U of T’s Festival of Dance is celebrating its ninth year this weekend at Hart House Theatre. The three-night festival showcases different acts each night, presenting over 55 different acts, 200 performers, and a wide range of styles-from jazz to hip-hop to Egyptian belly dancing.
“The really great thing is that there are so many different styles in one night,” says Kathryn Clarke, the director of the festival. “And dance is a different form of expression that, unlike painting or theatre, you just don’t get to see every day.”
It’s a great chance for students to see a huge diversity of “different cultures and different dances all in one place,” agrees Michelle Wong, a dancer who will be performing in the FoD for a third year.
Performing in both an Irish traditional dance and a fusion ballet/swing piece, Wong praises the show and the performers for embracing a plethora of styles and levels of experience, so that everyone is able to learn and contribute. For instance, for one piece she was able to take advantage of a workshop for new dancers presented by the Irish dance choreographers, while contributing a “lot more creative input” into the fusion performance by drawing upon her previous swing-dance experience.
“A lot of my friends have been really supportive, even if they’re not usually really into dance themselves,” she adds. “It’s a great opportunity to see what your classmates have been up to, and what they’re capable of!” For dancers, the fest proves that “there’s always room for improvement, and not just technically,” she says. Performing “really allows some people to blossom on stage.”
Clarke says that a big part of the rationale behind the festival is “giving people the opportunity to perform in a professional setting,” to give people the chance to “show everyone something that [we] have been working on so hard that they otherwise wouldn’t get to see.” The dancers’ enthusiasm, she notes, makes for “such a fun show! There’s so much energy. I can’t think of anything like it in the dance community at all.”
It’s a great opportunity for future performers as well. “I don’t know of that many performing opportunities for non-professionals” who are enthusiastic about dance, says Wong. But the FoD provides a great introduction to U of T’s unique dance community. Dancers like Wong encourage their fellow students to drop by Hart House this weekend to “see what [they’ve] come up with, see what it’s like-and then hopefully join next year!”
The Festival of Dance runs April 1 to 3 at Hart House Theatre. Tickets are $12, or $10 for students and seniors. See www.harthousetheatre.ca for more details.
