Deborah Lundmark, Co-Founder, Artistic Director and Resident Choreographer, has created more than 40 works for her company. These range from performance collaborations with the Danny Grossman Dance Company, Dancemakers and Toronto Dance Theatre to live co-presentations with blues artists Thompson Egbo-Egbo, Carlos del Junco and Jerome Godboo. From her Street Songs (1980) to the darkening green (2021), 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, Roberto Campanella and Jera Wolfe 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 leading companies including the Limón Dance Company, Mark Morris Dance Group, Doug Varone and Dancers, Gallim Dance, Company Wayne McGregor and Skånes Dansteater, among many others. Most recently her film, the darkening green, has won numerous international awards including the Cannes World Film Festival’s Best Dance Film and Best Original Song, composed and performed by Greg Harrison and Frances Miller.

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Photo by Gary Ray Rush

Michael deConinck Smith has directed the staging of over three hundred CCDT productions including five appearances at the Canada Dance Festival. In 1988 he conceived and produced CCDT’s acclaimed collaboration with the Toronto Boys Choir and the Hanson Singers, the original WINTERSONG – dances for a sacred season, now a three-decade-old tradition. In 1990, Michael led CCDT’s first international tour to the People’s Republic of China, and the following year the premiere of SONGS of INNOCENCE and of EXPERIENCE, featuring commissions by ten leading choreographers, realized one of his long-cherished dreams. From 1997 to 2000 he planned CCDT’s extensive tours of Northern Ontario, and in 2002 led the company’s return to Southeast Asia with performances in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru, Malaysia. In 1994, Michael oversaw the purchase and renovation of CCDT’s 509 DANCE studios, now an intergenerational crossroads for Canadian dance. For fifteen years Michael has led his company’s Ontario Community Residencies Program introducing more than 300,000 young people to contemporary dance in theatres throughout Ontario. Most recently, he produced CCDT’s Scotland tour to the Commonwealth Youth Dance Festival followed by the company’s inaugural appearances at the storied Joyce Theater in New York City as part of the José Limón Dance Company’s International Dance Festival in celebration of their 70th Anniversary.

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Photo by Gary Ray Rush

Natasha Poon Woo began her formal training and performing career with Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre from ages 10-17. She holds a BFA from the Conservatory of Dance at SUNY Purchase, having graduated summa cum laude with the President’s Award for Achievement. Natasha is an active performer with Toronto dance companies Rock Bottom Movement and Côté Danse, and has also worked with The Dietrich Group, Roderick George, BoucharDanse, Fujiwara Dance Inventions, Benjamin Landsberg, Ryan Lee / The Platform, Hit & Run Dance Productions, Gadfly, Little Pear Garden, Kevin Wynn, and Conny Janssen Danst, among others. She is a Dora Award-winning performer with Rock Bottom for its acclaimed 2019 production of hollow mountain.

Natasha is currently a Guest Artistic Associate of CCDT, after serving as the company’s Associate Artistic Director from 2019-2021 and Rehearsal Director from 2012-2021. She has been the Rehearsal Director for Human Body Expression since 2015, in addition to assisting the creative processes of many independent artists for the past decade. A member of Healthy Dancer Canada, Natasha is a certified instructor of The Extension Method™ as well as a sought-after dance educator specializing in Limón-based modern technique and C-I Training™ (certified and mentored by Donna Krasnow).

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@npdubz

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Photo by Drew Berry