Dusk Dances 2020: A virtual edition

Performers: Julianne Blackbird, Raelyn Metcalfe and Santee Smith
Composer: Cris Derksen
Featured Singers / Musicians: Ngahui Murphy (Māori Karanga, Waiata) and Jo'el Komene (Taonga Pūoro)
Costume Designer: Adriana Fulop

Blood Tides is the 2nd production in Kaha:wi Dance Theatre's triptych series Re-Quickening, Blood Tides and Skén:nen about the rematriation to the house of humanity: the womb. The international Indigenous collaboration premiered in 2018 and was created and performed through a ceremonial womxn's processes. The Dusk Dances excerpt features the scene The Thresholders and activation of Lighting Womxn. Moving through transformative states, it calls to awaken the sacred feminine, acknowledges womxn as the thresholders of life/death, and navigates sacred alignments from cosmos to earth.

Kaha:wi Dance Theatre and Dusk Dances would like to thank Beth and Ron Bomberry, Ellie Joseph and Robin Staats for the use of their beautiful Grand River lands and facilities.

First seen at Dusk Dances in 2020.

Performers: Carmen Romero and Justin Brown
Music: Justin Brown
Costume Designer: Carmen Romero

The music for Nuestra Leyenda is based on Isaac Albeniz iconic classical composition Asturias or Leyenda which means story. Carmen Romero and Justin Brown have adapted the composition to include flamenco rhythm of Bulerias and this is a way in which Carmen Romero is able to manipulate the score and perform a structured improvisation. Justin and Carmen have known each other for well over 15 years and this is a story within a story.

First seen at Dusk Dances in 2020.

Performers: Kaitlin Standeven and Brodie Stevenson
Composer: John Gzowski
Singers: Patricia O’Callaghan and Rick Hyslop
Costumes Designer: Appleberry Ink with Heather Macrimmon
Set Designer: Appleberry Ink

This piece explores the inevitability of moving onward. Relationships with people, places and things evolve and change. Experience can cloud our ideals and reality makes them slippery. This piece celebrates an ongoing choice to dance with love. No matter what.

Thank you to the original cast Yvonne Ng and Robert Glumbek. This work would not exist without you. Thank you to Brendan Wyatt. Your interpretation of the work added hugely to its current form and understanding. Thank you, Kaitlin and Brodie, for bringing your artistry to the new rendition of the piece. Thank you, Dusk Dances and Sylvie Bouchard for your ongoing support for this work. Thank you to my husband John and our daughter Jenny. I couldn’t do it without you.

Thank you to Nancy, Paul, Victoria, and Sophie Harper and Maureen Maslin for the use of their property and generous care of our team in Caledon, Ontario, and to Annie and Jacob Kottadiel for the use of their property in Caledon, Ontario.

First premiered as a Dusk Dances and Tiger Princess Productions commission in 2012.

Performer: Michael Caldwell
Composers: David Morton, Spear Fisher and The Bows
Table Designer: Jeff Livingston
Production Assistant: Jessie Garon
Location Manager: Gerry Trentham

Monument, first created in 2016, is a timely work that questions why, who and what we monumentalize. How did we arrive at this tradition that locates and casts in stone or bronze a particular image, a slice of time, on ground that holds the varied memories of generations? Why are our monuments so often built to celebrate perceived victors of war? Who are these heroes?.

First seen at Dusk Dances in 2020.