Never Twenty One at Scotiabank Dance Centre

The Dance Centre and PuSh International Performing Arts Festival present Smail Kanouté/Compagnie Vivons! in Never Twenty One. Kanouté is a French-Malian dancer, choreographer, film maker, visual artist and designer based in Paris. Echoing the hashtag #Never21 coined by the Black Lives Matter movement, Never Twenty One pays tribute to the young Black men who have been victims of gun violence in New York, Rio de Janeiro and Johannesburg – and will never reach the age of 21.

Three powerful dancers – their torsos inscribed with testimonials from the victims’ families – recount the stories of broken lives, through ferociously intense movement which draws on krump, popping, contemporary dance, baile funk and pasinho. This is an urban requiem steeped in a shamanistic heritage, a subtle lamentation infused with energy, poetry and humanity.