Aluna Theatre is proud to announce the second edition of panamerican ROUTES | RUTAS panamericanas: an International Festival of Performing Arts taking place betweenFebruary 27 and March 9, 2014, at the newly opened Daniels Spectrum. This prestigious theatre event will bring Canadian, Indigenous and Latin American artists from across the Americas including Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, the United States and Canada.
Programming includes main stage performances, gallery exhibits, installations, concerts, and master classes with international artists and an engaging four-day conference on performance and human rights where artists, academics and activists meet with the public to discuss how art can mobilize social change.
“Since our first festival in 2012 we’ve traveled around the Americas to find some of the most fascinating and controversial performers,” says festival director Beatriz Pizano. “These artists have incredibly strong messages and are not afraid to shatter the status quo.”
Also new this year is Aluna Theatre’s festival partnership with the oldest and most important Indigenous theatre company in Canada, Native Earth Performing Arts.

Individual tickets are on sale now at www.nativeearth.ca

For more information on panamerican ROUTES | RUTAS panamericanas, the festival line-up, or the company, please visit www.alunatheatre.ca
Aluna Theatre is an artistically driven company that makes theatre in an environment of cultural diversity – with a focus on Latin-Canadian and women artists. Aluna brings human rights concerns into their practice through creation of original works that form a new and distinct language of theatrical (re)presentation. Founded in 2001, Aluna was created in response to the misrepresentation and under representation of cultural diversity on our stages.

International Shows

Witness to the Ruins
When: 8:30pm March 6, 7 & 8
Price:  $25 | Genre: Video Performance
Company: Mapa Teatro- Laboratory of Artists
Country: Colombia | Director: Heidi and Rolf Abderhalden
Duration: 70 minutes | Language:in English and Spanish (Spanish texts are read “live” in English by actors)

A multi-media piece documenting the disappearance of one of the oldest and most dangerous “barrios” in downtown Bogotá, El Cartucho, as it was redeveloped into a modern city park.  Witness to the Ruins is the result of five years the company spent with the residents of El Cartucho before, during, and after its razing.
Mapa Teatro is one of the foremost artistic companies in Colombia, and one of the favorites on the world stages in Europe and Latin America. This work is a co-production with the Wienerfestwochen and the Zuercher Theaterspektakel, Zurich.  Since its first presentation in Vienna in 2005, it has traveled to festivals in Berlin, Geneva, Prague, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Mexico, Sao Paulo, Yale and Columbia Universities, and many others.

NK603: Action for Performer and e-máiz
When: 9:30pm February 28 & 8:30pm March 1
Price: $15 | Genre: Performance
Company: Violeta Luna | Country: Mexico / USA
Duration: 45 minutes | Language: English

Renowned Performance Artist Violeta Luna returns to the panamerican ROUTES Festival with a provocative confrontation between capitalist science and ancient ways of life. Máiz plays a symbolic role in ritual, and is a key traditional food source from the American Southwest to Patagonia. NK 603 is the name of one of the many genetically modified corn seeds available in the market.
Violeta is a recipient of a San Francisco Arts Commission award, is a member of La Pocha Nostra, and has toured extensively with her performance pieces throughout Latin America, Europe, Africa, and the USA.

Antigona
When:7:30pm February 27 & 7pm February 28
Price:$25 | Genre:Theatre
Company:Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani | Country:Peru
Duration:60 minutes | Language:in Spanish with English sub-titles

Beautifully performed by one of Peru’s greatest actresses, Teresa Ralli, this one-woman show is an astounding retelling of the classic Greek tragedy, set in Peru after 20 years of bloodshed surrounding the internal conflict of the 80’s and 90s in that country.  This version was developed through interviews with families of the “disappeared” by Peruvian poet José Watanabe, based on both on Sophocles’ original text and on a contemporary understanding of the trauma.
Yuyachkani is a Quechua word which means “I’m thinking / I’m remembering”.  The group is recognized worldwide as one of the greatest exponents of Peruvian and Latin American Theatre.  They were awarded Peru’s National Honors for Human Rights in 1999 and worked with Peru’s Truth Commission investigating crimes against humanity committed during the 1980s and early 1990s.

