Sunday, December 12, 2010

Dance Immersions 2010 Showcase - Kashedance presents: "In SEARCH of OURselves"

In 2000 Kevin Ormsby left Canada to dance with the Garth Fagan Dance Company in New York and returned to Toronto in 2006. “There’s a classical Jamaican saying that ‘If there’s no opportunity out there for you, create your own’. I came back with a passion for choreography and for teaching.

The former assistant artistic director at Ballet Creole says since coming back to Toronto he views dance differently. KasheDance, his dance company, emerged from that longing for a different understanding of what he thinks dance can be in the city.

The inspiration for the piece that will be showcased May 27-29, In Search of Our Selves, came from seeing Wardance, a documentary about war in Northern Uganda and what it did to the children and the Arts in that country.

“In SEARCH of OURselves” is a dance work looking at displacement of people across borders inspired by the documentary War dance, Native displacement and trans –cultural theme of a retrospective optimism of a humanity that questions existence. In SEARCH of OURselves is fueled by one single inquiry; If you knew your life was about to change, what questions would you ask yourself? Do the answers lie within? How we affirm who we are beyond odds? This is where the story begins. The answers to which we arrive become an armour to the spirit of who we are. The movement in the piece includes Dinki and Kumina.“I search for a more human expression than a more cultural or traditional expression,” says Ormsby.

Ormsby says KasheDance is a company in constant maturation, and credits it as the only contemporary dance company run by a Jamaican Canadian.





























































































































All images not noted are copyright by Christopher Cushman and can only be used or re-posted by the artists permission. 2010

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