Dance in Toronto: Pop Up Porchview Dances in Seaton Village July 18 – 20, 2013

From a media release:

Dance in Toronto: Pop Up Porchview Dances
Kaeja d’Dance’s award-winning Porch View Dances lives on with a mini pop-up Porch View Dances festival in Seaton Village, July 18 – 20, 2013

• Pop up Porch View Dances premieres July 18 – 20, 2013 at 7 PM starting at 843 Palmerston Avenue and is a pay-what-you-can event

TORONTO… Kaeja d’Dance is pleased to announce that “pop up Porch View Dances” will be taking place this summer from July 18 – 20, 2013. This miniature version of last year’s awardwinning Porch View Dances is adding new flavours and opportunities for direct audience participation in preparation for an expanded Porch View Dances concept to be launched in 2015. The festival will feature two new audience-inclusive inventions by choreographers Meagan O’Shea and Karen Kaeja, as well as showcase two favourite moments from last summer: Allen Kaeja’s choreography, Crutch, and Karen’s audience-inclusive Flock Landing.

Last year, Porch View Dances made the news when it was awarded the Globe and Mail’s Best Site Specific Work of 2012 and the Canadian Dance Assembly’s I love dance ‘Community’ award. Over 2,400 spectators came from across the city to wander through the downtown Seaton Village neighbourhood watching families perform dance works on the front porches and gardens of their own homes and participating in the audience inclusive Flock Landing. The nondancer families had been partnered with exciting mid-career and established choreographers from Toronto, creating the works together in the months leading up to the shows, and a broad range of community members had attended flock landing workshops.

This year, rather than touring the entire neighbourhood, pop up Porch View Dances promises to get the audience involved on a grander scale. Audiences will move in and around the area of Vermont Square Park and St. Alban’s Boys’ and Girls’ Club at Bathurst and Dupont, to watch and participate in a three-day dance festival that celebrates the everyday individual in direct interaction with the professional artist. In the spirit of Porch View Dances slogan: ‘real people, in real time, in real spaces’, Kaeja d’Dance’s interim year will give the audience new adventures to experience.

“There is community outreach, and then there is Porch View Dances. Outreach has long been a catch phrase in the arts. Many times, the impact is the proverbial square peg in the round hole, but Porch View Dances could be the poster child for how to do everything right,” says Paula Citron, Senior Dance Writer for the Globe and Mail about last summers’ event.

Porch View Dances was conceived by Karen Kaeja of Kaeja d'Dance and developed with Allen Kaeja. Kaeja d’Dance has created a multitude of audience-inclusive site-specific works with professional and non-professional performers across Canada and abroad. Established in 1991, Toronto's Kaeja d’Dance is renowned for creating exceptional award-winning contemporary dance performances, site works with extreme numbers of dancers, acclaimed screen dance and in-demand education & outreach programs. Living fully at the heart of Kaeja are Co-Artistic Directors Karen & Allen Kaeja. They break ground, take risks and bring together exquisite dancers and collaborators to infuse extraordinary experiences both on and off the stage in local and international communities.

Meagan O’Shea has a long history of making site-specific and participatory dance events. In 2009 she created a 2 km dance relay for 30 dancers that took place over 12 hours in Scotiabank’s Nuit Blanche. Her popular outdoor contemporary dance/public art project, dance like no one is watching, has included more than 200 dancers and engaged over 30,000 audience members since it’s inception in 2007.