SHOW UR STUFF is designed to generate and animate curiosities about new ways of thinking, making, seeing, and talking about live physical performance. The event will include works in progress by four choreographers and facilitated audience-choreographer dialogue through mediated conversation. SHOW UR STUFF seeks to expand language and promote exchange beyond comfort ranges, experiences, and cultural contexts.
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SHOW UR STUFF offers a supported space to ask the Big Questions: about art, value, meaning, self-understanding, and interpretation. We support the creative appetites of artists and audiences alike. We encourage artistic risk in making work, in revealing ourselves onstage and in community through performance and discussion. We are committed to discover, create, practice and use language to support respectful questioning and challenge to help artists and audiences grow together.
SHOW UR STUFF is interested in Queering and complicating the notion of curating: considering the idea of curating a space that welcomes failure, raw attempts, mistakes, and risk-taking in order to develop community in real time. We welcome performance experiments that are imperfect, incomplete, and “unready”. We welcome artists dedicated to exploring an idea: to attempt “work”, to explore something they’ve never done, or wrestle through an inspirational block.
We recognize that the artistic process is full of ups and downs and believe there is a benefit to working in front of others to address problems in real time. We seek brave artists and audiences to question the process and parameters for artistic value, questioning success and curious about how we can use these questions to create new languages about the work we make and present.
This event is a part of Unfinish / Unfurl, DanceWorks’ mini-festival focused on creative practice and choreographic process and is made possible with co-production support from Dancemakers.
About the Organizers
Sara Porter
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At Sara Porter Productions - we believe that art is for everyone, both to make and to enjoy. We make performance, creative and educational projects that highlight play and exploration, based in personal storytelling. We take a multidisciplinary & inclusive approach to art-making: integrating movement, language, ideas, science and personal experience to build artworks and creative communities that centre on humility, honesty, rigour and investigative play. We centre our work on foregrounding voices that live outside mainstream art communities, including mothers, elderly, Queer and new generation voices. The company’s work is informed by feminist and Queer perspectives.
Rooted in company director Sara Porter’s experiential and academic studies in literature, dance, cultural studies, music, sport, and science, Sara Porter Productions takes an inclusive – and broad-reaching - approach to art-making and sharing.
Sara Porter has 30 years experience as a dance educator, teaching both creative and theoretical approaches to contemporary dance in colleges and universities in Canada and Scotland. An innovative and popular teacher, she has advised, consulted and created new contemporary dance curriculum for professional professional training programs and university departments in Canada and Scotland. She has taught professional artists, university students, and dancers of all ages from teens to seniors through courses in contemporary dance, improvisation, choreography, history, criticism and cultural theory.
Nina Milanovski
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Nina Milanovski is a contemporary dance artist and producer based in Toronto. A graduate of the York University Dance program, Nina specialized in choreography and performance. As an emerging artist, Nina has had the pleasure of creating numerous live works and dance films that explore universal themes including love, identity and grief. Looking forward, Nina is excited to develop her one-woman show, “Good Girl”, which investigates the intersections of queer shame and perfectionism. Learn more at www.ninamilanovski.com and follow @ninamilanovski on Instagram for updates on new works and performance opportunities.
Featured Artists
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Emmett Bradshaw (they/she/he) is a non-binary movement and performance artist currently working in Tkaronto. They graduated from Dance Arts Institute (formerly The School of Toronto Dance Theatre) in 2024 as the recipient of the Leslie Wood Leadership Award. Emmett has been fortunate to work and train under a variety of prolific contemporary choreographers, including Michele Rizzo, Antonin Rioche, Akira Yoshida, Yin Yue, Lea Ved, and DA Hoskins. Their practice is rooted in contemporary movement practices from a European lineage, American modern dance, and somatic practices attuning to the five senses. Emmett’s current choreographic endeavours centre around physical and emotional indulgences. Through queered perspectives on relation, cultivating sensuality, and physical demands for the body, they ask; How can the human body be used to relay pleasure in its variety of manifestations? Emmett also works in the cooking industry, relating dance and food as means of indulging and connecting socially.
