Industry professionals are a vital part of the SummerWorks ecology. Each year, we program a special series of events and activities for accredited industry professionals, in tandem with the SummerWorks Performance Festival.

This year, we are offering a bespoke experience of the Festival, with a small group of artists, curators, presenters, and community members. These individuals will have an opportunity to engage with all of the Festival offerings, network and dialogue with industry peers, and meet/engage with Festival artists.

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We invite you (as Festival artists) to join four (4) specific industry events, to share space and connect with the industry gathering participants:

Industry Welcome / Opening Reception

• Saturday, August 5th // 5:00 – 6:00pm
• The Theatre Centre Café/Bar (1115 Queen St West)

Embodied Togethering with Wild Soma

• Tuesday, August 8th // 11:00a – 12:15pm
• The Citadel: Ross Centre for Dance (304 Parliament Street)

International Choreographic Interlink: Toronto-Taipei

• Tuesday, August 8th // 2:00-3:30pm
• The Citadel: Ross Centre for Dance (304 Parliament Street)

Industry Closing Reception

• Tuesday, August 8th // 3:30-4:30pm
• The Citadel: Ross Centre for Dance (304 Parliament Street)

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*Due to overall capacity, we are only able to accommodate two (2) representatives from each Festival project.

*Scroll down to view all of these event descriptions.

Join us at The Theatre Centre Café/Bar (1115 Queen St West) for a welcome reception with SummerWorks co-leadership, Michael Caldwell and Morgan Norwich. Share a drink with some industry gathering participants, as well as SummerWorks Performance Festival artists and staff.

This event is generously supported by Ontario Presents and The Theatre Centre.

Wild Soma will guide industry gathering participants and Festival artists through intentionally-designed practices and experiences that support making meaningful connections in community.

While honouring the SummerWorks’ core values of creative risk and curiosity, care and collaboration, diversity and difference, as well as the 2023 Festival theme: diverse encounters and curious collaborations, Wild Soma aims:

• to seed new relationships by engaging and interacting with new people in a supportive environment;
• to activate, delight and awaken our senses;
• to meet each other through aesthetic experiences.

Everyone is welcome to come as they are and to engage in kind exchanges through familiar languages of non-verbal communication, including eye contact and everyday gestures.

This event happens at The Citadel: Ross Centre for Dance (304 Parliament Street).

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Wild Soma is a collective of experienced embodied artist facilitators, formed in 2021 to support the research and practice of embodiment as a world-making process. Core members Julia Aplin, Shannon Litzenberger, Andrea Nann and Roula Said are established dance artists, performance makers, movement facilitators and community mobilizers. Their shared interest in embodiment practice as a world-making proposal is the basis of their collaboration. Interested in animating the self-in-the-world relationship, Wild Soma is a platform to research, design, prototype and experiment with interventions that centre new ways of being through aesthetic embodied participatory experience.

Three Taipei-based movement artists share their artistry and creative practices in this informal and intimate sharing session. Wu-kang Chen (HORSE), Fangas Nayaw (Fist and Cake Productions), and Pin-wen Su (Kua-bo Dance Theatre) exemplify the Taiwanese dance scene; they are open, curious and collaborative, they hold space, generously build opportunities for others, and are anchored by authentic relations within community.

Joined by Taiwanese producer Wen Huang, the artists will share elements of their creative work and engage in a live exchange with Canadian artists, discussing the ecosystems, networks, and aesthetic/cultural perspectives from these two distinct social, political, cultural, and geographic environs.

Hosted by Toronto-based dance performance artists Andrea Nann, Heidi Strauss, and Michael Caldwell, this session happens at The Citadel: Ross Centre for Dance (304 Parliament Street).

This session is presented in partnership with Citadel + Compagnie and International Choreographic Interlink, with support from We Island Dance Festival and Dance on Fluid, and with funding from the National Culture and Arts Foundation, Taiwan.

(Note: limited capacity, once this specific event registration is confirmed, you will receive an email confirmation.)

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International Choreographic Interlink (ICI) is an emergent platform for international exchange and collaboration, and was formed as a rethink button on working methods and assumptions sorely in need of reimagining. Since September 2020, eight Canadian and Taiwanese artists and producers have embarked on monthly online meetings, providing a space for collective creation, experimentation, and critical thinking at a time of forced isolation.

A closing reception for the industry gathering at the 2023 Festival, sharing space and diving into informal conversations at The Citadel: Ross Centre for Dance (304 Parliament St) with Festival artists and industry peers.

This event is generously supported by Ontario Presents.