Diego y Ulises
When:9pm February 27 & 8:30pm February 28
Price:$15 | Genre:Dance Theatre
Company:Diego y Ulises Cia | Country:Argentina
Duration:40 minutes | Language:no language spoken

Inspired by the world of cult filmmaker Gus Van Sant, this Argentine love story fuses theatre and dance to thrilling effect. Two young men wait for the day to go by. They laugh. They fight. They drink Coca Cola. Imperceptibly, everyday actions take on a profound poignancy. Wordless, completely modern and athletically danced, this is beautifully crafted theatre dance.
Winner of the Igualdad Cultural Prize in Argentina, the work has toured extensively in Europe and Latin America.

National Shows

What I learned from a decade of fear
When: 6:30pm February 28 & 2:30pmMarch 1
Price:$20 | Genre: Interdisciplinary Theatre
Company: Aluna Theatre | City:Toronto
Duration:80 minutes | Language: English

A Karmic Accounting / Interrogation Ritual to atone for a decade of repression, war and paranoia. The Dora-winning team behind Nohayquiensepa (No one knows) eulogizes the human costs of our collective safety through the medium of security technology.  This premiere will go on to run in NYC at LaMama ETC.  Aluna’s critically acclaimed work has garnered 17 Dora nominations and 5 awards.

El Refugio de Freidel / The Refuge of Freidel
When: 4pm March 8 & 4pm March 9
Price: $15 | Genre: Theatre
Company: The Freidel Collective and Aluna Theatre | City: Toronto
Duration:40 minutes | Language: in Spanish with English sub-titles

Inspired by the plays of one of Colombia’s most controversial playwright /directors, José Manuel Freidel, this compelling one-woman show is a poetic biographical account of the forced exile and refugee experience of a Colombian actor now living in Canada. A brilliantly performed piece presented at the Impact Festival, Harbourfront Centre’s Ritmo y Color, and the And Social Justice For All Conference in Montreal.

Alicuanta
When: 7:30pm March 5 | 7:30pm March 6
Price: $20 | Genre: Song Cycle
Company: Gitanjali Jain Serrano & David Ryshpan | City: Montreal
Duration: 60 minutes | Language: English and Spanish, with English sub-titles.

The legacy of General Francisco Roque Serrano (1889-1927), an influential yet mysterious figure of the Revolutionary era who was assassinated by his opponent in the midst of a presidential campaign, is told by his great-granddaughter, Gitanjali. Song and story draw forth an ancestor in an attempt to make peace with the tumultuous history of 1920’s Mexico.  An hour-long suite for voice, piano, drums, cajón, and string quartet.

In Spirit
When: 11am March 4  & 7:30pm March 7 & 7:30pm March 8 & 2:30pm March 9
Price: $20 | Genre:  Theatre
Company: Native Earth Performing Arts | City: Toronto
Duration: 60 minutes | Language: English with Spanish surtitles

Spring, 1979. A young girl is mere days away from celebrating her  birthday. Her dad can’t keep the secret of her gift any longer, so proudly presents her with a new bike. Sharing in his excitement, birthday girl and bike make their debut trip along the nearest paved road. Failing to return for dinner, a makeshift search party finds only the bike, tossed to the roadside. Told from the missing girl’s perspective, this is a journey into love and loss. Directed and written by former Artistic Director Tara Beagan, designed by Andy Moro and starring Sera Lys-McArthur, In Spirit is a fiercely haunting work inspired by all too many true stories.
Native Earth Performing Arts is the oldest professional Indigenous performing arts company in Canada. They have been central in the development of a community of theatre artists, and have contributed to the creation of several plays that have become canonical in Canadian theatre.  NEPA has been awarded 7 Dora Mavor Moore Awards and 27 nominations.

