Third Digidance Presentation Features Excerpts from Award-Winning Creations Trace & Miigis,
and Interviews from Collaborators Charting Company’s Extraordinary JourneyToronto, ON
Harbourfront Centre, in partnership with Digidance, announces the Canadian digital broadcast of More Than Dance, We Are A Movement, streaming April 14-20, 2021. The film marks the 20th anniversary of Toronto’s own interdisciplinary innovators Red Sky Performance – showcasing excerpts of their award-winning work and the remarkable story of their rise to one of the world’s most prolific and celebrated Indigenous performance creators. Playing out over three distinct parts, the 55-minute film will include the exhilarating work Trace, interviews with Executive and Artistic Director Sandra Laronde and her company of collaborators, and Miigis – an exploration of unique connections to land and water, the environment and conservation.
The broadcast of More Than Dance, We Are A Movement is due to the coordinated effort of Digidance, a national initiative formed in response to COVID-19 between Canada’s leading dance presenters: DanceHouse (Vancouver), Harbourfront Centre (Toronto), the National Arts Centre (Ottawa), and Danse Danse (Montreal), and co-presented with Springboard Performance (Calgary).
“For two decades, Red Sky Performance has been at the forefront of innovative Indigenous performance, sharing their artistry with audiences across Canada and around the globe. We could not be more thrilled to mark this milestone than with the presentation of this new film,” says Nathalie Bonjour, Director, Performing Arts at Harbourfront Centre and Digidance Partner. “Viewers will experience the company’s powerful, highly kinetic performance and gain profound insight into the company’s extraordinary journey.”
Filmed in celebration of the company’s 20th anniversary, More Than Dance, We Are A Movement captures the creative drive of Founder and Executive and Artistic Director Sandra Laronde and the exceptional artistic vision that propelled Red Sky Performance to prominence and critical acclaim. The film also contains extended excerpts from two of the company’s award-winning creations, choreographed by Jera Wolfe: Trace, the recipient of two Dora Mavor Moore Awards in 2019, and Miigis, which received the Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Award for Excellence in Conservation in 2018.
Trace is a highly kinetic contemporary dance work inspired by Indigenous (Anishinaabe) sky and star stories, offering a glimpse into Indigenous ancestral origins as well as the future evolution. Trace made its world premiere in Toronto at Canadian Stage in November 2018, before its international premiere at the iconic Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in the US in 2019.
Miigis represents the “the perfect breath” of life, a symbol that informs our origin story of travel from the Atlantic Coast to the Great Lakes. Fusing contemporary Indigenous dance with athleticism in an extraordinary form, Miigis explores the catalysts for movement, ancestral forces and living memory, and the cycle of life. Having premiered as a site-specific work at Fort York in Toronto in 2017 and toured to the Venice Biennale in 2018, the featured excerpt gives audiences an intimate view on the nuanced and elaborate creation.
In the fall of 2021, Red Sky Performance will embark on their first international tour since the global COVID-19 pandemic, bringing Trace to cities across the US and Canada. This continues the company’s extensive history of touring, which to date includes more than 2,750 performances in 17 countries and four continents, including two Cultural Olympiads (Beijing and Vancouver), the World Expo in Shanghai, and the Venice Biennale, among others. At the same time, Red Sky Performance remains deeply rooted and invested on a grassroots level, regularly performing in urban, rural, and reserve communities across Turtle Island.
For tickets and information on More Than Dance, We Are A Movement and Digidance, visit: harbourfrontcentre.com
About Digidance
Digidance is a new joint initiative of Canadian dance presenters to deliver exceptional, full-length Canadian and international dance content online to patrons across the country. Created in July 2020 as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Digidance consists of the following leading dance presenters: DanceHouse (Vancouver), Harbourfront Centre (Toronto), the National Arts Centre (Ottawa), and Danse Danse (Montreal).
By joining expertise, experience, and international networks, the partner organizations are better equipped to pivot to presenting work online — a first for all four organizations. Beyond the short term response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions placed on presenting live work in theatres, Digidance will ensure a rich legacy of dance in Canada for future years through continued presentations and access to Canadian and international dance works without the barriers of transportation, physical mobility, and affordability.
