The Whole Shebang Community Festival 2010

Drawing on the success of our 2009 Festival, The Whole Shebang Community Festival 2010 will once again centre around the diverse and historic Cabbagetown district of downtown Toronto.

Our public high school touring performance will reach across the GTA to features a cast of diverse Toronto based artists including: dancers, musicians, visual artists, poets and singers in a 40 minute blockbuster mixed repertoire programme curated speci!cally for youth. Each student matinee programme performance is followed by a question & answer period with the artists.

Each student matinee programme performance will also be supported by a series of three creative morning workshops that will take place prior to the Company’s performance date. The workshop series will be offered to a selected group of 30 dance, music and creative writing students from your school. A trio of Shebang artists (dancer, musician, writer) will come to your school to work with these students to explore improvisation strategies that will generate materials for a collaborative performance piece. Students will learn to create ‘instant’ compositions within a structured framework using common themes and time markers that instigate creative expression and allow the different elements to interact. Guided by the Shebang artists, these students will perform their work during one part of our matinee programme.

The workshops are designed to expand learning and life experiences for students through the basic elements of dance and form and exercises that inspire imagination, exploration, discovery, composition, storytelling, dramatic intention, and execution. Learners will engage in carefully structured and responsibly monitored movement and dance exercises and improvisations. The students learn to focus individually and as a group to confront and communicate selected issues through temporal and spatial relationships, gestures and movements. Specic activities will depend upon the age and experience level of the learners. Older or more experienced learners will be challenged with more complex tasks and concepts.