Conference
To connect the shows with the current issues that energize them, panamerican ROUTES | RUTAS panamericanas will host a four-day conference with panels of artists, academics and social innovators from across the Americas, including a keynote by award-winning author, Diana Taylor. Academic production partners include the University of Toronto, York University and Glendon College, Brock University, Ryerson University.

conversatorio 1: keynote: diana taylor
February 28, 2014, 10am-12pm
The genesis of our “conversatorio” lies in a shared desire among the proponents to query Canada’s place within the hemisphere and examine the ways in which performance draws on cultural heritages and practices as a mode of agency, strength, and resistance among populations that have been displaced and dispossessed in the Americas. Building on the successes of its inaugural festival-conference in 2012, which drew over 3,000 participants to Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille, the 2014 event draws on an exciting partnership between Aluna Theatre and Native Earth Performing Arts with the aim of building strategic alliances among communities whose populations share histories of colonial and neo-colonial invasion. All conference sessions will be held at the stunning Daniels Spectrum cultural hub in Toronto’s Regent Park: http://regentparkarts.ca/visit/

conversatorio 2: truth and reconciliation: performing interventions
February 28th, 2014, 2pm-5pm Tickets: $5 
This session emerges from the festival performances of Antigona by the internationally acclaimed Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani (Peru), an adaptation of Sophocles’ tragedy based on the company’s work with Indigenous women in rural areas as part of Peru’s recently formed Truth Commission. This session queries truth and reconciliation commissions in Peru and Canada inviting a comparative examination of histories of state violence, the fraught process of reconciliation through testimony, and the ways in which performance serves as an act of redress.

conversatorio 3: re-staging treaty: embodied memories, written records, living archives
March 1st, 2014, 10am-1pm | Tickets: $5 
This panel session will begin with a verbatim theatre piece created by Aluna Theatre based on the transcriptions discovered in Daniel MacMartin’s 1905 diary of the making of Treaty no. 9 in what is now northern Ontario. Following the performance, the panel will examine the tensions between the act of treaty as oral performative, the agreements that are sustained through embodied memory and oral traditions, and the written record.

conversatorio 4: maiz(e) in the americas: tradition, big agriculture, and resistance
March 1st, 2014, 2-5pm | Tickets: $5 
In response to festival performances of NK 603: Action for Performer & e-Maiz by Violeta Luna (Mexico-US) and photography exhibit Mujer, Maiz, y Resistencia [Women, Corn, and Resistance] by Julio Pantoja (Argentina), this conversation focuses on the Indigenous women involved in protests against the corporate control of corn production and genetically modified crops that are displacing traditional farming practices. The discussion moves from a consideration of the sacred place of maize in the mythologies of Indigenous populations in the Americas to the pervasive forces of genetic engineering and Big Agriculture.

conversatorio 5: the displacement and migration of youth in the americas
March 7th, 10am-1pm | Tickets: $5 
This panel session on the displacement and migration of youth in the Americas begins with a reading of La Maleta, a story about a ten-year-old refugee’s journey to Canada and her uncertain future. Following the performance, the panel discussion will consider the barriers undocumented youth face in Canada, the experiences of youth detained in Canada’s refugee holdings cells, and strategic aims for immigration reform.

conversatorio 6: urban displacement and renewal from regent park to el cartucho
March 7th, 2-5pm | Tickets: $5 
This session is inspired by the festival performance of Witness to the Ruins by the internationally acclaimed company Mapa Teatro (Colombia), a “performance-lecture” about the process of disappearance of the El Cartucho neighbourhood in Bogotá, Colombia. It begins with a performative ‘Urban Intervention’ by displaced youth and members of Aluna’s youth training program. This session examines the fraught process of urban displacement and “renewal” inviting a comparative discussion that telescopes on El Cartucho and the festival site of Toronto’s Regent Park.

conversatorio 7: femicide in the americas
March 8th, 10am-1pm | Tickets: $5 
Our final conversatorio is a response to playwright Tara Beagan’s new play Quilchena, to be premiered at the festival, about the 500 Aboriginal women who have been murdered in Canada, and Colombian-Quebecois performance artist Claudia Bernal’s Monument to Ciudad Juárez about the femicide occurring in Chihuahua, Mexico. The panel marks International Women’s Day by inviting a comparative analysis of these sites of femicide in order to unearth the systemic violence that accounts for both the continuation and disavowal of femicide in the Americas.

closing keynote
March 8th, 2-5pm
A closing keynote address, to be announced.

