stay tuned in with my community as well as the greater Canadian dance community, to continue to ask myself why dance is important, why we need art to foster who we are. I feel immense passion for all of the "hats" I wear and find deep inspiration from my students, dancers and community.

You can catch This Side of Light on Friday, February 7, 2014 at 7:30pm as part of the Fab 5 Cabaret at the River Run Centre. The performances will also include Tony Dekker (Hillside) of Great Lake Swimmers’ fame, the 9-member band GUH (Jazz), who will perform a musical score to the Festival of Moving Media’s screening of Georges Méliès’ 1912 film, Conquest of the Pole (À la Conquête du Pôle). The Eden Mills Writers’ Festival offers Maestro Fresh Wes, the pioneering, Juno-award winning “godfather of rap”. A little like a Valentine’s Day chocolate box, the cabaret will allow the audience to sample the flavour of each festival, offering a sensual indulgence and opportunity to expand one’s artistic experiences.

Do not miss this event! Tickets available at the River Run Centre Box Office.

Guelph Dance would like to thank the Ontario Trillium Foundation for all of their support of this Fab 5 co-production.