Canada Dance Festival
The Canada Dance Festival (CDF) is a presenter of Canadian dance and a catalyst for the development of the art form. As a national organization that presents live dance performances, activities reflect the diverse cultural and regional landscape of the country, and foster a healthy and stimulating environment for community networking, artistic exchange and audience development.
The mandate is to ignite passion, inspire creativity, and unify community in support of dance in Canada, and is the lens through which all the CDFs activities are programmed.
Co-produced by the National Arts Centre (NAC), the CDF has been a national leader in presenting the best in Canadian dance, and a partner in the commissioning and touring of dance since 1987.
The CDF is the only festival dedicated solely to Canadian dance, foregrounding the form on its own terms, rather than through the lens of theatre or inter-disciplinary performance. It has been a vital partner in the development of touring activity, and over the course of its history has commissioned over 95 new Canadian works.
The gathering of dance artists and companies from across Canada is not only a national showcase; it is the coming together of a small and far-flung community. While a performance at the CDF can often launch an artist’s exposure to local, national and international audiences, the festival also acts as a unique professional development opportunity. The chance to build or deepen relationships with peers, to develop new creative partnerships, to encounter new dance experiences and potentially to re-contextualize one’s own body of work against the backdrop of a broader range of aesthetic and thematic concerts. These are all additional and essential benefits to the festival’s on-stage activities. The CDF also integrates opportunities for professional training, networking and support into our festival activities.
The CDF programs and presentations are focused on investing in the development of the artist and creating a supportive and enriching environment for dance-making. Locally, it is committed to investment in the professional community through opportunities during the CDF, and to building mutually beneficial partnerships with organizations that are active in Ottawa year-round.
History
Originally a biennial festival, the CDF developed the “off” or alternate year events as an opportunity to address thematic ideas relevant to the dance community. Since 2013 it has also focused our attentions on works that live outside traditional theatrical experiences, using performances themselves as engagement and audience development initiatives. Festival taglines like “Changing Perspectives” in 2013 and “Dance Where You Least Expect It” in 2015 clearly establish the curatorial ideas at the heart of the programming.
In the past 29 years the CDF has:
● Participated in the commissioning of over 95 original dances;
● Promoted Canadian dance artists on a national and international level, and presented more than 1000 Canadian dance works to Ottawa audiences;
● In 2007, developed and presented the Hip Hop 360 program with a Bboy / Bgirl advisory committee, successfully bringing Bboying into the contemporary dance context;
● Hosted Dancing Through Cultures (2009), a dialogue on diversity that was developed by a national, culturally diverse advisory committee;
● Underwent two key organizational development processes in 2011, which included consultations with the dance community conducted by the Board of Directors across the country and a strategic planning process to map out the CDFs direction for the future;
● Celebrated 25 years of presenting dance in Ottawa in 2012, showcasing 20 performances at the festival, including six world premieres, and welcomed new AD Jeanne Holmes;
● Presented Sylvain Émard’s Le Grand Continental® (LGC®) featuring 120 amateur volunteer dancers from Ottawa-Gatineau as part of CDF 2013: Changing Perspectives;
● Closed CDF 2014 with The 60 Dancer Project – a national collaboration project with young dance graduates from five contemporary dance-training programs, choreographed by Ottawa-based dancemaker Tedd Robinson | 10 Gates Dancing;
● Presented the first touring production of Kaeja d’Dance’s community dance project Porch View Dances during in Westboro in 2015.
CDF 2015 celebrated the work of artists who are changing the idea of what dance can be: dance that played like a rock concert; dance that immersed the audience and invited them to experience the performances also as a participant; dance that introduced new spatial relationships, created and performed by families in their own homes, gardens and front porches; by artists on very small stages; in the entrance to the theatre rather than on the stage; and a few others that literally popped up around Ottawa. Rather than waiting for audiences to come to the CDF in the theatre, they brought the work out into the world in places audiences might never look to find it.
CDF 2016
CDF 2016, a large festival year, will run June 4–11 and feature works in traditional venues, as well as several site-specific performances that maintain the commitment to bring work out of the theatres and directly to audiences. Alongside the ongoing commitment to excellence, accessing the extensive NAC dance audience, continuing to build local partnerships, and expanding the festival’s reach are informing the choices of the CDF this season.
CDF 2016 will bring together artists and artistic points of view that reflect the full spectrum of Canadian dance; the voices of the next generation alongside veteran creators, the regional perspective in contrast with the urban experience, diverse cultural influences and experiences, traditional theatrical events and site-specific community engagements, all brought to life by Canadian contemporary dance makers.
The event page can be found on the NAC website.
Looking Forward
The proposal for CDF 2017, traditionally a small-event year, is to again embrace the ideas and ideals of dances created for non-traditional performance spaces and situations. However, given the focus on activities honouring Canada’s 150th, the “small” festival year programming includes larger scale projects and commissions that reflect the celebratory nature of the event year.
CDF 2017 celebrates the national dance milieu with performances that showcase a range of Canadian artists embracing the non-traditional creation format. The works presented will offer immersive performance environments alongside expansive platforms, collaborative projects that connect creators across disciplines, and productions that bring dances and dancers off the stage and out into the world in both intimate and high-profile ways. The productions coming to Ottawa in June 2017 will challenge audiences to see the city and its public spaces in new ways. Free and pay-what-you can events will encourage audiences to take risks, while non-theatrical spaces will engage invested dance audiences in new performance experiences.