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Photo by Ceinwen Gobert

Allies and Friends (November)

November 11 - 12, 2022
8:00 PM @ The Citadel
Livestream on November 12 (Available until November 26)

ABOUT THE SHOW

Citadel + Compagnie is thrilled to have our presenter-in-residence back for their three-part performance series Allies and Friends. This mixed bill fuses poetry and movement for an evening of intimate and insightful performances 

everything is everything: spirit of 5 
everything is everything captures the relationships between people, the spiritual and natural world as an exploration of connection to ancestors who had such practices.

Untitled Red
The spirit of Untitled Red is the healing journey connecting the past histories of our ancestors, to the present moment to awaken the rising spirit and engage with the physical for the healing of our nation’s future. The transformative spirit of dance travelling through dimensional realms of existence – ancestors, dreams, blood memory and the land – are directly connected to our way of living and being in this landscape.
Truth! Brokenhearted and shipwrecked, some survive the middle passage. We gave into fate and danced Untitled Red. Red is the blood of the abandoned; some live to tell the tale, with the stand alone spirit from the doors of no return to arrive upon these lands of new possibilities. Take flight, unite, triumph, ah! Blessings. 

And I Wonder
This new creation weaves together movement, music and poetry written by Roula Said (except “I am from There”, by Mahmoud Darwish). It explores the author’s personal experience of racism “between the lines”, where home lives, and the medicine of Love as a devotional practice.

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Meet the Artists

Photo of charles c. smith

charles c. smith

Poet

charles c. smith is a poet, playwright and essayist who has written and edited fourteen books. He studied poetry and drama with William Packard at New York University and Herbert Berghof Studios, drama at the Frank Silvera’s Writers’ Workshop in Harlem. 

He won second prize for his play Last Days for the Desperate from Black Theatre Canada, edited three collections of poetry and his poetry has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including Poetry Canada Review, the Quille and Quire, Descant, Dandelion, Fiddlehead and others. He has received grants for writing from the Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts. charles is the Executive Director of Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario and Artistic Director of the wind in the leaves collective.  His recent books include: travelogue of the bereaved, The Dirty War: The Making of the Myth of Black Dangerousnesswhispers and destination out.  His most recent book of poems, Searching for Eastman, was released in September 2021 by Mawanzi House.
Photo of Morgyn Aronyk-Schell  Photo by Morgyn Aronyk-Schell

Morgyn Aronyk-Schell 

Performer

Morgyn (She/They) is a freelance contemporary dance artist and an arts educator for youth and seniors through Tiger Princess Dance Project’s ‘Moving Stories’, and ‘Swallowing Clouds’ programs. They are a co-creator of ‘Blank Space’, a series of movement-based community workshops.

She moved from Edmonton, AB to T’karonto to study at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre’s professional training program, graduating in 2019. Following graduation, they travelled to Mexico for a residency with La Escuela Profesional de Danza de Mazatlán. Since then, she has worked with Frog in Hand, Human Body Expression, Kaeja d’Dance, Peggy Baker, the Citadel + Compagnie, the wind in the leaves collective, and Tiger Princess Dance Projects, and has performed in Nextfest, the Toronto and Edmonton Fringe Festivals, InSitu, Dance Ontario DanceWeekend, SummerWorks and the Festival des arts de Saint-Sauveur. 

Photo of Victoria Matasoledad

Victoria Matasoledad

Performer

Victoria Matasoledad is a Venezuelan-Canadian settler in T’Koronto. Poly-lingual choreographer, dance artist and activist with a background in expressive arts therapy. Mata’s career was first sculpted by pedagogic, self-directed training, which proceeded with training under internationally renowned choreographers.

Mata’s sensibility to inclusion and border stories is due to her eclectic upbringing in three continents before the age of fifteen. Mata’s intimate, dynamic and visceral aesthetic is rooted in traditional Venezuelan dance genres reframed through contemporary expressions. Intersectional, multi-framed community arts and the abolishment of violence against women are some of Mata’s passion. She has intricately weaved these themes in her MFA in Contemporary Choreography and is the foundation for some of her recognitions such as being a recipient of the Metcalf Foundation, a finalist of the Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award and 7 Dora nominations. Mata deeply believes in the arts as a core and tangible mode of sustaining and transforming the paradigms of oppressive tropes to populate a sphere of discourse, play, exploration and possibility.

