Porch View Dances 2024/curated by Mayumi Lashbrook, choreographed by Sid Ryan Eilers, Fer Camacho, Zita Nyarady and the participants, Seaton Village in the Annex, closes Jul. 21. Pay-what-you-can. (The gathering place is Porch View Dances Lane and London St., between Euclid and Manning.) More information here.
Despite the fact that Porch View Dances is 13 years old, the concept remains astonishingly unique. A mainstay of a Toronto summer, this community dance event — “real people dancing in real spaces” — continues to delight on so many levels.May
By way of background, Karen Kaeja, co-artistic director of Kaeja d’Dance, was at a boring budget meeting (her words) at her home in the Annex neighbourhood, when she happened to look out the window at people at the house across the street. Suddenly a vision came to her, and in her mind’s eye, normal, everyday activity morphed into choreography.
And so an idea was born — ordinary people dancing on their porches (and front lawns).
This is what happens at Porch View Dances.
People who live in Seaton Village, in the Bloor/Bathurst area of the Annex, volunteer to be participants. They are matched with a professional choreographer, and together, they create a performance piece. The audience moves from one porch to the next, led by a master of ceremonies. On the way to the porches, the audience is treated to vignettes created by a professional choreographer, and performed by professional dancers. The event ends in Vermont Square Park with a Flock Landing, where dancers lead the entire audience in gentle movements in a community dance finale.
It truly does take a village to mount PVD each year.
For the 13th addition, Hamilton-based choreographer/dancer Mayumi Lashbrook was the artistic curator and producer who chose the professional artists. Noted Toronto choreographer Malgorzata Nowacka-May acted as project & production manager, with seasoned stage manager Sharon DiGenova handling the sound. The Emcee/tour guide this year is the spirited multi-discipline artist Kunji Ikeda, who certainly has the flamboyance needed to handle the crowd.
Over the years, PVD has refined its act. For example, Allen Kaeja, the other half of Kaeja d’Dance, has a bicycle squad to control traffic. They wear signs that say “The Streets Are For People, and People Are Dancing”, as they stop the flow of cars to allow the crowd to move between the porches. As well, there are volunteers with boxes to collect the pay-what-you-can money from the audience.
This edition features three porches, and the fun of PVD is to see these enthusiastic amateurs give themselves over to movement. There is always something so joyous about these dances.
Porch 1 is choreographed by veteran dance artist Sid Ryan Eilers, the founder of TRANScenDANCE, which supports gender non-conforming children through creative dance.
The adorable piece, Joy is a Home with Many Rooms, features three children and four adults, and what is special about this work is that the performers are families from TRANScenDANCE.
Dancing to original music by Raphael Roter, the movement, through solos, duets and ensembles, conveys aspects of relationships between parents and children as they express their true selves.
The piece ends with an original song by Roter and librettist Amber Wood featuring lyrics such as, “Our story is joy, and we will be free”, and “We’ll make the world a better place”. The audience was invited to sing along, as the cast holds up placards with the lyrics, and so the piece ends on a joyous anthem to freedom.
Mexican-Canadian dancer, choreographer and acrobat, Fer Camacho, came up with the concept for Porch 2’s piece, Everyone Know How to Play Tag, and is the most seriously choreographed of the three. This charming work features Camacho with Karen and Naomi Atkin, and a hula hoop, performing to music of many moods.
The premise has the elderly Karen, cane in hand, transformed into a vibrant younger self by stepping into a magic hula hoop. She is then joined by Naomi and Camacho in playful solos, duets and trios, as they create games to amuse themselves, tease each other, and fight over the hula hoop. It is an utterly beguiling piece, and special kudos to Karen who is the driver of the action.
Porch 3’s amusing Counting Smiles comes from a concept by Zita Nyarady, who works in the fields of dance, theatre and circus. The piece was inspired by Maiko Taku, who during COVID 19, put on her clown outfit to bring smiles to the faces of people during her walks through the neighbourhood. Nyarady, on a pandemic walk with her own family, saw Taku in Christie Pitts during the pandemic, which was the wellspring of the work.
Counting Smiles is essentially a clown piece performed by emerging clowns Taku, Adam Mohammed and Maggy Zelaya. Moving between the porches and the front gardens of two semi-detached houses, they each try to steal the spotlight from each other in playful antics.
Between the porch dances, the audience encounters the vignettes, which this year are by the very talented Esie Mensah, who gets to show her less serious side. In three site specific dances, under the umbrella title As We Age…, performed by Mensah and Rose-Mary Harbans, the choreographer takes us through three stages of life.
The first, performed in a laneway, features Harbans as a young girl who has been made fun of at school. Mensah comes on the scene as a new friend who cheers her up and they play together. The next is set on the far side of a schoolyard fence, with the audience looking in. This vignette is the middle years, as the two dancers perform agitated movement to express sturm und drang. Finally, on two park benches, we find the dancers in old age, with Mensah trying to get Harbans to find her inner vibrancy. Mensah also did the colourful costumes and chose the music.
PVD is always a most satisfying event, walking through the leafy streets of Seaton Village, and inhaling the perfumed air from the flowers in the front lawns. It well and truly makes you feel part of a community.
Are you looking to promote an event? Have a news tip? Need to know the best events happening this weekend? Send us a note.
#LUDWIGVAN
Get the daily arts news straight to your inbox.
Sign up for the Ludwig Van Toronto e-Blast! — local classical music and opera news straight to your inbox HERE.
- SCRUTINY | Mirvish’s Moulin Rouge Deserves All The Hype - November 26, 2024
- SCRUTINY |Svetlana Lunkina Is Radiant In The National Ballet’s Magnificent Giselle - November 22, 2024
- SCRUTINY | You’ll Laugh, You’ll Cry At Crow’s Theatre’s Engaging Big Stuff - November 21, 2024
