Toronto dancers to make New York City debut
Young troupe will perform Jose Limon’s The Winged at international festival
Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre has travelled thousands of kilometres in its 35-year history, from Europe to Asia, but it’s never managed to carve its way into the Big Apple . . . until now.
Next weekend the Toronto youth troupe, for many years known as Canadian Children’s Dance Theatre, will appear at New York City’s prestigious Joyce Theatre alongside illustrious companies from around the world, all in celebration of one of the 20th century’s most influential choreographers, Jose Limon.
Fourteen CCDT dancers, ranging in age from 11 to 18, will perform excerpts from the Mexican-born choreographer’s expressive 1966 work The Winged. They’ll be part of a 12day international festival marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Limon Dance Company. CCDT will perform The Winged twice, including the festival’s closing show, as part of a program called “The Next Generation,” designed to show how the Limon technique and the humanistic values underpinning the choreography still play a role in the contemporary dance scene.
The other seven troupes in the sec- tion come from university-level dance programs, which makes CCDT’s involvement all the more exceptional.
“We’ll be the youngest company there,” says CCDT artistic director Deborah Lundmark, who founded the company with husband Michael de Coninck Smith in 1980. CCDT owes its New York debut to two key factors.
In its earliest years the troupe trained in a contemporary style that, as Lundmark explains, comprised “little bits of this and that.” Then, in 1988, at the suggestion of guest teacher Donna Krasnow, a leading Canadian exponent of the Limon technique, CCDT made it the core of its modern-dance training.
The result is that CCDT’s dancers take naturally and expertly to Li- mon’s organic, fluidly evolving movement style.
One of the beneficiaries of Krasnow’s teaching is Kristen Foote. She graduated from CCDT in 2000 and immediately won a place in the Limon company.
Foote has returned to CCDT several times as a guest teacher and, knowing plans were afoot for a festival in New York, told Lundmark she felt strongly that CCDT should be part of it.
“I knew we were inviting companies from university dance programs,” says Foote, “but I still felt something was missing, a school and company that train in Limon.”
It did not take much for Foote to convince her boss, Maxwell.
“I chose to invite CCDT not only because of our long history as colleagues but also knowing the excellence and integrity of their work; love and respect for the essence of what makes us dance,” says Maxwell.
An invitation is one thing. Making the numbers work is another. The festival could only offer a modest fee and CCDT still had to raise about $20,000.
“But one way or another we just knew we could not let this opportunity slip by us,” says de Coninck Smith. So, the company launched a campaign on crowdfunding site Indiegogo and succeeded in getting a grant from the Ontario Arts Council.
Now CCDT’s young dancers are all set to show New York audiences so many other places have already discovered.
“CCDT’s dancers are real dynamos,” says Foote, who came to Toronto again this year to teach them The Winged.
“They’re quick, eager and totally invested in what they’re doing. I just know they’re going to do Toronto and Canada great credit.”