International hits, premieres lined up for Luminato arts fest

The highly acclaimed soldier drama Black Watch, a multi-lingual South Asian production of the Bard's A Midsummer Night's Dream and a one-week residency by U.S. contemporary dance icon Mark Morris will be among the high profile events anchoring the 2008 edition of Toronto arts festival Luminato.

Tim Supple's South Asian revamp of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is performed in eight languages and features actors, dancers, acrobats, musicians and martial artists from Sri Lanka and India.
(Luminato)

Janice Price, CEO of the fledgling multidisciplinary arts and culture festival, announced in a downtown theatre on Wednesday the lineup for the festival's second edition in June.

"This festival is not about passive spectating," Price told a theatre packed with arts and cultural representatives, festival stakeholders, media and sponsors.

"It's about using your senses, engaging emotionally and intellectually with artists and their work, and sharing the excitement of that with the people around you."

Black Watch, the National Theatre of Scotland's much lauded drama based on interviews with soldiers from a Scottish regiment stationed in Iraq, is among a host of recent international sensations Luminato organizers are bringing to Toronto audiences next year.

Other international hits heading for the festival's stages include performances by choreographer William Forsythe's dance company and Tim Supple's South Asian revamp of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream — performed in eight languages and featuring actors, dancers, acrobats, musicians and martial artists from Sri Lanka and India.

Morris is slated to bring his Brooklyn-based dance troupe to Toronto for a one-week residency during Luminato, with the group to perform several works, including the popular Mozart Dances, as well as stage workshops and visit schools.

The festival will also host a number of world premieres, including the debut of Where the Blood Mixes, a new drama by First Nations playwright Kevin Loring and Nunavut, a musical collaboration between award-winning ensemble Kronos Quartet and Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq.

The Mark Morris Dance Group will perform Mozart Dances during its one-week residency in Toronto at the Luminato fest.
(Gene Schiavone/Luminato)

These two are also among the approximately 30 per cent of next year's lineup offerings that Luminato actually commissioned outright or through a partnership.

"You can either be a shopping festival — where you just sort of go out with a shopping cart and pick up what you think are interesting art pieces and throw them into the cart — or you can be a creating festival, where you really sort of engage with the artist early on in the process," Chris Lorway, Luminato's director of programming, told CBCNews.ca Arts.

"I love that idea of getting involved on the ground level," he said.

"The idea is that as we evolve the festival, we would like to be more of a creating festival, so that by 2010-11 a lot of the projects we've already begun to seed will come to fruition. We'll have a festival of both local and international work that we'll have had a role in getting to the stage."

Other notable Luminato presentations will include:

• A 40th anniversary reading of the George Ryga drama The Ecstasy of Rita Joe.
• The Alberta Ballet's performance of The Fiddle and the Drum, inspired by the art and music of Joni Mitchell.
• StreetScape, a multi-location, outdoor exhibition of street and graffiti art.
• French artist Pierre Maraval's vast photo installation Mille Femmes, featuring 1,000 portraits of Toronto women involved in the arts and culture community.

Also, festival organizers will court audience participation and interaction through public workshops, panel discussions and open houses — some presented with topics complementary to specific performances.

"We don't necessarily want to tie things into thematic areas that are sort of strict and limiting," Lorway said.

"You can see one piece, you can see another in isolation but at the same time, if you want to make that connection … you can have that more in-depth experience with the festival."

Unlike the first edition this past June, Lorway has also worked to stagger the openings across the entire festival and throughout each day for 2008.

"We're trying to come up with a real balance this year so that the festival ends with as much as a bang as when it started."

Details about Luminato 2008's lineup are available on the official website, with the complete list of offerings to be announced in April.

Luminato takes place June 6-15 in venues across downtown Toronto.