SSF @ Museum of Boulder: Festival Premiere 2023

America, God Bless You (If It’s Good to You) highlights brief containers of memories from black women with diverse backgrounds. It examines their collective response to America’s inability to address and rectify the structures that create isolation in the community and its fragmented truths. The Dancer in the Black Dress calls for black women to collectively break these systems of oppression by utilizing their strengths and joining forces, echoing the message “The future is ours if you can count.”

Deleite honors the delicate balance of motherhood by exploring the embodied weight of the physical and psychological consequences of maternal caregiving. The juxtaposed delight and struggle of parenting are reflected in the title, Deleite, a play on words meaning both delight and ‘of milk’ in Brazilian Portuguese.

Two hands lead the movement and poetry of a solo dancer contemplating life and loss.

This piece was originally part of an outdoor performance presented during the pandemic. The choreographic process involved creating movement material from stories of travel to relate to the environment where the performance took place.

This high energy piece features a fusion of Afro dance, House and Hip-Hop dance styles. Through an exploration of these dance forms, this piece seeks to establish American street dance as a direct extension of West African culture.

Follow the Flow is an environmental dance film focused on bringing awareness to the water crisis of the Colorado River. A dancer, rawly integrated into the environment, illustrates a symbiotic relationship with the river, while exemplifying how paramount it is to remember humans are intertwined with this river in everyday life. The grandeur and nuance of the river is emphasized while following it through diverse environments from the headwaters in Colorado, through Utah, and to the final stretch of the river in Yuma Valley.

A duo between a woman and a circle. Vicious Circle is a lyrical, comical and sometimes dramatic meditation on the meaning of life. Going from a cell to an embryo to a girl to a woman, the character continually encounters the circle, which she tries to grasp. The circle surrounds her, fascinates her and seduces her. Highly metaphorical, ranging from the cosmic to the everyday, the circle is the uterus, the lover, the father, the aspiration – life – death – and the mandala (‘circle’, in Sanskrit): the one that brings everything back to oneself. Learn more.

Five people venture to a secret meadow tucked behind snow capped mountains to participate in a ritual of their own making. Together, they delight in dream logic and ceremonial uncanny through their mischievous traditions.

In the videodance Maracatu vs Passinho we invited a Passinho dancer and a Caboclo de Lança to present some of their expressions in a friendly duel.

Whether it’s running a marathon, climbing a mountain, or simply making it through a difficult day, endurance is what enables people to persist and succeed. Without it, people would give up at the first sign of difficulty. Endurance is a film about the power of perseverance and the resilience of the human spirit in the face of challenging circumstances. It examines the journey of life itself, the physical and emotional aspects of endurance, exploring the ups and downs, the triumphs and failures, and the moments of joy and sorrow that define the human experience. A testament to the idea that with hard work, determination, and the inherent drive to keep going despite adversity, anything is possible. Through the role of community and the support of others, this film aims to evoke a sense of wonder, hope, and renewal, encouraging audiences to embrace life’s journey with courage and determination.

To perceive, from the Greek “touch at a distance.” Absent Presence is the surreal journey of a disconnected body in an attempt to find itself in the spaces of an empty house. A game of perceptions, between the ambiguity of reflections and distorted shadows, which leads the viewers to wonder about the relativity of what they are watching: “What is real to us? What can I move and what moves me?”

Offering creates a meaningful convergence between the Migration Dance Film Project’s body percussion artists and emerging artists from dance (gigue, contemporary, street) and circus arts. The choreography uses the power of procession in Montreal’s urban borough of Little Burgundy to amplify its storyline of (re)imagined homescape in the era of mid-pandemic. The procession formed by movement artists from across communities weaves its way through urban corridors, neighbourhoods, green spaces — an uncoiled assemblage of nomadic storytellers anchored in the intimate knowledge of individual and shared experiences in unison. Offering imbues movement in stillness within our city and takes refuge in its powerful migratory patterns traced across our urbanscape.

An elderly man crosses paths with the neighborhood mischiefs.

During a nighttime visit to a museum, an unforeseen connection between a woman and a painting triggers an unexpected journey between the real and the unreal.

A visual fable with poetic notes that oscillate between reality and surrealism to reveal a universe mixing plastic, landscape and poetry. We discover a couple looking like René Magritte’s lovers who have exchanged their veil against a plastic bag. In research of sensitivity, this video fable questions our rupture with the rest of the living world and our (in)ability to identify with it. We are this living being caught in a trap: how could we forget about it?

This character is for the part of us that likes to be dressed up but go off kilter. It’s the adrenaline rush of being late for the boss, or running off with a piece of fruit. There is a broken toy in this man, a last clown standing; a child that still remains intact and at large. When I have worked 9-5 jobs lunch break was a broadly erotic time because it was a chance to be a body. A gulp of possibility sandwiched in between otherwise impossible hours. He is but a momentary ant galavanting through a deserted hive.

I Go Iŋdeepe/andence is a duet piece that raises the question of independence on a personal and global level and its impact on people. Starting from relevant political events in the cultural and social life of Poland and Ukraine, we examine phenomena of independence in these countries and how this issue affects local citizens. How much are people willing to pay for the independence of their country, for independence in decision-making and personal freedom? This performance represents a way to find harmony in boundaries and trust not only in yourself, but also in the closest people and local socio-cultural environment.

Why are our fantasies so far removed from our reality? Regret to inform You follows a difficult day in the life of a Performer on the verge of forced obscurity and retirement. After one too many rejections, he becomes undone, retreating into a black and white dance fantasy to combat the reality of a society that has no place for him.