Raindate Effective

Last night, just as we meant to begin, there was a beautiful and torrential downpour.

We will perform the show tonight,

Sunday May 31, 7:30pm

at the same location

(details below).

Thank-you to everyone who came even as the clouds gathered.

The rainbow in the photo above appeared after the rainout.

Up Darling 5

Up Darling 5

(happily part of Nuit Blanche Devereaux)

http://nuitblanchedevereaux.blogspot.com/

Featuring Dances by Megan English, Barbara Lindenberg

and Aimée Dawn Robinson

Saturday May 30, 2009

7:30pm

Raindate Sunday May 31, 7:30pm

If there is heavy rain at 7:15pm on Saturday, we will postpone to Sunday.

Please call 416.825.0396 if you wish to double check.

PWYC

Trinity Bellwoods Park

We will be near the NorthWestern edge of the ravine. But not in the ravine.

Just South of Dundas, East of Shaw.

Please bring your own picnic supplies.

Questions? Call 416.825.0396

More information in the posts below.

Barbara Lindenberg

Barb in her work A True Lady of Mystery (February 2008). Photo by John Lauener.

Through Glass and Water

Barbara Lindenberg will revisit an old favourite. Through Glass and Water is a contemporary dance about mirrors, movement, and haunting images of the past. It will be the first time Barbara will perform this dance outdoors. The cheerfulness of the park and the dark yet subtle drama of the dance should prove an interesting contrast.

Barbara Lindenberg trained in Dance at York University (graduation 2001) and has been performing, producing and creating in this medium, in Toronto, since then. Born in Manitoba, raised in BC, her work is influenced by music, art, travels and other common and uncommon experiences.

She has been developing an extensive and intimate solo repertoire while exploring larger conceptual group choreographies. Her work has been presented at Nuit Blanche Toronto 2007, Dance Matters (Risky Business and Rebel Yells), A Month of Sundays, Up Darling, Fringe Shanghai, the wHole Exhibition (AWOL Gallery), Series 808 Season Finale and Lab Cab Festival.

Ms Lindenberg has studied a variety of approaches to dance with artists in Canada, Germany, Spain and Italy. She has performed work by Learie McNicolls, Sara Porter, Magali Charrier (film: Tralala), Denise Duric, Aimée Dawn Robinson, Jenny-Ann McCowan, and Hope Terry.

Aimée Dawn Robinson

Aimée (at left) and Josh Rutter preparing for the festival Dance Hakushu 2008 (Hakushu, Japan).
Photo by Asher Woodworth.

Untitled Improvisation

Aimée Dawn Robinson is an improvising dancer, musician, gardener, writer and visual artist. She has performed, studied and taught dance in Canada, the United States, Malaysia and Japan. With Barbara Lindenberg, Aimée co-founded Darling Contemporary Dance, and is the director of the multi-disciplinary performance series, A Month of Sundays.

Aimée has performed with improvising musicians, songwriters and composers including Martin Arnold, Jennifer Castle, Eric Chenaux, Nick Fraser, Kurt Newman, The Reveries and Doug Tielli. While she has danced with, and for, choreographers such as Terrill Maguire, Viv Moore, Ame Henderson, Motaz Kabbani and Seika Boye, Aimée most often improvises solo as mother drift. She has been performing installments of her ongoing dance series, mother drift dances to the songs in her head, since 2003. Recently, she performed with Small Wooden Shoe in Dedicated to the Revolutions.

Aimée holds her Master’s of Arts from the Department of Dance, York University. Her current research explores the radical political potentials of body, cultural and personal memory and forgetting in dance, specifically in experimental improvising, butoh and Canadian Aboriginal dance. Aimée has participated in butoh workshops with artists such as Yoshito Ohno, Yukio Waguri, Joan Laage and SU-EN. She spent the summer of 2008 in Hakushu (Japan) farming and studying dance on Body Weather Farm with her hero, Min Tanaka.

Megan English

Dancers from left to right: Megan English, Barbara Lindenberg, Holly Treddenick.
Photo by Kathleen Brown.



