2017/18 : The Talking, Thinking, Dancing Body
Co-Presented by Dancemakers, the Toronto Dance Community Love-In & the Canadian Alliance of Dance Artists - Ontario Chapter
Tuesday, May 29, 2018 |6 PM - 8 PM
Dancemakers, Theatre Studio 313
9 Trinity Street
Toronto's Distillery Historic District
The Talking, Thinking, Dancing Body (TTDB) is a facilitated conversation about aesthetics, context and artistic process. Initiated in 2012 by Lee Su-Feh of battery opera performance, it encourages speaking about dance from an awareness of our bodies as well as the world it lives in. It unabashedly interrogates dance through a lens that is concerned with anti-colonialism, anti-racism and feminism.
In this edition of TTDB, Lee Su-Feh and Barak adé Soleil will lead a discussion on “Performing the Dominant Body” and what it means for different bodies in different spaces: the how, the why and the impact on both the space and the bodies within that space.
Food and ASL interpretation will be provided. Dancemakers is a fully accessible space. For the accessible entrance, enter through the doors on the north side of the Case Goods building, up the ramp. The Case Goods building is immediately east of Balzac's. Take the elevator to the third floor and follow signage to the Theatre Studio 313.
ABOUT LEE SU_FEH
Lee Su-Feh is the 2017-2019 Artist in Residence at Dancemakers.
Su-Feh was born and raised in Malaysia. While studying both traditional and contemporary theatre and dance there, she was indelibly marked by teachers who strove to find a contemporary Asian expression out of the remnants of colonialism and dislocated traditions. Important teachers were Janet Pillai, Marion D’Cruz and Krishen Jit. In 1985, she left Malaysia for Paris, where she was deeply influenced by the late Lari Leong. Since arriving in Vancouver in 1988, she has created a body of work that interrogates the contemporary body as a site of intersecting and displaced histories and habits. As Artistic Director of battery opera performance, (“fearlessly iconoclastic”), she has worked both alone and in collaboration with other artists, notably David McIntosh, Benoît Lachambre, Justine Chambers to name a few. Her current project, Dance Machine, premiered at the Festival Trans-Amériques in Montreal June 2017 and is currently touring across Canada, with a week long run at Dancemakers in June.
ABOUT Barak adé Soleil
Barak adé Soleil makes dance, theatre and performance art of the moment, and in the moment. An award-winning artist, consultant and independent curator, he has been working within the live arts scene throughout the Americas, Europe and West Africa for more than two decades. His creative practice speaks to the expanse of contemporary art; utilizing techniques drawn from the African diaspora, queerness, disability culture, post-modern and conceptual forms. Invested in engaging diverse and intersectional communities, Barak currently works and resides between Chicago and Toronto.