Dancemakers Presents TWOBYFOUR Festival of Duets, 1/17

Artists from Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Berlin bring a vast aesthetic to the stage, but come together through their shared insistence on rigour and beauty – beauty that is complex, contemporary and full of life in the TWOBYFOUR Festival of duets.

George Stamos, in his second appearance at Dancemakers, mines queer politics in Liklik Pik, a duet for two men, in the first program. Peter Bingham/EDAM, also making a return engagement to Dancemakers, offers a playful yet complex exchange between two men, in Right in Front of You. On the same program, emerging dance maker Andrea Spaziani contemplates the possibility of really feeling ready to perform in The Moment Before. The third program presents the Toronto debut of German artist Martin Nachbar in Repeater, an intergenerational work with his 73 year old father.

Program 1 – George Stamos
Humans have long been interested in examining the distinctions and similarities between themselves and other animals. Inspired by his own fascination, following imaginative impulses and convergent queer tangents along the way, George Stamos pursues this curiosity in Liklik Pik, a cross-media duet for 'pigs'. 

Living and working in Montreal, contemporary choreographer Stamos was a sex-worker's rights and AIDS activist from 1987-1993 and a go-go dancer from 1989-2000. He studied choreography and improvisation at The School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam and his work has been presented across Canada, the US and in Europe.

Program 2 – Peter Bingham / Andrea Spaziani
As two men watch, learn and respond to each other through physical elaborations in Right In Front Of You, their bodies "talk". The resulting conversation builds a language of physical freedom that ultimately liberates them both.

EDAM (Experimental Dance and Music) is a Vancouver-based contemporary dance company under the artistic directorship of Peter Bingham, Canada's master of contact improvisation. The company is deeply committed to the investigation of movement as an expressive art form and to providing a stable and fertile environment for the development of contemporary dance.

In The Moment Before, two performers, suspended in time, prepare, warm-up, and freak-out as they attempt to come to terms with their upcoming debut. Their rituals, personal voodoo, and self-doubt intensify, as every second brings them closer to the edge of an incomprehensible future, making them question if it's possible to ever feel ready.

Andrea Spaziani is a Toronto-based independent dance artist, Ryerson University graduate and therapeutic pilates instructor. She is currently hatching Open Air Collective which will premiere new choreography by Montreal's Emmanuel Jouthe in the summer of 2012. In the past year, Spaziani collaborated on projects with Alicia Grant, Susie Burpee, Juno winner Christopher Mills and Alias Dance Project.

Program 3 – Martin Nachbar
Repeater is about a father and son making a dance piece together. Inverting the traditional power dynamic, the son asks the father to imitate, learn and repeat his physical patterns and improvisation scores. Through this kinship of movement, the father now follows the son.

Martin Nachbar is a performer, choreographer, teacher and writer. He received his training at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam, at P.A.R.T.S. (Brussels) and in New York. He was a co-founder of the collective B.D.C. and has worked with, Les Ballets C de la B, Vera Mantero, Meg Stuart, Nicole Beutler, Carlos Pez, Thomas Lehmen, Jochen Roller and Joachim Schlömer. His pieces, which tour internationally, are characterized by their combined use of dance, choreography, dramaturgy, text and visual media.

DANCEMAKERS presents TWOBYFOUR - A Festival of Duets
January 17-28, 2012
All performances begin at 8pm in the Dancemakers Centre for Creation

Program 1
January 17-19
George Stamos (Montreal)
Liklik Pik – Performed by George Stamos and Dany Desjardins
Post-show Talk-back: January 18

Program 2
January 21-23
Peter Bingham / EDAM (Vancouver)
Right in Front of You – Performed by James Gnam and Farley Johansson
Andrea Spaziani (Toronto)
The Moment Before – Created and performed by Amanda Acorn and Andrea Spaziani
Post-show Talk-back: January 22

Program 3
January 26-28
Martin Nachbar (Berlin)
Repeater – Performed by Martin Nachbar and Klaus Nachbar
Post-show Talk-back: January 27

Dancemakers Centre for Creation
Distillery District, 55 Mill Street, The Cannery Building 58, Studio 313

3 Show Pass: $60 / $54 (CADA, Senior/Student, Arts Worker)
Passes are available until January 19 by phone only 416.367.1800.
Single Tickets: $25 ($20 CADA, Senior/Student, Arts Worker)

To Purchase Tickets Visit www.dancemakers.org/boxoffice.html. Single tickets are also available in person at Soundscapes, 572 College Street

The TWOBYFOUR Festival of Duets is supported by the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Canada
Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, the Hal Jackman Foundation, IBM Canada Ltd. and The Mayor of Berlin – Senate Chancellery – Cultural Affairs.

Photo by David Hou

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