THE NELL SHIPMAN PROJECT
Dances Inspired by the Silent Films of Nell Shipman

Barbara, Holly and I have been having fun and working hard to emulate the movement from the silent films of Shipman. The starting point for the process was my interest in the odd tempo and rhythmic quality of the movement in the films and my fascination with Shipman’s life and work. We’ve been playing with the dramatics and the quirky, adventurous storylines in an abstract way. The dances we’ll perform today are excerpts from a larger work in development, which included snippets of Shipman’s films.

ABOUT NELL SHIPMAN
‘She’s our forgotten star, a Canadian siren who carved out her own Hollywood North – far north – to become a symbol of untamed wilderness, and untamed womanhood. From 1912-24, Nell Shipman became famous as the heroine of silent film melodramas visibly set in the wilds of Canada, a land she called “the Great White North.” She worked as a writer, producer, director, star – and intrepid stuntwoman. ‘Macleans’s, Sept. 1, 2003

THE PERFORMERS:
Jason Benoit has been performing, composing, or improvising music, vocally or instrumentally, since the age of 6. For him, music is an important way of connecting to the real world. He has independently released one album under his own name, She Omen (2006), and has another tentatively slated for release sometime this year under the mantle of his improvising duet with Eric Chenaux, Nightjars. Currently, he regularly gives solo performances and plays in the band Dream of Distance. His previous musical involvement with dance includes collaboration with Marcus Quin for the first production of Maya (directed and choreographed by Brandy Leary) and collaboration with Jennifer Castle and Jonathan Adjemian for True Lady of Mystery (conceived and choreographed by Barbara Lindenberg).

Megan English began her dance career improvising in her living room in Sudbury, Ontario. She is a graduate of York University’s Dance Program and has presented work at many Toronto venues and series. Her solo, ‘This Dance is Mic’ed’, was selected for Dance Matters, A Woman’s Work. (Toronto, 2008) From 2003 until 2005, Megan worked with the dance theatre company Zephyr in Zanussi while living in England. She dances in The Great Lake Swimmers’ video for their song, ‘Backstage with the Modern Dancers.’ One of Megan’s interests is finding sources for her dance work that will produce unique movement aesthetics. Currently, she is finding those sources in the work of female artists from different eras.

Tania Gill is a pianist, composer and arranger who has worked extensively in Canada’s jazz and improvised music scenes. She is a member of The Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, Charles Spearin and the Happiness Project, Andrew Downing’s Melodeon, Saint Dirt Elementary School, See Through Trio, Runcible Spoon, Blah Blah 666 and Deep Dark United. She has composed for many ensembles and recently finished a piece for CONTACT Contemporary Music that will be premiered in June, 2009. She teaches at Humber College and has a Master of Music degree from the University of Toronto.

Holly Treddenick is a graduate from The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, and has also studied fire performance, clown, aerial silks, harness, bungee, static and dance trapeze. Holly has worked as a dancer and circus artist with various choreographers including Sally Morgan, Free Flow Dance Company, Ballet Creole, Goodness Gracious, The Goodtimes, Zero Gravity Circus, Barbara Lindenberg and Circus Orange. Holly co-founded Femmes du Feu, who are currently working on their first full-length aerial dance show for the London, Toronto and Hamilton Fringe Festivals this summer. Holly also works as osteopath. This has been Holly’s first time dancing for Megan and first introduction to Nell Shipman.

There are many talented and generous people Megan would like to thank for their enthusiastic support. Barb, Holly, Jason and Tania. Marian Barnett, Dan English and Philip. Lisa Gigliotti. Terry Pidsadny. Emily Walker Thornton. Kathleen Brown. Lisa Cristinzo. Lo Bil. Matt Ferguson. Jacky Sawatzky. Georgia Webber. Ray Stedman. Charlette Treddenick. And Manuel Cappel, the prop magician.

Produced with the support of the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council.

Up Darling 4

Up Darling 4 Location photo: Barbara Lindenberg

Up Darling 4 presents new dance works by Barbara Lindenberg, Meredith Thompson and Mairéad Filgate, Allison Peacock and Aimée Dawn Robinson and a special guest appearance (June 5) by video artist Renée Lear.

