PorchView Dances Returns for 2017

Dance lovers everywhere will flock to Seaton Village for the sixth year of Porch View Dances. From July 19 to 23, join your neighbours to experience and celebrate the often-quiet stories that make a community what it is. Kaeja d'Dance, Toronto's cutting-edge contemporary dance company, brings together professional dance artists with ordinary citizens, creating a truly magical outdoor event in the heart of Toronto.

Conceived and developed in 2012, Porch View Dances is an innovative dance festival, engaging members of the community in Seaton Village and surrounding neighbourhoods. Performed by local non-dancer residents in the front yards, porches and courtyards of their own homes, Porch View Dances includes choreographic commissions by local and Canadian talent, including. Allison Cummings, Karen Kaeja, Allen Kaeja, Yvonne Ng and Lua Shayenne The audience is guided from dwelling to dwelling throughout Seaton Village by our tour guide Maurycy (played by Allen Kaeja), watching the stories of a neighbourhood unfold. The event culminates at Vermont Square Park, where the audience joins in Karen's Flock Landing - a gentle and inclusive movement experience for the general public.

Co-Artistic Directors Karen and Allen Kaeja have been living and working in the neighbourhood for years. "Allen and I are thrilled to bring dance to the streets in our very own Seaton Village", said Karen. "We are always incubating ways to bridge the gap between professional art and the general public. We invite you to take pleasure in our community, reflect upon what dances lie within your own home, and be inspired by the talent that is right here in our city."

Now in its 27th year, Kaeja d'Dance has "been called a "power couple," "go-getters" and "the coolest couple on the dance scene. But no phrase quite encompasses the extraordinary range of ways in which the Kaejas engage with dance and each other. Before there was a buzzword for it, the Kaejas were engaged in outreach, finding ways to make dance accessible, engaging different communities, exploding barriers between art and life, professional and amateur, [and] making dance public in unexpected locations" (Michael Crabb, Toronto Star). This year alone Kaeja was the first Ontario company invited to tour the Red Noroeste de Festivales de Danza, to 6 cities in Mexico, they completed a EDge UK commission that had a 4 month European tour, taught and performed in Japan and will head to Israel to teach and perform in the fall.

Porch View Dances
Presented by Kaeja d'Dance
Starts: 648 Markham Street, ending in Vermont Square Park (819 Palmerston Ave)
July 19-22 @ 7pm
July 23 @ 1pm
Tickets: PWYC
Facebook Event: Porch View Dances 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.

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