It takes – at minimum – two people to establish a conversation. In dance, the duet is the purest form of this exchange and informs the curatorial lens of the TWOBYFOUR Festival.

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.

Program 1 – J anuary 17-19 at 8pm
George Stamos (Montreal)
Liklik Pik - performed by George Stamos and Dany Desjardins

A duet for two men, Liklik Pikemphasizes the animal power of the human body, following imaginative impulses and convergent, queer tangents along the way. Neither narrative nor abstract Liklik Pikplayfully evokes the pig as a totem animal.

Examining distinctions and similarities between humans and other animals is a long-lived human interest. At times serious and at times playful, with Liklik Pik,George Stamos explores his interest in this topic while utilizing a variety of media. Liklik Pikis a cross media performance piece where the medium is but a fraction of the message. These guys are pigs.

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

Choreographed by Peter Bingham, Canada’s master of contact improvisation, right in front of you reveals a building friendship between two men. As they watch, learn and respond to each other through physical elaborations, their bodies “talk”. The resulting conversation builds a language, trust and physical freedom that ultimately liberates.

In Spaziani’s The Moment Before two performers, suspended in time, prepare, warm-up, and freak-out as they attempt to come to terms with their scheduled debut. Their rituals, personal voodoo, and self-doubt intensify, as every second brings them closer to the edge of an incomprehensible future.

Program 3 – January 26-28
Martin Nachbar (Berlin)
Repeater - performed by Martin Nachbar and Klaus Nachbar

In his Toronto debut, dancer and choreographer Martin Nachbar brings the internationally acclaimed Repeater, a duet for a father and son about making a dance piece together. Inverting the traditional power dynamic, the son invites the father, through a kinship of movement, to imitate, learn and repeat his physical patterns and improvisation scores. In so doing, the father now follows the son.

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.