Photo by Aidan Tooth Photography
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Aisha Nicholson is an Artist, Emerging Choreographer, Teacher and Reiki Practitioner that hails from Toronto; creator of the Movement CheckIn a program that brings artists together on Instagram live. She is currently an independent artist and has worked with various choreographers and companies such as Lua Shayenne Dance Company, Ronald Taylor Dance, KasheDance, Arsenio Andrade, C.O.B.A (Collective Of Black Artist), Garth Fagan, Ballet Creole, Aria Evans to name a few. Aisha has performed and toured with Obeah Opera for Luminato festival and in South Africa. She performed at Carifesta XIV festival in Trinidad and Tobago in 2019. In 2021, she choreographed her first inaugural solo called Abandonment and is currently working on remounting this work. Her artistic practice is rooted in Caribbean, West African, Contemporary and Afro-contemporary dance styles and her exploration of movement is multilayered, polyrhythmic and rooted in the Black experience. @movementcheckin
Photo by Drew Berry
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Paromita Kar is the first to complete a PhD in Dance Studies in Canada (2014). A performer of different world dance styles, she attributes her core training to classical Indian Odissi dance. Paromita was introduced to Central Asian dance styles in 2008. She is today an active professional performer of dances of Central Asian and South Asian heritage, including dances from India, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Iran. She is the choreographer and lead dancer of Ensemble Topaz, a Toronto-based integrated dance-music ensemble dedicated to dance and music of these regions. She has performed in India, United States, Canada, Netherlands and Czech Republic. In addition to concerts, and the special events sector, her choreography and Ensemble Topaz performances appear in a number of international music videos for artists in Canada, Japan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. She served as the Curator of the Toronto International Dance Festival 2024.
Her website is: paromitakar.wix.com/danseuse and her work can be followed on Instagram: @paromita.karPhoto by John Markle
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Christopher Petersen is a Toronto based dancer and performance artist. He is currently working on quiet solo pieces and collaborative public performances. His work focuses on the physical spaces and attempts to allow opportunity for audience to stare into bones and flesh, the exertion of bodies and the bodies of stillness. Christopher is unsure of most things, but cannot stop. It is okay.
Photo by Ryan Hatfield
Tickets
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This year, DanceWorks is piloting a Pay-What-You-Can ticket pricing model. Please use the below reference points to select a ticket price option that aligns with your circumstance.
SUPPORTER - $24.00 including facility fee, not including order fee - If you have access to a salary, savings, investments, assets, or familial wealth, selecting this rate will help subsidize the attendance of someone for whom cost is a barrier.
REGULAR - $18.00 including facility fee, not including order fee - This rate reflects the regular cost for the event. Please select this rate if you have access to a regular income and are able to meet your basic needs around food, housing, and transportation.
SUBSIDIZED - $12.00 including facility fee, not including order fee - Please select this rate if you are able to meet your basic needs but have gaps in your income and limited access to savings or familial support.
REDUCED - $5.00 including facility fee, not including order fee - Please select this rate if you are able to meet your basic needs but don’t have access to a regular income, savings, or familial support.
ACCESS - $0.00 - The option to access this event at no cost ensures that members of our community for whom price is a barrier to participation are able to join us.
This approach is greatly inspired by the Toronto Dance Community Love-In. Special thanks to Leelee Oluwatoyosi Eko Davis for sharing their knowledge!
If you have questions about attending a performance, ticketing, or would like assistance purchasing tickets, your best option is to email [email protected]. You can also reach the Theatre Centre box office by phone at (416) 538-0988. Please leave a message and they will endeavour to return your call within 48 hours.
Reception
After this event, please join us in the Theatre Centre cafe for a closing Unfinish / Unfurl reception!
Keep in Mind
A brief break will take place about halfway through the event.
Please bring a pen with you! We’ll also have extras for anyone who needs one.
This event will be documented with photo and video. By attending this event you consent to your image being taken and potentially being used on DanceWorks’ website and social media.
Access Information
This event will include options for participation with various levels of mobility. If you have any Access Needs, please reach out to Cass Cabral Pucci, Festival Coordinator.
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The Franco Boni Theatre is accessible via a single-user accessibility lift on the main floor:
The lift is key-operated and must be operated by a staff member. Upon arrival, please notify the Box Office or Café/Bar staff for lift assistance. When leaving the venue, the lift includes a blue call button to request staff assistance to go down.
The second floor provides level access into the theatre, with reserved seats on the ground level to accommodate accessibility devices.
An accessible bathroom is located on the second floor.
Contact Information
If you have any questions about this event, please contact Nina Milanovski, organizer of SHOW UR STUFF.
For Box Office & Ticketing Inquiries, please reach out to The Theatre Centre Box Office by email or phone.
