Porch View Dances not to be missed
Next weekend is fabulous for the arts locally, but it will be tough to see it all
Next Saturday, Sept. 16, we have an extraordinarily rich range of cultural events to choose from:
There’s the 15th Doors Open Waterloo Region that I wrote about last week — 50 sites, six talks and nine hands-on activities, all within a seven-hour time frame (10 a.m. to 5 p.m.).
Two weeks ago I mentioned the inaugural “Bestival,” a celebration of musical, visual, culinary and other arts in Kitchener’s Belmont Village (10 a.m. to 10 p.m.).
There’s also the 20th annual Royal Medieval Faire up in Waterloo Park (11 a.m. to 6 p.m.).
It would be difficult, but not impossible, to take in all three. And now I’m going to further complicate the picture by highly recommending a fourth: The return of Porch View Dances to Kitchener’s King Street East neighbourhood belongs in the “not to be missed” category.
The tag line is “Real People Dancing in Real Spaces.” Porch View Dances is people of all ages from in and around the King Street East area, guided by dance professionals, expressing themselves through movement “on their porches, and in the front- and back- yards of their own homes.”
Fortunately there will be two opportunities to experience this award-winning community dance offering: If you can’t make it Saturday, you can go on Sunday.
The start time for both days is 12:30 p.m. The starting location is 53 Betzner Ave. N. From there, Porch View Dances will wind its way through the neighbourhood until the finale on the plaza in front of the Kitchener Market.
Porch View Dances is presented by Kitchener’s Registry Theatre in conjunction with a provincewide initiative called Ontario Dances.
The concept, and the artistic leadership, comes from Kaeja d’Dance, a contemporary dance company with a long record of site-specific work and community engagement projects.
Porch View Dances Kitchener also includes choreographic work by Natasha Mansell and Augustine Wigle of Waterloo Region’s Contemporary School of Dance, as well as live choral musical accompaniment, arranged and performed by Kitchener’s Sarah Pearson.
Karen and Allan Kaeja founded Kaeja d’Dance in 1990. Their dance work, which has taken them around the world, is characterized by “its intimacy, athletic intensity, sensual articulation, theatrical imagery and story-telling through personal and artistic resourcing of lives lived.”
It was Karen who came up with the concept for Porch View Dances, which was originally inspired by and designed for the precinct where they live and work, Seaton Village in Toronto. It was first presented six years ago and has now become an annual event.
The first Kitchener iteration in June 2016 earned the King Street East Neighbourhood Association a Kitchener Festival of Neighbourhoods Arts and Culture award. This inspired people from the neighbourhood to take the lead in the effort to host the event for a second time. The JM Drama Alumni group, operators of The Registry Theatre, was able to secure a grant from the Ontario Arts Council to make this possible.
For Allen Kaeja, presenting Porch View Dances here in Waterloo Region is coming home. He grew up in the Kitchener’s Central Frederick neighbourhood, went to Forest Heights Collegiate, and then to the University of Waterloo.
It is worth noting that Allen Kaeja was introduced to what became his life’s work through the legendary, and much lamented, U of W dance program. As a member of the varsity wrestling team, he’d heard how football and basketball players were upping their game through dance. So he signed up, and when he turned up for his first session he realized immediately that dance is what he wanted to do.