Flight Festival

Contemporary dance festival returns to The Eddie

The Flight Festival of Contemporary Dance will return to The Eddie Hotel and Farm from August 16 to August 20. The Festival includes a series of stage performances on the outdoor pavilion, performances that use to terrain of the land, as well as a number of workshops. “Flight on Stage is the more traditional, with the audience seated around the outdoor pavilion, and it’s mostly solo performances. Flight on Site is where the audience moves around the meadow and through the garden and around the pond to take in various works of choreography that are set on the land or on the water,” said Arwyn Carpenter, one of the co-creators of the festival, along with Carol Anderson, Kristen Foote, Sophie Dow and Jordana Deveau. There are six workshops that explore various dance styles. “Vogue with Ralph Escamillan is very expressive where you get to use your hands and your face and you pose. It’s very glamorous. Then there’s a hoop dance workshop with Beany John where you get to tell stories through formations you make with your hoops. There’s a really cool workshop with Julia Aplin that takes you on a walking journey where you get to interact with the trees through expressive movement. Libydo is teaching an improvisational breakdance workshop. He’s done this work about mycelium and he’s inviting dancers to respond to the biological processes through movement,” said Arwyn. The two other workshops are Limón Technique (leader to be announced) and Mindful Movement: Dance for Everyone with Carol Anderson.

Flight on Stage includes a number of solo performances as well as a group performance with members of the community dance group Groove Tonic accompanied by Carol Anderson and Arwyn Carpenter, with music by Erik Geddis. There are also solo performances by Jordana Deveau and Natasha Poon Woo. “Jordana is performing a really important work by iconic Canadian choreographer David Earle, who was really important in the foundation of modern dance in Canada with Toronto Dance Theatre. We’re fortunate to have a piece of his work in the program, and Jordana is a beautiful dancer who is going to interpret that for us,” said Arwyn. “Natasha is fantastic and is definitely someone to watch as an emerging dancer with phenomenal technique and energy and spark. She is dancing a piece by Carol Anderson called Night Vigil.”

Rihanna Harris performs a dance on paddle boards choreographed by Arwyn Carpenter on the pond at The Eddie.

Flight on Site uses the landscape of The Eddie as a backdrop for the performances. Dancers Arwyn Carpenter, Jordana Deveau, Kendra Epik, Kristen Foote, Ellis Martin-Wylie and Natasha Poon Woo will perform Sephardic Songs created by Carol Anderson in 1992 to acknowledge the expulsion of Sephardic Jews from Spain in 1492, and which remains relevant today with the increasing number of displaced peoples around the world. Arwyn is the choreographer for SELKIES, a group dance performed on paddleboards in the pond and accompanied by music from Kat Burns and Erik Geddis.

Flight Festival celebrates diversity in contemporary dance and makes space for Black, Indigenous and People of Colour artists, as well as dancers from the LGBTQ community. “We are trying to open people’s minds to who can be on stage,” said Arwyn. Neither is age a barrier to contemporary dance. “We have Carol, who is in her seventies, dancing. There’s no forced retirement. We can continue to deepen our practise as we get older,” they added.

Dance performance is just one facet of flight Festival. The festival creators also incorporate education, connection and community in the festival. “For me, it’s important that people watching dance are not passive, that as an audience member they are engaged in what is going on, taking it in through their eyes and also taking it in through their bodies. They experience what the dancers are experience on stage, where the performer invites you into a journey, and the audience has a physical sense of embodying that,” said Arwyn. “We have a pre-performance talk by the dancers and choreographers, and a post-show question and answer. That’s where we are trying to build community and connection. We love to get to know people and build friendships.”

The outdoor venue is a critical part of the festival. “We chose Prince Edward County for this festival because of the magic of the land and sky here. All of the work that we chose has a connection to the land. This is, I am learning, an Indigenous approach to making art; it’s really to listen to the land, listen to the trees so that we are informed what kind of art needs to be made there,” said Arwyn. Flight Festival will be bringing a number of elders from Tyendinaga to attend one of the performances, and is looking to establish closer connections with that community in the future. For more information and to purchase tickets to any of the performances or workshop, please visit flightfestivalpec.org.