Middle East Premiere
FRONTERA - Dana Gingras / Animals of Distinction
Presented with the support of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels
Thu & Fri, Oct 12 - 13 @ 7:30pm, 2023
Past Event
A visually stunning spectacle of propulsive dance, powerful live post-rock, and dazzling lighting.
In FRONTERA, choreographer Dana Gingras explores spaces of inclusion and exclusion, tackling borders as boundaries between the public and private realms. Animals of Distinction’s nine dancers — their bodies mapped in high resolution, their destinies unresolved — contend with the ideas of ‘a real or imaginary dividing line’ and the extreme limits of understanding.
United Visual Artists (UVA) creates a spectacular world of light. Paired with Fly Pan Am’s live, gripping, post-rock beats and field recordings by Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s Dave Bryant, they form a dynamic, visual conversation between choreography, architecture, and sound.
In an era of accelerated climate change, mass migration and corporate surveillance, the human body has never been rendered so visible, subject to increasingly invasive forms of oversight and processing. Increasingly, the border moves with the body, and seeks to organize and orchestrate its passage through the world. In the ever-advancing frontier of technology, what space remains for the unruly, ungovernable body?
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Biography
Dana Gingras
Dana Gingras is a choreographer, filmmaker, performer and teacher. Her 30-year career has moved across mediums and artistic practices and has established her as a game-changing, boundary-pushing artist. Co-founding The Holy Body Tattoo in 1993 the company changed the landscape of Canadian dance, earning numerous awards and honours for its stage and film work. Through Animals of Distinction (AOD),established in 2006 and based in Montreal, she has fostered the creation of cutting-edge works with innovative collaborations that had recently included Godspeed You! BlackEmperor, United Visual Artists, Jim White, and Marie Davidson. The work of AOD has been performed at some of the most prestigious festivals and venues in the world including the Edinburgh International Festival, BAM’s Next Wave Festival, MONA FOMA Tasmania, ROMAEUROPA Festival, Barbican Centre London, Sydney Festival, Adelaide Festival, CTM Festival Berlin, Festival TransAmériques Montreal, PuSh Festival Vancouver and the National Arts Centre. Dana was awarded the long-term artist residency at Centre Creation O Vertigo From 2017-2019 which produced Frontera,a collaboration with United Visual Artists and Fly Pan Am.
As a response to the recent pandemic, Gingras conceived and curated Jump Cut, an 8-part multimedia digital series featuring a hybrid of dance, music and video. The series was co commissioned by CTM Festival with the participation of MUTEK and Take Me Somewhere Glasgow. Jump Cut was featured in the exhibition “Connected Alienation” at Kunstraum Kreuzberg in Berlin as part of CTM 2022. Most recently, AOD premiered Creation Destruction, a large-scale outdoor event at theLuminato Festival in Toronto in 2022 and at the Festival TransAmériques 2023 in Montreal. In 2023, AOD also premiered two new productions, Mountains are Mountains at Agorade la Danse Montreal,and Interoception with Marie Davidson at the Ypsigrock Festival in Sicily. Dana Gingras is an associate artist of the National Arts Centre Of Canada.
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- Choreography & Direction: Dana Gingras
- Visual concept & Scenography: United Visual Artists
- Live music composed & performed by: Fly Pan Am
- Performed by: Rodrigo Alvarenga, Nindy Banks, Amara Barner, Nicholas Bellefleur, Jaleesa Coligny, Bailey Eng, Louise Michel Jackson, Alexandre Leblanc, Mark Medrano, Koliane Rochon-Prom Tep
- Field recordings: Dave Bryant
- Dramaturgy: Ruth Little
- Rehearsal director & Assistant to the choreographer: Sarah Williams
- Costumes: Sandra Richefort
- Production Manager: Brenda Recinos Ramirez
- Stage Manager: Claudia Colonna
- Technical Director: Jean-François Piché
- Sound Technician: Yann Dupuis
- Producer & Agent: Sarah Rogers
- Executive Producer: Centre de Creation O Vertigo – CCOV
- In co production with Animals of Distinction
- Developed with support from the National Arts Centre’s National Creation Fund
- Co produced by Danse Danse (Montreal), Sydney Festival, CTM Festival (Berlin) & PuSh International Arts Festival (Vancouver)
- Creation residencies: Centre de Création O Vertigo, Place des Arts Montreal & Salle Pierre-Mercure du Centre Pierre-Péladeau (Montréal)
- This tour of Frontera was made possible with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Quebec.
- Presented with the support of
- Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels
- Also supported by:
