top of page
Visit the new Film Releases page to view CCDT's recent dance films and mini-documentaries, created in the time of Covid-19.
​
Artistic Director | Deborah Lundmark
Photo by David Hou from The Pace of You by Chantelle Good | Dancers: Jamarie William with Akin Mponjika and Tristyn Murray
Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre presents TEMPERED
TEMPERED features a Canadian Premiere by Florida-based Peter Chu and a World Premiere by Artistic Director, Deborah Lundmark. Alongside audience favourites by Jennifer Archibald, Colin Connor, and Roderick George, these works highlight the company’s annual home season of cutting-edge contemporary dance.
...simply breathtaking
- Michael Crabb, Dance International​
​
CCDT can take its place among the ranks of Toronto’s top dance companies.
- Paula Citron, The Globe and Mail
—
May 23 & 24, 8:00pm
The Creative School Chrysalis, Toronto Metropolitan University
43 Gerrard St. East
PROGRAMME
Canadian Premiere—Choreography by Peter Chu
World Premiere—Choreography by Deborah Lundmark
ARENA (2009)—Choreography by Colin Connor
Bytiye (2019) - Choreography by Jennifer Archibald
Dreamscape (2024)—Choreography by Roderick George
 |  |  |  |  |
|---|
Peter Chu trained at Dussich Dance Studio before earning a BFA from The Juilliard School. Peter has performed with Ballet Jazz de Montreal, Crystal Pite's Kidd Pivot, EZdanza, Aszure Barton and Artists, and Celine Dion's “A New Day”. He has been commissioned by Ballet Augsburg, Backhaus Dance, Charlotte Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, Cirque du Soleil, DART Dance Company, Gibney Dance Company, Giordano Dance Chicago, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Kansas City Ballet, MØN Festival, and the Paul Taylor Dance Company. He also has been Rehearsal Director for Nederlands Dans Theater 2 and Guest Rehearsal Director for NDT1. His accolades include the 2010 A.C.E. Capezio Award and the 2008 Perry-Mansfield New Works Festival choreographer award. He is a Choreographic Mentor for the Ann & Weston Hicks Choreography Fellows and the Upsurge Dance Festival. In 2008, Peter founded chuthis. where, as the director of his chuthis. Perspectives program and co-director of Creating WAVES with Jess Hendricks, he continues to push the physical boundaries of dance.
Deborah Lundmark, Co-Founder, Artistic Director and Resident Choreographer, has created more than 40 works for her company. These include collaborations with the Danny Grossman Dance Company and blues artists Thompson Egbo-Egbo and Jerome Godboo. From her Street Songs (1980) to Salients (2023), Lundmark has impressed audiences and critics alike with the power, precision and artistry of her unique company. She has commissioned over one hundred works from a who’s who of Canadian choreographers including David Earle, Carol Anderson, Tedd Robinson, Santee Smith and from abroad, Colin Connor, Sidra Bell, Kevin Wynn, Roderick George, Jennifer Archibald and Alexander Whitley. Her company won Toronto Arts Foundation’s prestigious Arts for Youth Award and has been critically acclaimed as “a national treasure… numbered among the ranks of Toronto’s top dance companies” by The Globe and Mail. Her dancers have gone on to perform with many of the world’s leading companies including the Limón Dance Company, Mark Morris Dance Group, Doug Varone and Dancers, Gallim Dance, Company Wayne McGregor and Skanes Dansteater, among many others.
Based in NYC, Jennifer Archibald is the founder and Artistic Director of the Arch Dance Company and Program Director of ArchCore40 Dance Intensives. She was the first female Resident Choreographer in Cincinnati Ballet's 40-year history. She has choreographed for Atlanta Ballet, Ailey II, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Kansas City Ballet, Tulsa Ballet, Grand Rapids Ballet, Ballet West, Sacramento Ballet, Nashville Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet, and worked commercially for Tommy Hilfiger, NIKE, and MAC Cosmetics. She was awarded a Choreographic Fellowship for Ailey's New Directions Choreography Lab and is a Joffrey Ballet Choreographic Winnings recipient. She was the recipient of the CUNY Dance Initiative Residency and is an Acting Lecturer at the Yale School of Drama who was appointed Guest Faculty Lecturer to develop the Hip Hop curriculum at Columbia/Barnard College. Bytiye is the second of Jennifer's three CCDT commissions.
“Is it even possible to achieve higher consciousness? BYTIYE - (n) a higher state of being; a meaningful existence, investigates how you raise your consciousness and awaken to the eternal, unlimited of your being.” - Jennifer Archibald
Colin Connor has had work invited by festivals such as the Momment’Homme Festival in Montreal, The Holland Festival, and the Festival Internacional de Danza Contemporanea in Mexico. He was the winner of both Sarasota Ballet’s International Choreography Competition and Charleston Ballet Theatre’s Fountainhead Choreography Competition. Major collaborations include: Solea and the Winds, a radical Contemporary / Flamenco evening which toured to critical acclaim for three years across Europe and Secondhand Sofa with bluegrass band The Biscuit Boys for the Piccolo Spoleto Festival. He has choreographed for Atlanta Ballet, Finland’s Damaru Dance Company, Hartford Ballet, Dayton Ballet, Ballet Pacifica, the Island Moving Company, The Juilliard School, Rotterdamse Dansacademie and the ABT Studio Company among many others. Mr. Connor has been an educator at many of the world’s foremost dance centers and was Artistic Director of the American legacy Limón Dance Company for four years.
ARENA was originally developed collaboratively with dancers at CCDT and California Institute of the Arts in 2009. Since then, CCDT has performed it in Glasgow, Scotland where Scotland’s national newspaper acclaimed ARENA, perfect alchemy, and the production by California State University, Fullerton was chosen for the Gala Performance of the American College Dance Association. The independent film version of ARENA, with director Natalie Metzger, won the award for best music video at the Silent River Film Festival."
​ARENA is the first of four works Colin has created for CCDT, followed by Against the Dark (2010) Breath of Rivers (2012), August (2013) and Thaw (2022). Company premieres by Colin include The Weather in the Room (2015) and Two Guys (2016).
Roderick George was born and raised in Houston, Texas. he spent his formative years' training at Ben Stevenson's Houston Ballet Academy, The Alvin Ailey School, and the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (HSPVA). George was a bronze winner of the Youth American Grand Prix in 2005 and a YoungArts Winner and Presidential Scholar of the Arts in 2003. He has danced for Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, Basel Ballet/Theater Basel, GöteborgsOperans Danskompani, and The Forsythe Company. He has performed the work of choreographers such as Marie Chouinard, Peeping Tom, Jorma Elo, Jacopo Godani, William Forsythe, Johan Inger, Iiri Kylian, Sharon Eyal, Ohan Naharin, Benoit Swan-Pouffer, and Richard Wherlock. George founded kNoname Artist in 2015 in Berlin, Germany, and has relocated the company to NYC. George was recently named a YoungArts Fellow 2021-2022, Mertz Gilmore Foundation Dancer Award 2023, and Jacob's Pillow 2024 Inaugral Fitzpatrick Award. Dreamscape is Roderick’s third commission for CCDT.
"Dreamscape was created as a development of fantasy, dreaming, and memory to connect my experience as a teenager with these young artists. Dreaming and owning their perspective in life is how they curate their future, finding the path in their lives and within themselves." - Roderick George
And I’m In Way Over My Head Here by Peter Chu
ARENA by Colin Connor
Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre is a Toronto-based repertory company of exceptional young artists founded in 1980 by Artistic Director Deborah Lundmark and Managing Director Michael deConinck Smith. Highlights include appearances at Toronto’s Princess of Wales and Royal Alexandra Theatres, five invitations to the Canada Dance Festival, and tours to Singapore, Malaysia, China, Scotland, and NYC. CCDT has introduced over 350,000 young people to dance through its Ontario Arts Access program. In recent years, CCDT celebrated the José Limón Dance Company’s 70th anniversary, performing excerpts from The Winged at the Joyce Theater as part of their International Dance Festival, helped to launch Harbourfront’s inaugural Junior International Children’s Festival and was featured in Canada’s premiere international dance festival, Fall For Dance North.
Join our mailing list
to stay in the loop!
bottom of page