Enjoy performances of the world’s best dancers
Queer festival’s last week, world’s best hip hop dancers and a SummerWorks winner
Breakin’ Convention Watch this if: You’re in a b-boy or b-girl stance.
The Sony Centre, in association with the Luminato Festival, is presenting the Canadian premiere of Breakin’ Convention, a two-day long performance feast of the world’s best hip-hop dance companies, like South Korea’s Just Dance and the U.K.’s BirdGang Dance Company, alongside many Canadian and local companies. Although the first two days are ticketed, a free Park Jam takes place on June 25, bringing the dance outside to David Pecaut Square.
Friday to June 25, Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, 1 Front St. E. Lessons in Temperament Watch this if: Your inner tuning is out of whack.
The craft of tuning a piano incorporates a theory called equal temperament, which requires every key to be slightly off to make the instrument sound best as a whole. Composer, performer and professional piano tuner James Smith knows this all too well and beautifully applies this theory to his own family’s history of mental illness in his solo show Lessons in Temperament, directed by Mitchell Cushman. After premiering at the 2016 SummerWorks Festival, where it won Best Production, it’s back for a limited run from Cushman’s Outside the March company.
Sunday to June 28, various locations Queer Pride (final week) Watch this if: You’re still bursting with Pride.
True story: the intention here was to single out one act or performance to catch at the tail end of Buddies in Bad Times’ Queer Pride festival, but the choice was too difficult. It’s an embarrassment of riches: a play reading about the friendship between a straight Black woman and a gay white man ( Every Day She Rose), an album release party for Stewart Legere, a sneak peek at Johnnie Walker’s new true crime-inspired play Shove It Down My Throat, a vintage theatrical salon hosted by Titus Androgynous, an Elvira Kurt cabaret, a performance by the Queer Songbook Orchestra and a night devoted to performances by Black and brown trans artists. Phew.
Sunday to June 25, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, 12 Alexander St.