For more details on workshops and master classes please visit www.alunatheatre.ca

– Lata Pada, Sampradaya Dance Creations;
– Naomi Campbell, Luminato Festival;
– Ronnie Brown, Oakville Centre for the Arts;
– Ravi Jain (tentative), why not theatre;
– Daniel Northway-Frank, ImagiNative Film Festival; and
– Eric Lariviere, Flato Markham Theatre.

Registration Fee:  General Admission $15 | CPAMO Members $10 | Students and Underemployed $10

Speakers bio:

Lata Pada is the Founder and Artistic Director of SAMPRADAYA Dance Creations, an award winning company at the forefront of South Asian dance in Canada. She has also founded the SAMPRADAYA Dance Academy, Canada’s premiere bharatanatyam training organization.

Lata is a recipient of the Order of Canada in 2010 and has the distinction of being the first South Asian artist to receive the Order of Canada. She has also received the the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal and has been inducted into the inaugural Legend’s Row of the City of Mississauga.

Lata holds a Masters in Dance from York University and is an Adjunct Professor in the Graduate Program of Dance at York University. She has received the 2012 Chalmers Foundation Senior Fellowship from the Ontario Arts Council to research the performance traditions of the Ramayana in Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia.

Naomi Campbell is an award-winning producer of over sixty new Canadian performance works with companies including Nightswimming, Mammalian Diving Reflex, DVxT Theatre, the late Paul Bettis’ Civilized Theatre, VideoCabaret and numerous independent artists. She has produced national and international tours and was Industry Series Producer for the 2008 – 10 Magnetic North Theatre Festivals. She is currently the Director of Artistic Development at Toronto’s Luminato Festival, where she shepherds new works from ideas to production.

Ronnie Brown: Oakville Centre for the Performing Arts. Ronnie’s career revolves around the performing arts. Eight years with internationally acclaimed Famous People Players as performer and assistant director, eight years as a stand-up comic and the past fifteen years as Coordinator of Marketing, Programming & Development at the Oakville Centre for the Performing Arts.

Ravi Jain, a multi-award-winning actor, director, producer, educator, arts activist, and Artistic Director of Why Not Theatre noted that “in order to understand inclusion, it’s important to understand exclusion.” Ravi shared that as artists, much of how we work is often done out of necessity; for example, he created his theatre company in order to create work for himself and he shared a story about mounting a hit show in Urdu. Part of the success of this particular show was that he had staff working front of house who spoke the language of the community (Urdu), creating a welcoming and comfortable environment for the audience. He encourages us to put thought and care into how we communicate (both language and culture) to different cultural audience groups. For example, some cultural groups may not understand that it’s important to arrive early to pick up tickets prior to the show.

Daniel Northway-Frank is the Programming + Industry Manager at imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival. Since 2009 has overseen submissions, programming management, jury management and industry panels and networking activities, including the annual documentary and drama pitch competitions. Daniel has worked at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, most recently as Conference Coordinator in 2010. Daniel previously worked in the Canadian Initiatives department at the Toronto International Film Festival for two years, and as Senior Production Coordinator for commercials at Technicolor Creative Services for 5 years. Daniel completed his BFA in Film Studies at Ryerson University in 2002.

Eric Lariviere is General Manager of Markham Theatre for Performing Arts(Ontario, Canada). Since his arrival in May 2009, he has repositioned and expanded the Theatre’s programs and services with the result of significant participation and audience growth, and created Markham Theatre Discovery, a new umbrella to develop and sustain education and community outreach initiatives. Before Markham, Eric was President and artistic director of Daytona Beach International Festival, the Official American Festival Residency of the London Symphony Orchestra (UK). Under its leadership, the event blossomed into the largest international and orchestra Festival in Florida. He was pivotal in launching a comprehensive strategic planning process and organizational transition that led to repositioning the Festival into a major cultural destination attraction. He was also responsible for building new capacities in marketing, development and financial control. In additions, he implemented strategies to diversify funding and develop key partnerships, with the result of significant organizational and programmatic growth. In terms of audience development, his marketing initiatives to increase visitors were frequently acclaimed by Visit Florida, the state’s recognized authority in tourism promotion.

