This summer through February 2018 Allen and Karen will be presenting a new project Extraordinary TO Dances (X-TOD) and Solo Dance Exchange (SDex) in a collaborative three-phase dance project.
Working with 22 multi-generational Extraordinary Dance Artists (EDA) of various genres, X-TOD is a two-fold film and stage project featuring beloved local and national choreographers. These seasoned professionals will dance a 1-minute improvisation for dance film on June 30, 2017 presented as a live feed broadcast. The EDAs then take a fellow EDAs footage from the broadcast as inspiration to create a personal 4-minute stage solo for the Solo Dance Exchange performance to be presented at Crow's Nest Theatre in February 2018.
X-TOD is a 30 minute broadcast in celebration of Canada's 150, funded by TAC Open Doors program. The first phase of this project took place through June as Allen Kaeja filmed each performer on location in and around Toronto using new 4k technology. On June 30, a live feed of the dance creations will be presented in partnership with Bell Media for a national broadcast and with UK-based Marquee Arts for international exposure, the second phase of this project.
The third phase of the project will be Karen Kaeja's Solo Dance Exchange (#SDex) a platform for improvised cross-pollination, featuring these same 22 dance artists in a stage production for February 3 & 4, 2018 at Crow's Nest Theatre.
As an improviser for 30 years, Karen has embraced and honed her body's personal and developed practice. This living collective of expression that lives in all dance artists, is what resonates who we are and what we are saying in its intuitive and constantly shifting state, with all its punctuations, tone, quality and intelligence. Karen Kaeja
This stage performance creates an opportunity for creating a gateway between dance artists and their practices, to inspire and seed a responsive exchange between each other and our audience.
XTOD is a perfect marriage of Allen and Karen's sensibilities and directions. For many years they've held similar ideas of highlighting, investigating, and drawing solos from a diverse group of individual artists - this project is now being fully realized.
Allen has long harbored a desire to work with individuals on different locations documenting their dance on film utilizing on site locations as transformative environments to inspire a mix of multi-generational dancers with diverse dance practices. The variety found in Toronto - from flamenco, African, indigenous, to contact and improv - extraordinary in their form, improvised in that moment, captured on 4k film with a live feed where the camera is choreographed and the ins and outs of the shot will determine the next artist that comes into the frame. Allen started shooting improvised short films two decades ago but not with such a large number of dancers for one film, and on such high-quality 4 k film, utilizing new advanced technology in his dance films. He became fascinated with live feed because of an experience in Mexico. This mix of film and live feed with international exposure is unique in an industry that has seen broadcast licensing collapse for contemporary film. Karen's stage performance, the second phase of this project, will feature the solo dance artists who will draw inspiration from each other to create unique works.
By marrying these two ideas with film and stage the dancers will inspire each other, collaborating in continuous dialogue with each other offering something new to both the dancers and our audiences.
Find us at our
Facebook Page visit us on June 30 at 8pm for our Facebook Live reveal of these extraordinary artists!
Since 1991, Kaeja d'Dance has created award-winning contemporary dance performances, site- specific works with large numbers of dancers, acclaimed dance films and educational outreach programs. An internationally lauded dance company with recent quadruple Dora Mavor Moore nominations for Karen's Crave, they break ground, instigate risk and bring together dancers and collaborators to create experiences both on and off the stage, in local and international communities. With over 140 original works including commissions here and abroad, Karen and Allen's signature aesthetic is known for its athletic intensity, sensual articulation and theatrical imagery, each with distinctly individual sensibilities.