Please join us.

Tuesday May 27

Wednesday May 28

Thursday May 29

Tuesday June 2

Wednesday June 3

Thursday June 5

All shows at 8:30pm

Admission: Pay what You Can

Meet us on the fifth floor of the Green p parking garage in Kensington Market

(20 St. Andrew Street). The show is outdoors.

Call 416.534.4509 for more information.

Please see the posts below for more detailed information on the artists and their works.

Special thanks to Ian at Green P Parking.

Up Darling is generously supported by the Toronto Arts Council.

Barbara Lindenberg

Words from the artist:

At Up Darling 4 I will show you two new dances. One is called Crossing and the other is Unbroken. Here are the ingredients I am using to make these dances: my feelings, thoughts about life, dream imagery, memories of personal experiences, inspiration from the collaborators on this show, cool moves, invented symbolism, intuition and love.

Bio:
Barbara Lindenberg trained in Dance at York University (graduation 2001) and has been performing, producing and creating in this medium, in Toronto, since then. Born in Manitoba, raised in BC, her work is influenced by music, art, travels and other common and uncommon experiences.

She is the co-artistic director/co-founder of Up Darling, a new contemporary dance series, and is developping an extensive and intimate solo repertoire while exploring larger conceptual group choreographies. Her work has been presented at Nuit Blanche Toronto 2007, Dance Matters (Risky Business and Rebel Yells), A Month of Sundays, Up Darling, Fringe Shanghai, the wHole Exhibition (AWOL Gallery), Series 808 Season Finale and Lab Cab Festival.

Ms Lindenberg has studied a variety of approaches to dance with artists in Canada, Germany, Spain and Italy. She has performed work by Learie McNicolls, Sara Porter, Magali Charrier (film: Tralala), Denise Duric, Aimée Dawn Robinson, Jenny-Ann McCowan, and Hope Terry.

Drawing of Barb by Jennifer Castle

Allison Peacock

Words from the artist:

1979

A homage to dance fundamentals and car ballets. And 1979, birth year of dancer and manufacturing year of the Firebird.

Allison would like to thank Pol Cristo-Williams very, very much for his creative generosity in this project, and Jonathon Osborn, Aimee Dawn Robinson and Barb Lindenberg.
viewing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlZu18xEKDs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s21LACa4_r0

Bio:

Allison Peacock is a Toronto-based dance artist. Her work has been presented at the 2008 Rhubarb! Festival, 2006 Toronto International Dance Festival, 2004 Canada Dance Festival and the Yukon Arts Centre. She holds a B.A. in Political Science and Visual Studies from the University of Toronto. She completed her dance training at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre in 2004, and has gone on to pursue training in Brussels, Belgium and Vienna, Austria through the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Recent projects include Solos by me not as myself or Dances for, as and by Stevie Nicks, 6 Prototypes for Human Wind Generation, collaborative projects Emergency at McMurdo Sound (with Anna Finkel), My feelings and shit (with Lindsey Gillard), and Mini-tramp (with Jonathon Osborn). Allison has also been choreographing site-specific works with a constantly name changing group that have been presented at Extermination Music Nights, Loving in the Name of.... and the Abandoned Nunnery.

Photo credit: Jenny Orenda-Smith

Aimée Dawn Robinson

Vehicle Dance #1: After Work Dances, After Haystacks

Words from the artist:

This is a dance in video form, created by filming myself improvising dances inside my work vehicle, a 2006 Ford Econoline E-350 XLT Super Duty (I'm a gardener), for ten consecutive weekdays immediately after work.

Each segment of the dance is between thirty seconds and three minutes long and accumulate chronologically, without editing, to comprise the entire dance. The final piece will be projected at the parking garage, either onto the outer surface of a vehicle, or onto a wall.

This piece is inspired in part by Monet's 1890-1891 Haystacks series.

Different days, different light, different weather, different bodies.

