Co-Guest Curators
Tanveer Alam & Nithya Garg:
Engaging in Repertoire
As part of their residency, Tanveer and Nithya are interested in exploring and devising ways of bridging different dancers who are working outside, and inside of Eurocentric dance forms.
Held at Collective Space located at 221 Sterling Rd in Toronto
Engaging in Repertoire
“We are working towards creating a space of dialogue and learning, for both artists and audiences, in how to hold different lenses of contemporary expansion and artistic references.
We have devised a residency which brings together two artists in different stages of their career, who are building repertoires anchored in ideas of slowness — both in form and choreography.
We are interested in how these two artists are approaching the concept of slowness within their personal practice and work, and we are curious to see how they can invigorate each other’s work through this residency.”
Here are the artists involved:
Image Description: Sanjukta on stage performing Mohiniyattam. Photo credit: Ken Dobb
Sanjukta Banerjee (lead artist) is an accomplished dancer-actor and educator specializing in Bharatanatyam and Mohiniyattam. As part of her residency, Sanjukta will be performing Mohiniyattam, a traditional dance practice of women in the state of Kerala, India.
The dance technique has a unique movement quality and stands apart from all seven classical dance styles of India. Nature inspires the circular pattern of movements—with the sway and gentle hand gestures, undulations of the torso and the knees, which she intends to explore through solo dance practice, choreographing a new dance, based on river Ganges.
Image Description: Marie Lambin-Gagnon standing on a box with a colourful backdrop behind her.
Marie Lambin-Gagnon (lead artist) is a choreographer, dancer and visual artist. Her practice combines dance, photography, sculpture and installation. As part of her residency, she will develop her current project, Still Life, a series of performances and exhibitions composed of large-scale photographs and sculptural movements.
Inspired by the still life genre, she explores the ephemeral nature of the body and investigate how its shape and movements relate to living and non-living matter. She will be working with dancers Megumi Kokuba and Jessica Germano.
Image Description: Hari looks up into the camera. He is wearing a dark green shirt and is smiling. Photo credit: Alvin Collantes
Harikishan S. Nair (residency dramaturg) is the Founder and Artistic Director of Regatta Kala Kendra. He is active in the community as a dancer, theatre artist, teacher, choreographer, mentor, dramaturge and rehearsal director.
He is a passionate and critical advocate for equity within the dance sector for practitioners of South Asian dance and a community leader in articulating issues on how these performance aesthetics interface with established institutions of dominant dance presenting/curation in Canada.
Image Description: A black and white close up of Brandy looking directly into the camera. Photo credit: Harikishan S. Nair
Brandy Leary (residency dramaturg) creates contemporary performances with an artistic practice informed by dance, martial arts, circus, and theatre. Her works have been produced and performed in Canada, Europe, India, the Arctic, South Africa and the USA in theatres, urban environments, festivals, museums, art galleries and isolated landscapes. She is a dancer, choreographer, dramaturg, curator and Artistic Director of ĀNANDAṀ.
Her choreographic works have been described as “phenomenological interventions” (Canadian Theatre), “soulful and sensuous” (NYTimes) and “embodying a hallucinatory, dreamlike state” (NOW). The dances she creates are rooted in choreographic rigour that considers aesthetic, and structural inquiries for the body, space and audience relationships.
June 2023
Co-Curators: Tanveer Alam & Nithya Garg
Lead Artists: Sanjukta Banerjee / Marie Lambin Gagnon
Dancers: Sanjukta Banerjee / Megumi Kukoba & Jessica Germano
Dramaturgs: Harikishan S. Nair / Brandy Leary