Contact Dance International Film Festival and Dance Workshops

The Contact Dance International Film Festival (CDIFF), returning for its third season June 28 to July 2, 2017 in Toronto, is a unique opportunity for both film and dance lovers to experience the joy, chaos and intimacy of human connection through physical movement.

FILM SCREENINGS
Toronto Spins
Wednesday, June 28, 2017 @ 9pm, Dovercourt House, 805 Dovercourt Road

Zen and the Art of Dance Mechanics
Thursday, June 29, 2017 @ 8pm, Betty Oliphant Theatre, 404 Jarvis Street

Rotating View Points
Friday, June 30, 2017 @ 5:30pm, Celia Franca Centre, 400 Jarvis Street

An Intimate Dance: Journeys Through Movement and Touch
Saturday, July 1, 2017 @ 2pm, Celia Franca Centre, 400 Jarvis Street

Gala Film Screenings and Award Ceremony
Saturday July 1, 2017 @ 8pm, Revue Cinema, 400 Roncesvalles Avenue

For a complete schedule of Film Screenings visit: http://contactdancefilmfest.com/films.html

Download a complete Festival schedule here:
http://www.reasondetre.com/my downloads/2017 CDIFF schedule Easy See Grid.pdf

A biennial Festival, CDIFF celebrates films featuring momentum-based dance created by some of the top creators and dancers in the field of Contact Dance Improvisation. Five different screening programs will be presented alongside dance workshops, jams and parties where dancers fly and bodies collide with force, grace and tenderness.

The Festival is thrilled to bring Mayumu Minakawa and Tom Weksler to Toronto to teach Tom’s Movement Archery workshop, and to perform together and present their film work.

Other special guests include filmmaker and dancer Harriet Waghorn, from Edifice Dance Theatre in the UK, who will be teaching her unique fusion of ballroom and contact improvisation; New York filmmaker and Parcon dancer Andrew Suseno who will teach an outdoor cityscape workshop; and LukeAnderson (Founder of the StopGap Foundation) and Laura Storey who, with Festival director Kathleen Rea, will teach Inclusive Contact Improvisation Workshops and facilitate an Inclusive Contact Improvisation Jam; and present their film Contact Dance Every Body by Olya Glotka.

This year, the festival is very excited to announce that 80% of its programming is in accessible spaces. There are two films on the program that showcase dancers using a wheelchair; Contact Dance Every Body and the documentary Intimate Dance: Journeys through Movement by Sanford Lewis. The inclusive workshops and jams lead by an all-abilities team of dance teachers are designed to be welcoming to people of all training levels and abilities, to those new to the form of Contact Dance, and to dancers using wheelchairs.

The Festival literally kicks off on Wednesday, June 28, at Dovercourt House with a pre-Jam Workshop Class with Tom Weksler, followed by The Wednesday Dance Jam with music by Jennifer Gillmor; and continuing with the first screening programme, Toronto Spins, a mixed program of short films that celebrate the explosion of dance films made by Toronto based filmmakers and dancers. Also, included is a documentary on the Israeli Contact Festival.

Each day of the Festival features workshops, classes and Jams with live music with the Festival’s visiting artists plus evening screenings and a live performance of Zen and the Art of Dance with Mayumu Minakawa and Tom Weksler at the Betty Oliphant Theatre on June 29; Rotating View Points, a mixed program of short films that find contact improvisation in an underground parking lot, on a circus pole and through philosophical discussion, at the Celia Franca Centre on June 30; An Intimate Dance: Journeys Through Movement and Touch, a feature-length documentary following the lives of an all-star athlete, a skeptical beginner, and a professionally trained dancer on and off the dance floor, at the Celia Franca Centre on July 1; plus the Gala Film Screening of international shorts showing dancers rolling up and down the Niagara escarpment, local water towers, an abandoned factory, a farmer’s field, the Helsinki Market Square, the New York subway, and Toronto’s financial district, at the Revue Cinema, also on July 1.

Sunday, July 2 offers an intense post-Festival Dance Film Making workshop with Olya Glotka in various locations around the Roncesvalles/High Park area, from 3:30pm-Dusk. Films will be made!