Bio:

Aimée Dawn Robinson is an improvising dancer, musician, writer and visual artist. She has performed and taught dance in Canada, the United States and Malaysia. Aimée is the co-artistic director of Up Darling and the director of multi-disciplinary performance series, A Month of Sundays.

She has performed with improvising musicians, songwriters and composers including Martin Arnold, Jennifer Castle, Eric Chenaux, Ryan Driver, Nick Fraser, Alex Lukashevsky, Kurt Newman, The Reveries and Doug Tielli. While she has danced with artists such as Terrill Maguire, Viv Moore, Ame Henderson, Motaz Kabbani and Seika Boye, Aimée most often improvises solo as mother drift. She has been performing installments of her ongoing dance series, mother drift dances to the songs in her head, since 2003.

Some of her music projects include playing whammied Echo harps with Eric Chenaux, various instruments and vocals with The Thorpe, singing jazz, country and torch tunes with Nick Fraser (drums) and sometimes sings songs with Jennifer Castle in the duo Together at Last.

Aimée holds her Masters of Arts (Dance) from York University and begins her PhD candidacy at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department in September 2008. Her current research explores the radical political potentials of memory (body memory, cultural memory, personal memory) and forgetting in dance, specifically experimental improvising, butoh and Canadian Aboriginal dance.

Aimée has participated in butoh workshops with artists such as Yoshito Ohno, Yukio Waguri, Denise Fuijiwara, Joan Laage and SU-EN. Aimee is thrilled to be traveling to Japan later this summer to study dance with the formidable Min Tanaka.

Meredith Thompson and Mairéad Filgate

Words from the artists:
Vantage Point is a collaboration between co-creators and interpreters Mairéad Filgate and Meredith Thompson. Using the Kensington parking garage as a point of view, it is a physically demanding duet that moves about the Market and explores ideas of perspective and environment, as well as the words of J. Nehru: “The wheel of change moves on, and those who were down go up and those who were up go down.”

Bios:
A native of Huntsville, Ontario, Meredith Thompson is now a Toronto-based dance artist. A graduate of York University’s Department of Fine Arts in 2000, Meredith is currently enjoying her sixth season appearing as a dancer with the Danny Grossman Dance Company, performing in a number of Mr. Grossman’s signature works, as well as that of Anna Sokolow, Paul Taylor and the Clichettes. Over the years, she has also had the great pleasure of frequently working with Dancetheatre David Earle, dancing in both new works and the revival of some of Mr. Earle’s classics. Independent dance endeavours have brought her together with a number of other notable choreographers and artists. This spring she is excited to be working two different co-creations, one with Kate Franklin for Dusk Dances and one with Mairéad Filgate for Up Darling 4.

Mairéad Filgate is a professional modern dancer, choreographer and teacher based in Toronto, Canada. After studying at York University and the School of Toronto Dance Theatre, Mairéad joined the Danny Grossman Dance Company. For the past five years she has performed in many of Grossman’s greatest hits including ‘Higher’, ‘Bella,’ and ‘Endangered Species’; as well as work by American dance pioneers Anna Sokolow and Paul Taylor. Mairéad also dances independently with many noted choreographers. Exciting upcoming projects include work with Sylvie Bouchard for Dusk Dances 2008, an Up Darling 4 co-creation with Meredith Thompson and Danny Grossman’s ‘Vanishing Acts’.

The Past

Photo: HT, choreography Barbara Lindenberg, dancers left to right: Danielle Baskerville, Meredith Thompson, Maria Litvin, Holly Treddenick, Megan English and Neil Sochasky. Photo credit: John Lauener.

Past Up Darling installments -- briefly described

Up Darling 3, October 19 – 23, 2006, The Winchester Street Theatre, Toronto

Up Darling 3, presented premieres by Katherine Duncanson, Barbara Lindenberg, Aimée Dawn Robinson and Holly Small. The show was generously funded by the Toronto Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Council.

Katherine Duncanson premiered Begin Again, a lecture piece and a companion solo to the installation she created for The Large Glass (June 2005, DNA Theatre). Spider webs, conjoining circles, spirals, the tarantella, the Mona Lisa and a song by Cole Porter all contribute to the subtext of this new work.

