Luminato goes wide and gets wild
New boss increases festival’s scale, with emphasis on how diversity shapes art
Before it has even begun, Josephine Ridge’s first season as artistic director of Luminato makes a clear statement about her vision for the festival and for the arts in Toronto.
Two world premieres of cutting-edge work by Canadian theatre, dance and musical artists ( King Ar
thur’s Night and Bearing) and two other adventurous Canadian pieces ( Vertical Influences and Life Reflect
ed), presented alongside work by international masters such as Akram Khan and Alain Platel. And there are many opportunities for audiences to participate with local and visiting artists. It’s a commitment to work in progress, to diversity and to independent artists who are not, Ridge notes wisely, necessarily the same thing as emerging artists.
Although Luminato — which runs from June14 to June 25 — has been in a period of significant financial restructuring following last year’s costly escapade at the Hearn Generating Station and an evolving funding relationship with the province, the 2017 season features nine mainstage theatre, dance and musical productions, compared to just five in 2016.
That’s the mark of a programmer with chops, and it’s worth noting that Ridge is the first artistic director in Luminato’s 11-year history with prior festival programming experience. She comes to Toronto having spent three decades working in the Australian arts, including 10 years as general manager and then-executive director of the Sydney Festival.
The Luminato job caught her eye as she was finishing a three-year stint as creative director of the Melbourne Festival, and she saw parallels between the two events.
“Both were conceived to add to the city, rather than organically growing out of what’s going on,” she explains. “The moment of creation is one thing. Ten years on, you ask: what is the festival now, what is the city, the country, the world?”
Ridge, 58, arrived in Toronto on the day Luminato began last year. In addition to seeing several productions and visiting the major cultural institutions, her crash course in the Toronto arts scene has involved meeting with “lots and lots of people about what they want to achieve and how we can be part of that — what are the things that artists or companies would like to do but can’t do for some reason?”
Key qualities of Toronto that have focused Ridge’s attention are “the incredible growth” of the city over the past decade and the resulting urban density, “the cultural diversity that’s always been a part of the city and its history . . . and its relationship to Indigenous people. These questions of identity are all ideal territory for a festival.”
The interest in Canada’s First Nations comes through in the opening event, Tributaries — a free celebration of Indigenous women through music and dance in David Pecaut Square, the festival’s hub — and in Bearing, a world premiere musicand-movement piece about the legacy of residential schools by Signal Theatre’s Michael Greyeyes and Yvette Nolan.
“To combine dance and opera is in some ways a very old idea, but at the same time an amazing way to treat the content they want to cover,” says Ridge.
In the case of Bearing, Luminato’s support didn’t mean straight-up seed funding: “They didn’t need our assistance to create the work, but we are able to offer the platform to present it.”
“The hope in a festival is that when people see work and are exposed to its ideas, that they take that with them.”
JOSEPHINE RIDGE LUMINATO ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
The commitment to participation comes through in open-to-the-public workshops around Breakin’ Convention — a mini-festival of hip-hop dance theatre at the Sony Centre — and Vertical Influences, the ice-skating/street-dance mash-up at Ryerson’s Mattamy Athletic Centre (formerly Maple Leaf Gardens).
“The opportunity to interact breaks down all kinds of barriers,” says Ridge. “The hope in a festival is that when people see work and are exposed to its ideas, that they take that with them. It’s had an impact on you and it informs you down the track.”
Ridge riffs on the concept of density to elegantly deflect a query about whether the festival’s financial restructuring has held her back from doing all she wanted this year.
“I shy away from notions of scale and growth — it’s not just about spread; it’s got to be about depth.”
As she thinks about the festival going forward (and at the moment, 50 per cent of her time is focused on the 2018 program), she considers “what are the points around the work and what discussion does that give rise to, what companion things can go along — and not just a series of talks and forums. There can be a cluster of activities, which amplify the questions the work raises.”
All of this, she says, is in collaboration with Toronto’s other arts leaders.
“We are all talking to each other. None of us is in a silo or vacuum. Ultimately, we all want the same thing, which is to enrich the cultural life of the city.” For details on programming, go to luminatofestival.com