Michael Trent
Curator
Dora-nominated dance artist Michael Trent was the Artistic Director and Resident Choreographer of Toronto’s Dancemakers from 2006 – 2014. In a career spanning over twenty-five years, Trent’s body of work has been seen across Canada at Montreal’s l’Agora de la danse, the Canada Dance Festival, the Dancing on the Edge Festival in Vancouver, the Dunn Theatre in Halifax, and the National Arts Centre. He was the co-recipient of the 2004 K.M. Hunter Artists Award in dance.
Curatorial Statement
At the company’s fortieth anniversary gala in April of this year, I had the great pleasure of announcing the incubation/production house (IPH) model, a new way of making dance and connecting it with publics.
Since 2006, I have fulfilled Dancemakers’ mission by making and commissioning new work that we performed at home and on the road, and by curating performances and learning opportunities with artists who, like us, were asking questions about the very nature of dance today.
Although the company’s mandate remains the same, this inventive new creation/production model was designed to drive our vision into the future and position Dancemakers as a Canadian leader in contemporary dance.
Re-imagining how, by and for whom we made dances, the IPH model would invite three resident artists (RAs) to incubate and produce new work over staggered three-year terms. A newly appointed position of curator would lead the crucial task of making connections between the RA creations, the field and the publics the company served.
Adaptation Project
Michael Trent’s response to choreographer Mitchell Rose’s 1974 Following Station Identification
Dancemakers Centre for Creation
Apr 19, 2012 – Apr 29, 2012
Love Loss
In loveloss, Michael Trent mines personal experience, investigating the bodily affects of love and loss.
Dancemakers Centre for Creation
Feb 17, 2013 – Feb 24, 2013
Hi-Fi: Rumschpringe
In response to Lo-Fi in 2012, Michael Trent has relinquished his fall season and handed it over, along with all the authority, to the resident company dancers.
Dancemakers Centre for Creation
Nov 18, 2013 – Nov 24, 2013
Around
Celebrating Dancemakers 40th anniversary, this new work mines all the ways we encounter ourselves and others in our pursuit of being human.
Dancemakers Centre for Creation
Mar 26, 2014 – Apr 6, 2014