Barbara Lindenberg premiered Franco-Hungarian Offtact (for 6), otherwise known as HT (for 6). The work asks 6 dancers to stay in contact with one anothers’ heads while performing a variety of dancerly tasks. Taking inspiration from a 1927 photograph by Andre Kertesz of a group of revelers posing at a table with their heads pressed together, this dance evokes that feeling of having an inside joke. It deals with proximity, attachment, influence, intimacy, cooperation, sensuality and dependance through the nature of a physical state of being.

Aimée Dawn Robinson continued her series, mother drift dances to the songs in her head – an ongoing exploration of dance improvisation within a conceptual framework, engaged with memory, failure and repetition. Aimée has danced to songs by artists such as Jimi Hendrix, Waterson:Carthy, James Brown, Silly Sisters and Neil Young in this series to date.


Keiko Kitano-Thompson in Holly Small's choreogrpahy, Night Vision: Nyx, 2006.

Holly Small premiered Night Vision:Nyx, a work that employs dance, music, textiles and video projections (created in collaboration with multi-disciplinary artist John Oswald) to evoke the beauty and dark mystery of the night. Performed by Susan Lee, Barbara Pallomina, Kieko Kitano and Rebecca Mendoza this evocative work will also features a musical score created by Sainkho Namchylak and Nick Brooke.

Up Darling 2, June 3 - 5, 2005, The Inter-Galactic Arts Co-op, Toronto

Kate Alton presented an excerpt of a work in progress, Kissing Giancarlo, a text-based dance piece created collaboratively by Alton and writer Jonathan Garfinkel. This solo performance reflects upon the impossibilty of choice in a world with too many options. Meshed with the work's dynamic movement vocabulary is a text that touches on choice, confusion, desire and the little everyday battles in life and love.

Barbara Lindenberg premièred a new solo, On Purpose, which interlaced dance with film and a mysterious ladder. On Purpose uses fluid, detailed movement as part of its playful meditation on decisive affirmation. While the dancer journeys through questions of doubt, the audience is asked to question the purpose of tulips, a ladder, of a dancing body.

Allison Rees-Cummings presented Scold, the third in a series of solos for women attached to inanimate objects, inspired by the Brank or Scold's Bridle used from 1500-1800 in England -- a device applied to the head of women who talked too much, complained or argued. Scold was performed here to a haunting score by Arvo Part and with set design by Rees-Cummings.

Aimée dancing in Au Revoir Darling, the last performance in our old sutdio space in the Darling Building.


Aimée Dawn Robinson improvised a solo to the music in her head to the song, The Grey Funnel Line, as performed by the Silly Sisters. The fourth in the mother drift dances to the songs in her head series, this piece experimented with memory, repetition and improvisation within a conceptual framework.


Up Darling, Dec 4 - 6, 2004, The Inter-Galactic Arts Co-op

Seika Boye premièred her work, Peggy's Paddle, a solo created for Meredith Thompson which followed Flock (2002), as the second in a series of abstract movement narratives. Peggy's Paddle is coming of age story and a snippet of self-realization, danced to a rendition of the traditional tune, Pretty Peggy, as arranged and recorded by Logan McNeil.

Barbara Lindenberg presented two new works, Was Broken, Fine Now (a duet for Jane Danielson and Karen Stern) and Out of Danger (a solo for Lindenberg). Was Broken, Fine Now is a piece about recovery, connection, severed connection and time. With a quirky, abstract movement vocabulary this dance's wandering quality is expressed with warmth and humour by the interpreters. Out of Danger, danced to music by John Sherlock and inspired by the poetry of James Fenton, roves from headstands, to balanced stillnesses, to languid movement passages, to snappy, angular phrases to weave images of suspicion, trust, instablilty and balance.

Aimée Dawn Robinson improvised a solo as part of her ongoing series, mother drift dances to the songs in her head. The second of the series, Robinson used two songs by Neil Young (Mellow my Mind and Albuquerque) to fuel her improvisation.

Neil Young