Fall for Dance North expands its footprint

Now the festival is getting even bigger.

Since its fall 2015 launch, FFDN has played three nights at the 3,200-seat Sony Centre. This year’s festival, opening Tuesday, is expanding into a second venue, the 1,200-seat Ryerson Theatre, for a total capacity over five days of more than 15,200 seats. This, for the first time, includes a Saturday matinee that FFDN organizers hope will appeal to family audiences. It’s a lot of inventory to move but at a flat, first-come-first-served $15 per ticket it’s not surprising that several of the six performances are already close to sold out.

The number of companies on the lineup — several of them, as in past years, new to Toronto audiences — remains the same but opening a second, smaller venue increases programming flexibility and means more intimate works can be now be presented in an appropriately scaled venue.

“Ideally, we’d like to become an even bigger festival with four or five different venues,” says FFDN’s ambitious founder and artistic director, Ilter Ibrahimof.

The Ryerson Theatre program, Oct. 2 and 4, features four works, all choreographed by women. One of these is Counter Cantor, an intergenerational choreographic collaboration between 42-year-old Montreal dance icon Anne Plamondon and 23-year-old Ottawa-born, Los Angeles-based Emma Portner. Among other credits, Portner choreographed and starred in the music video for Justin Bieber’s “Life Is Worth Living” as well as creating the choreography for his Purpose world tour.

Sadly, owing to injury, the talented young Portner is unable to perform as planned. Fortunately, with some juggling of schedules and intense rehearsal, another dynamo Canadian dancer, Belinda McGuire, has been able to step in.

Although FFDN’s programming tends toward contemporary dance, ballet is far from excluded. Realistically, it’s more a question of comparative costs. This year, however, the National Ballet of Canada will appear in force at the Sony Centre with its large-cast production of acclaimed choreographer Justin Peck’s Paz de la Jolla, accompanied live by the National Ballet Orchestra. On a smaller scale, Ballet Kelowna will dance Alysa Pires’ energetic MAMBO in the Ryerson Theatre program.

Other programming highlights include the appearance on both stages — but with different works — by the Netherlands’ celebrated Introdans. Also, Compagnie Marie Chouinard will perform a retrospective compendium of excerpts from several of the world-renowned Montreal choreographer’s most acclaimed works.

The company of Cuban choreographer George Cespedes, meanwhile, will make its Canadian debut, and the French-based company of Hervé Koubi makes its Toronto debut with excerpts from his sensational What the Day Owes to the Night. Choreographed for a troupe of Algerian and Burkina Fasan dancers, it’s a mix of capoeira, martial arts, urban and contemporary dance set improbably to the music of Bach and Mozart with additional Sufi sounds.

In a return to the Sony Centre — they were a hit at its hip-hop festival in 2017, Breakin’ Convention Toronto — South Africa’s all-male Soweto Skeleton Movers will thrill even larger crowds with their stunning, high-energy style of urban dance.

For $15 a show, it’s quite a feast; but what of potential collateral damage to local companies and presenters who can’t match such a heavily underwritten ticket price?

When the original populist model for Fall for Dance was launched by New York City Center in 2004, there were indeed whispered concerns about whether the rock-bottom ticket price might undermine less well-funded presenters by engendering false expectations. The whispers soon evaporated.

Fall for Dance, in both its New York and Toronto iteration, has always been clearly promoted as an event designed to whet an appetite among new, often younger audiences for the full spectrum of dance.

“People have common sense,” says Ibrahimof. “They understand this is a very special event, not the real world.”

“As far as I’m concerned, the more dance the better,” says Nathalie Bonjour, acting director of performing arts at Harbourfront Centre. Her new international dance series, Torque, launches Oct. 5 with the Toronto premiere of Battleground, by Canadian contemporary dance legend Louise Lecavalier.

“I think it’s fantastic they can offer tickets at such an accessible price,” says Bonjour. “With such diverse mixed programs, Fall for Dance sparks interest in all forms of dance. Of course, we’d also like to be able to offer such low prices. As it is, our bottom prices are very reasonable; but this is not about competition.”

Veteran presenter Mimi Beck, curator of Toronto’s annual Danceworks series, agrees.

“Fall for Dance is unique and attracts fresh audiences. I can tell you that last year Danceworks sales were very strong.”

In 2014, when Ibrahimof first floated the idea of a Toronto festival, there were plenty of skeptics. Even when the Sony Centre agreed in principle to co-produce such an event, the onus was on Ibrahimof to raise the money.

What skeptics failed to absorb was that Ibrahimof, like most impresarios, is a congenital optimist with a particular passion for dance. That passion, plus a canny gift for programming intriguing shows, has ignited help on all fronts and sustained an event that seems destined to endure.

CLARIFICATION — Oct. 1, 2018: This story has been edited to make it clear that there are two nights of performances at the Ryerson Theatre, Oct. 2 and 4.