Luminato, Dora awards cancelled
In yet another sign that life as we knew it isn’t going back to normal anytime soon, both the Luminato Festival and the Dora Mavor Moore Awards are being cancelled this June due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Luminato has been a fixture of Toronto’s arts scene since it began in 2007. This year’s festival, scheduled for June 11 to 28, will be delayed until June 2021.
“We had a thrilling program planned for this June,” artistic director Naomi Campbell, board chair Peter Herrndorf and CEO Anthony Sargent said in a news release.
Noting that Luminato began as a means to rejuvenate Toronto after the SARS outbreak, the leaders said they are “keenly aware of how important it is to work as a community in challenging times like these,” and that they were cancelling the fest to protect the safety of their audiences, artists, staff and volunteers.
The Dora Awards, which celebrate excellence in Toronto’s performing arts community, normally take place at the end of June but will now be postponed.
The Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts, which organizes the Doras, will still announce nominations for the prizes in early June via virtual news conference, it said in a news release.
In other cultural news, organizers of the cancelled Juno Awards have decided to indefinitely delay announcing the winners of the music prizes, which were to be handed out March 15.
Instead, they will focus on supporting the music community during the pandemic.