Photo of Ronald A. Taylor

Ronald A. Taylor

Choreographer

Ronald A. Taylor is the Artistic Director of the Toronto-based company Ronald Taylor Dance (formerly known as Canboulay Dance Theatre) founded in 1993. Taylor’s talent was first nurtured by the late Astor Johnson of the innovative Repertory Dance Theatre (Trinidad). After leaving Trinidad and Tobago, the birthplace of internationally acclaimed dance pioneers Geoffrey Holder and Beryl McBurnie, Taylor enrolled in the renowned Juilliard School – Dance division in New York. Under Héctor Zaraspe, international ballet master and private teacher to Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn, Taylor graduated with a BFA in Dance.

His stay with Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH) afforded him two prestigious awards – the DTH Scholarship Award and the Maxwell and Muriel Bluck Scholarship Award. Taylor moved to Canada in the early ’90’s and emerged as a leading force in Black Dance. During that period, he turned his focus on training new graduates in theater and dance, at the same time collaborating with the umbrella of dance organization “Dance Immersion”. 

True to his Caribbean roots, his work fuses Modern with Folk, and traditional Ballet in a distinctive style which Taylor describes as “Contemporary Caribbean”. Ronald has successfully pursued a Master of Arts degree at York University. In his capacity as dance educator, Taylor taught at York’s Faculty of Fine Arts and at designated school programs across Ontario, Western Canada, Belize, USA, Africa and parts of the Caribbean. He was also selected to be part of The Djerassi Resident Artists Program in California, a program internationally recognized as one of the eminent artist residency programs for artists of superior talent, who are chosen from a diverse range of backgrounds and geographical locations. 

In June 2019, Ronald Taylor Dance explored/showcased the development of PSYCHOSIS; a collaborative 1hr full work inspired by the investigation of his mental health episode in Canada; pulling into the present, an awareness of adversity, reconciliation and resilience. Connecting relationships between disability, environments and the human spirit, PSYCHOSIS seeks to explore the trauma of ongoing mental health challenges. The World Premiere of PSYCHOSIS will take place in May 2023. 

 

Photo of Roula Said Photo by Joanie Michaud

Roula Said

Choreographer

Roula Said is a multi-faceted artist of Palestinian heritage based in Toronto, Canada.  As a mover, Roula has been primarily a performer, teacher and eternal student of Bellydance and Sufi-style whirling. She is also a member of Wild Soma Collective, along with Andrea Nann, Shannon Litzenberger and Julia Aplin, exploring embodiment as a world-making practice and an architecture connecting us to ourselves, each other and all of life.

As a musician and poet, Roula sings and plays qanun (table-harp) and percussion to accompany traditional Arabic songs and original songs created from her Sufi-inspired poems. Deeply interested in ceremony and meaningful transitions, Roula also works as a wedding officiant and a death doula, supporting and empowering individuals and families to expand into areas of greater choice, agency and even beauty when it comes to death care. 

 

SHOW CREDITS

everything is everything: spirit of 5

A re-imagination of based on previous choreography by: Aria Evans, Jesse Dell, Lilia Leon and Yui Ugai.
Performers:
Morgyn Aronyk-Schell
Victoria Matasoledad
Charles C. Smith
Composer:
John Luther Adams – In the White Silence: D; Contantinople – Poisson au fond de l’ ocean; the Masada Trio – Garzanal; Anja Lechner and Francois Courturier – Voyage
Production Manager:
Sharon DiGenova
Lighting Design:
Andrew McCormack with Sharon DiGenova

 

Untitled Red

Choreographer:
Ronald A. Taylor
Performers:
Jillia Cato
Emilie Jabouin
Composer:
Cantemos, The Latin Chamber Ensemble of the Upper Canada Choristers
Production Manager:
Sharon DiGenova 
Lighting Design:
Andrew McCormack with Sharon DiGenova

 

And I Wonder

Choreographer:
Roula Said
Performers:
Roula Said
Patrick O’Reilly (guitar and laptop)
Tara Moneka (vocals and percussion)

Sound Design:
Collaboration between the performers 

Outside Eye:
Julia Aplin
Production Manager:
Sharon DiGenova 
Lighting Design:
Andrew McCormack with Sharon DiGenova
WORLD PREMIERE

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