tpdp to Present SOLODUET at Theatre Centre, 5/6-10

tiger princess dance projects (tpdp) presents SoloDuet, an evening of two heart-stopping new works that explore identity and its fluidity. Both premieres are choreographed by tpdp Artistic Director Yvonne Ng in collaboration with the artists: celebrated dancer Mairéad Filgate who partners with former acclaimed Toronto Dance Theatre member Luke Garwood for the duet and another beautiful former TDT dancer, Linnea Wong, who dances the solo. This striking program runs Tuesday, May 6 to Saturday May 10 at The Theatre Centre.

"She may be only 4-foot-10, but in the local dance world Dora Award winner Yvonne Ng (Artistic Director of tiger princess dance projects) is a giant. One of the city's most expressive and intense dancers.Š" - NOW Magazine

Ng is also an exciting, instinctive choreographer whose work inevitably braids her South East Asian heritage and her adopted Canadian culture. SoloDuet delves into the territory of roles and relationships and explores how dualities both shape us and shape how we are perceived.

Linnea Wong performs Metamorphosis of a Solitary female Phoenix. In 2008, Ng created Metamorphosis of the Solitary Female Phoenix for Wong as a five-minute commission for Toronto Dance Theatre's project, 12 Solos. Choreographically, the original piece ended on a cliff-hanger. Audiences kept asking - what happens next? Ng was curious as well and began a process with Wong to dig deeper into the pulsing core of this solitary woman; to see what 'phoenix' would emerge from the metamorphosis. The result is five births of the phoenix. Ng says, "I am drawing on Greek mythology for my particular interpretation. Each stage (I through V in the solo) sees the phoenix as a 'reincarnated' woman with a different persona, suggesting a narrative of resilience."

Magnetic Fields, created for and with Mairéad Filgate and Luke Garwood, explores the complex patterns of relationship - the unpredictable, shifting energetic field that materializes when bodies, eyes and stories meet. Relationship is a landscape in flux; attraction and repulsion, triggers and tremors, form new stories, new feelings. In a duet with the ever-elusive other, wounds are rediscovered and sometimes healed. Within these variables is the dance.