The Bentway hosts world premiere of “Sand Flight”

It’s a live dance performance on 18ft of sand, beneath the Gardiner! How cool is that?

Marking the Canadian debut at The Bentway, as part of their Sun/Shade summer festival, acclaimed Oslo-based choreographer Ingri Fiksdal unveils the world premiere of Sand Flight, a daring, site-specific collaboration with Jonas Corell Petersen and Toronto Dance Theatre, unfolding beneath Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway. 

Running from June 12–15 beneath the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto, Sand Flight is an outdoor performance that brings together 8 dancers and a 50-person choir from Viva Voices – an all-ages Toronto-based choral organization – performing live atop an 18-foot-high sand dune, created from locally sourced Ontario sand.

The work is a piece of speculative fiction, imagining Toronto 500 years from now, in a future so warm that a desert has begun to form. The performance explores both struggle and collaboration with the sand, with moments of resistance, unity, and adaptation, illustrating how humanity might evolve in response to extreme heat and climate change. 

Importantly, the piece is grounded in a site rich with meaning: the space beneath the Gardiner was once the original shoreline of Lake Ontario. Sand Flight reclaims and reimagines this altered land, inviting audiences to consider how our cities and ecosystems are continually reshaped by both time and human action. 

Key Details:

• 8 dancers: 2 from Oslo, 5 from Toronto Dance Theatre, and 1 independent Toronto-based dancer. One dancer is French speaking.
• 50-person choir: from Viva Voices, an all-ages community choir
• Family-friendly and accessible: Welcoming to all audiences, not just contemporary dance or art-goers
• Futuristic Costumes: Custom costumes inspired by motocross sports 
• Environmentally responsible: The sand will be recycled and returned following the performance run
• Canadian-made: Sand is locally sourced from Caledon. The sand dune will be covered between performances. Everyday the sand will be watered and re-set between shows 
• Global tour: Sand Flight will continue a world-wide performance schedule, going to Oslo and Copenhagen following the Toronto premiere

article submitted by DMPUBLIC

Other articles from totimes.ca – otttimes.ca – mtltimes.ca