Award-Winning Contemporary Repertory Company
Modern & Ballet Dance Classes in Toronto

"We want Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre to be a place of discovery where young dance artists can connect..." 

- Deborah Lundmark and Michael deConinck Smith

CANADIAN CONTEMPORARY DANCE THEATRE presents ARENA

MAY 25, 26th at the Fleck Dance Theatre, Toronto

Premieres by Sylvie Bouchard, Colin Connor and Deborah Lundmark

Premieres by three acclaimed North American choreographers will highlight CCDT’s appearance in Harbourfront Centre’s NextSteps 11/12 season at Fleck Dance Theatre, May 25 and 26 at 8 pm.

Internationally accomplished dance artist Colin Connor completes a trilogy of dances for CCDT with his duet The Breath of Rivers, following up his ARENA (2009) and Against the Dark (2010). Connor says of his latest work,  We can never fully explain the energy that happens between two people.  It has its own mysterious life that can ebb and flow. Sometimes it can emerge like the way, out of a cold winter, the snow slowly melts, streams start to flow, and rivers rush and fill, and pour into oceans. A former dancer in the Jose Limon Dance Company, now a prolific international choreographer, Connor has won both the Sarasota Ballet’s International Choreography Competition and the Charleston Ballet Theatre’s Fountainhead Choreography Competition. His ARENA, a fierce study in urban social combat that reads like a premonition of The Hunger Games condensed to a ten minute cage fight, culminates the program.

Sylvie Bouchard, CCDT’s 2011/12 Artist in Residence, says of her L’envol  There is excitement in being in a new place, but also a sense of missing the familiar. In our walk forward, our memories travel with us. L’envol is a celebration of life, a visit with memories, and also a remembrance of people who have traveled on this path, walking uncertainly towards the light, much too soon. Bouchard’s first work for CCDT, Passade, dates back to the mid-eighties during her outstanding performance career with Toronto Dance Theatre. In the intervening years Bouchard has launched several companies – CORPUS, Dusk Dances and most recently, BoucharDanse, toured the world, and received a Dora nomination for her solo, Cassiopeia.

In her untitled premiere, CCDT’s Co-Founder and Artistic Director Deborah Lundmark tackles the challenge facing young 21’st century women who find themselves expelled without a map from the doll-house certainties that confined earlier generations. Lundmark also will remount her While We Were Walking (2009), a leisurely old-world stroll in the town square inspired by Vivaldi’s Concerto for Four Violins in B Minor. In 2011 her company celebrated its 30’th anniversary by winning the Toronto Arts Foundation’s prestigious Arts for Youth Award

A sumptuous 1992 work by Carol Anderson, CCDT’s most prolific guest artist with ten commissions to her credit, completes the six dance program. The creation of Sephardic Songs coincided with the 500^th anniversary of Columbus’ 1492 voyage to America, the same year in which all the Jews were expelled from Spain. Anderson writes, On a trip to Spain, I saw a group of girls dancing in the old Jewish quarter of Seville. I was struck by the irony of the world celebrating Columbus’ voyage, while ignoring the tragedy of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. A founding member of Dancemakers and the author of dozens of articles and books on Canadian dance, Anderson currently teaches the next generation of dancers at her alma mater, York University.

SummerArts: A Spirited Toronto Arts Camp

Our SummerArts is back and better than ever with Creative Movement, Music, Visual Arts and our brand new You Can't Stop the Beat Club!

Active and creative, this weeklong program guarantees a fun summer adventure for your energetic and inspired little one.

Available in half and full-day sessions.  Early registrants receive a discount!

Presenting SunDance 2012 Summer Intensive

...dancing into your future

Celebrating our 15th year with the Royal Academy of Dance

Experience training that matters!  Our unique summer intensive artfully combines Limon modern technique with Royal Academy of Dance ballet.

  Capping Off a Stellar Year on a Winning Note!

