“The soul of what we do”: Festival of New Dance 2024 leaps, piqués, and jetés

October 2024

Across various stages on two coasts, FND 2024 is currently on the go with workshops and performances including in St John’s at the Theatre Hill Cafe and the LSPU Hall, and well as the Arts and Culture Centres there and in Corner Brook. Among the offerings were Grand Trine‘s Lounge Act, a tribute to Neighbourhood Dance Works inception in 1990:

There’s Christopher House‘s Crooked Diptych (top photograph) a stunning two-hander (danced by Cassidy Boone and Stephanie Campbell), and James Kudleka‘s Into White, featuring a trio (Boone, Campbell, and Hannah Drover) choreographed to the music of Yosef/Cat Stevens.

Then follows A Study on Loneliness, by Syreeta Hector, with a quartet (Boone, Campbell, Drover, and Abby Rowe) dynamic in voice and movement.

At the top of the pieces, the stage was set by the four dancers rehearsing en barre: as Kittiwake’s Artistic Director, Yukichi Hattori, explained to the audience, “ballet class is pretty much the soul of what we do.” Creation is rooted in the learning, the student becoming first an artisan, and then an artist.
Which makes for lots of great, gorgeous stuff, and presentations like Sarah Joy Stocker’s Pixel Bear (6pm today and tomorrow) are free yes free. Continues through to October 9 – check out the digital program here.

Spring issue on the stands

We’re getting a great response to our spring issue, packed with assessments, appreciations, and imagery on the theme of Corner Stores. Where can you buy it? In St John’s, try…

NORTHERN DETACHMENT

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The wind was still, but the cold was biting all the same. Stepping outside made her sinuses burn and her eyes water. She brushed the snow off the seat of her snowmobile—a mid-nineties Ski-Doo, always giving her trouble. She surveyed the town as she waited for the engine to warm up. It’s squat vinyl sided homes glowed amidst the dim winter daytime. Snowmobile tracks crisscrossed on the road but not a person was in sight. She checked her handheld GPS. The coordinates lined up with somewhere northwest, about a forty-five minute ride under the blanket of dark. There were no stars today. It was always cloudy.

James Miller: Making Marks in Realism

BY NQ

“I have been exploring and painting the landscape and seascape of the island of Newfoundland for over 35 years. This series of works, Gardens of Stone, is the continuation of…