Prior to his work in the United States, Eric was General Manager of Societe du Centre Pierre-Peladeau, in Montreal. During his nine-year tenure, he positioned the Centre as one of the prime performing arts venues in Downtown Montreal and was responsible for bringing the 25th Edition of the International Performing Arts for Youth Conference. Eric’s experience also includes work with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra as well as various cultural projects. A recognized leader, Eric has served on multiple panels and juries in Canada and the USA and was successively President of the Canadian Arts Presenting Association and President of the Volusia County Cultural Alliance. He is currently serving on the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters. A native of Canada, Eric studied cello at McGill University and earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the Universite du Quebec a Montreal.

Looking Back at 20 Years

2014 is set to be a milestone year in the history of SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre). SAVAC will celebrate twenty years of existence and ten years of Monitor: New South Asian Film + Video, SAVAC’s experimental film program. These two important and exciting landmarks in SAVAC’s history will serve as moments to pause and reflect on its contribution to the contemporary art world locally, nationally, and internationally. Additionally, this anniversary year will allow SAVAC to draw inspiration from its own history, to imagine possible futures.

We are proud to announce that the Ontario Trillium Foundation has awarded SAVAC three years of funding for its Mapping Genealogies, Building Futures project. The first year of the project will be focused on outreach to long-standing/established members of SAVAC and Desh Pardesh, a social-justice oriented arts festival that led to the ideation and formation of SAVAC. This outreach will culminate in interviews, which will be used to create an oral archive that explores themes around art, identity formation and social justice within our community. The Mapping Genealogies, Building Futures project will provide opportunities for meaningful and concrete engagement, inviting the membership of SAVAC into an active artist-run community. With the aid of the Ontario Trillium Foundation, SAVAC will be hiring an Outreach Coordinator to bring this project to fruition.

Monitor Turns 10

Monitor, SAVAC’s annual experimental film and video program, has carved out a unique place in Canada over the last decade. It has drawn participation from a growing community of international artists, curators and critics, initiating and extending dialogues around the shifting nature of South Asian politics, economies and landscape, through film and video. In its tenth year, there will be two components to Monitor: the annual on-screen program, as well as an off-screen component, in partnership with ASpace Gallery and Images Festival. In keeping with the theme of reflection, curator Shai Heredia has chosen works from the Monitor archive, asking each artist to reengage with their work from our contemporary social and political moment, through a reflective text that will compel new critical interpretations. The resulting exhibition, Monitor Reruns, looks to histories of South Asian film and video art in Canada, for insights into the attendant shifts in the politics, histories and identities that shape the South Asian diaspora and subcontinent.

Moving Forward

Within its organizational history, SAVAC has transformed from a grassroots arts collective that stemmed from an arts festival, to an institutionalized artist-run centre. Taking up the spirit of collectivity from which SAVAC originated, while accounting for the institutional nature of artist-run centres, SAVAC has introduced a non-hierarchical staff structure comprising three core positions: Executive Director, Artistic Director and Director of Communications.

In that vein, SAVAC is excited to announce the promotion of Aliya Pabani from Communications and Outreach Coordinator to Director of Communications. At a time when an organization’s ability to use networked media is becoming increasingly critical to building communities, it is important to value the role of communications toward that end. The communications person serves the aim of supporting an organization’s breadth and maintaining its vitality, by engaging with potential audiences before the programming even occurs. Given that objective, Aliya has been redesigning the SAVAC website to be more user-friendly and responsive across multiple platforms. She has increased our social media presence and devised other communications strategies to engage younger members who are more familiar with networked and digital media. Aliya’s new role as Director of Communications will allow us to have a more integrated approach to engaging with our membership as well interacting with our audiences.

SAVAC’s 2014 is going to be action-packed. This year’s programs will highlight lessons learned over the past two decades of identity-based arts production and institutional history in order to establish SAVAC within the trajectory of artist-run culture in Canada. This year will be full of reflection and building for the future. We are excited to to implement an innovative organizational structure, in order to present thought-provoking programming that will invite contributions to an ongoing discourse around identity-based art production.

SAVAC would like to thank everyone who has supported us over the years.

Here’s to twenty more!

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