CCDT RECEIVES TORONTO ARTS FOUNDATION’S ARTS FOR YOUTH AWARD

"This award belongs first and foremost to the more than 200 extraordinary young dancers who, over thirty years, have tirelessly pushed artistic boundaries.  They inspire us every day." - Deborah Lundmark, Artistic Director.

Mayor’s Arts Awards winners, from left, Alan Convery of the TD Bank, new music pioneer Trichy Sankaran, Michael deConinck Smith and Deborah Lundmark of the Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre, filmmaker Adam Garnet Jones and arts administrator Jane Marsland. Photo: Colin McConnell/Toronto Star

Leading into the sixth annual Mayor's Arts Award Lunch, CCDT had been honoured to stand as a finalist for the Arts For Youth Award with sister youth arts champions, Theatre Direct and Young People’s Theatre whose combined 80 years’ contribution has made Toronto a world leader in the field. The other winners joining CCDT on stage were Jane Marsland (the Rita Davies and Margo Bindhardt Cultural Leadership Award), Dr, Trichy Sankaran (the Muriel Sherrin Award For International Achievement in Music), Adam Garnet Jones (the RBC Emerging Artist Award) and TD Bank Group (the Toronto Arts and Business Award).

The Toronto Arts Foundation’s celebration of the City’s artistry was held October 20 at the elegant Arcadian Court with writer Ann-Marie MacDonald acting as the event’s  highly entertaining Master of Ceremonies. 
 
For CCDT, the award is a wonderful culmination of an already stellar 30th anniversary which included Galas at Fleck Dance Theatre attended by many former dancers, choreographers and designers, and the renaming of the former Canadian Children’s Dance Theatre. This $15,000 cash prize was established in 2007 by Martha Burns, Jim Fleck and Jim B. Pitblado. It celebrates an individual, collective or organization that demonstrates an outstanding commitment to engaging Toronto youth in the arts.

TAF commissioned "Finalist Series" photo by Denise Grant of CCDT's Artistic
Director Deborah Lundmark and Managing Director Michael deConinck Smith

Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre is a repertory company founded by Artistic Director Deborah Lundmark and Managing Director Michael deConinck Smith in 1980 to present gifted next-generation artists in professional productions. While still in their teens CCDT dancers enjoy performing the work of such dance luminaries as David Earle, Carol Anderson, Danny Grossman, Margie Gillis, Peggy Baker and Peter Chin in forty shows annually. As part of the Toronto-based company’s ten year Ontario Arts Access initiative they have introduced 160,000 students to contemporary dance, from Windsor and Lion’s Head to Kapuskasing and Kenora. Other presentation highlights include featured appearances at Toronto’s Princess of Wales and Royal Alexandra Theatres for the Creative Trust and Dancers for Life Galas, tours to Singapore, Malaysia and China, and five invitations to the Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa.

was founded in 1983 to provide a creative home for young bodies, minds and spirits. The School offers evening and weekend classes in Music and Movement, Creative Dance, RAD Ballet, Limón Modern, Jazz, Tap and Hip Hop. Summer dance programs, student teacher internships and classes for adults are also available. 

Fall 2011 Registration is on now!

 
Click here to see our 2011-12 schedule.

Click here to see our NEW classes. 

Click here to see our ADULT classes.

Click here to view the 2011-12 Brochure.
 

Visit our dancewear offerings online, click here for store hours.
Or shop in person at 509 DanceWear at 509 Parliament Street!

is home to the Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre, the School of CCDT, and hundreds of emerging and renowned dance artists including the Fujiwara Dance Inventions. A recently-renovated historic theatre in Toronto's Old Cabbagetown district, 509 Dance is available for rental.

Without public funding, the arts cannot flourish. We would like to thank the following government agencies for their ongoing support:

Come visit us at 509 Parliament Street - Toronto, Ontario  M4X 1P3 -  Canada (map)
Tel: 416.924.5657 - Fax: 416.924.4141 - e-mail: info@ccdt.org

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