Meridian Arts Centre
Lyric Theatre
Dimanche
Chaliwaté Company & Focus Company
February 21 – 22, 2025 Lead
Photo credit: Mihaela Bodlovic
About TO Live
TO Live is one of Canada’s largest multi-arts organizations, operating three iconic venues: Meridian Hall, St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, and Meridian Arts Centre. In addition, TO Live presents a full range of performing arts, theatrical, and concert events at these venues in both downtown and uptown Toronto. With these two hubs of creativity and content creation, TO Live has a unique place and perspective to activate creative spaces by inspiring local and international artists, connecting audiences, stimulating new ideas, and elevating artistic potential, becoming a catalyst for creative expression that is reflective of Toronto’s diversity.
Photo credit: Jonathan Castellino
TO Live would like to acknowledge Tkaronto (TKahr-on-dOnH), which is a Mohawk word meaning “the place in the water where the trees are standing.”
We live and work on the traditional territory of Haudenosaunee (HODE-en-ohshow-nee)-speaking nations, including the Wendat, Seneca, and Mohawk. Haudenosaunee-speaking nations have been here since time immemorial, and were more recently joined by the Mississaugas of the Credit.
This place has many Indigenous ports, including where the Humber and Rouge rivers meet other waterways such as Lake Ontario. Ancient longhouses, typical Haudenosaunee housing structures, have been found along both rivers and in the north of Toronto as well (near modern-day York University). This territory is covered by the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations) Confederacy and the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the lands and the relationships around the Great Lakes.
What this means is that by living and working here, we all have a responsibility to the environment and to each other, to treat each other and the environment with peace and respect. This means we have responsibilities to honour, renew, and consistently uphold the values and relationships outlined in the ancient agreements.
Today, Toronto is home to Indigenous peoples and settlers from around the world. Let us all come together in an atmosphere of respect and peace to do Good Work together with Good Minds. Let’s start building stronger and healthier relationships with each other, and the spaces which we inhabit in Tkaronto, Ontari:io (on-dahr-EE-yo), Kanata (Gan-AH-dah).
Let’s hold our minds together in kindness.
Nia:wen. Thank you.
©Dawn T Maracle
B R U E G G E R G O S MA N - L E E , TI A WO O D , A N D Z E B BA N G A S H WH AT MAKES I T GRE AT? WIT H R OB K AP I L O W F T. G R YP H ON T R I O
About Chaliwaté Company
Trained in the gestural arts, Sicaire Durieux and Sandrine Heyraud created Chaliwaté company in 2005. Based in Brussels, they defend a visual language without words, poetic, physical and artisanal, mixing gestural theatre, object theatre, circus and dance. For them, gesture is a singular means of creating evocative, suggestive and metaphorical images. Present and active on the Belgian and international scene, Chaliwaté Company creates shows that are accessible to the greatest number of people without language barriers. The company has won numerous international awards and honors and has given more than 1000 performances in all around the world.
Their first show Joséphina was created in 2009. The show won various awards in Canada, Mexico and Spain and was nominated for the Maeterlinck Prize in Belgium in 2013 in the "Discovery" category.
In 2011, their show for young audiences Îlo was presented at the Rencontres Jeune Public de Huy in Belgium where it received several awards. It was selected by the Théâtre des Doms for the 2012 edition of the Avignon Festival and toured for 6 years in Belgium, France and internationally. The show has been performed more than 350 times.
In 2015, Sicaire Durieux and Sandrine Heyraud teamed up with Loïc Faure to create the show Jetlag, combining movement theatre and circus. It was nominated for the Maeterlinck Awards in the category "Best circus show" in 2016. Jetlag was presented at the Avignon Festival in the OFF in 2018. To this day it continues to tour in Belgium, France and internationally.
In 2018, Sandrine Heyraud and Sicaire Durieux were awarded the SACD Belgium Prize in "Gestual Theatre" for all their shows.
Photo credit: Mihaela Bodlovic
About Focus Company
Directed by Julie Tenret, who graduated from INSAS, the company Focus from Brussels creates shows combining theater of objects, puppets, actors and video. The scenic language she proposes is essentially visual metaphorical, poetic, artisanal, very close to cinematographic writing. Her shows are aimed at all audiences and deal with social issues starting from the intimate, the infraordinary to reach the universal. In 2009, in collaboration with Isabelle Darras and Agnès Limbos, she created the show Fragile, which received a prize for its sensitivity, its strength and its commitment at the Rencontres de Théâtre de Huy in Belgium. To this date more than 250 performances have been presented around the world. In 2011, in collaboration with Isabelle Darras, she created Silence. Silence was presented at Avignon Festival in Théâtre des Doms in 2014. The show received numerous awards: the Maeterlinck Prize for the best young audience show in 2015 as well as the press crush and the Youth Minister’s Prize. To this day Silence has been presented 350 times.
Photo credit: Mihaela Bodlovic
At the start
For Dimanche, Focus Company and the Chaliwaté Company come together to write and create a surprising and touching performance.
For a long time they have been following and appreciating each other’s work. It became clear that they had a similar approach to our art and it was obvious that they shared a common taste for unusual theatrical forms. As if they spoke the same visual, artisanal and poetic language.
“We want to mutualise our skills and tools to shape something special combining movement art, object theatre, the marionette, stage acting and video. This new project is a logical next step in the creative process and artistic exploration of both companies. We work meticulously, concentrating on the smallest details to create a singular visual, metaphoric and poetic language, which grows from daily life, the personal and intimate experience, the “infraordinary”, aiming to touch the universal.”
Photo credit: Mihaela Bodlovic
About Dimanche
Sometime in the near future... Humanity has failed to adapt to the new ecological reality. It is officially the end of the world as we know it. In a small building in the city centre, a family is about to spend their Sunday together, a family tradition. But the walls are shaking, strong winds and torrential rain rage outside and the storm has only just begun. Amidst this climatic chaos, the protagonists absurdly attempt to maintain a normal family life.
Meanwhile, somewhere else on the planet, three travelling wildlife reporters are doing their best to document the apocalypse. They film, with what little equipment they have, Earth’s last living species: three wild animals on the brink of extinction.
Collective insanity, blindness to the bleeding obvious; it’s a rich subject for bittersweet clowning. Between dreamlike fiction and factual reality, Dimanche paints a witty and tender portrait of humanity surprised by the uncontrollable forces of nature. Using lo-fi FX, miniature vehicles, puppetry, video, deadpan mime and ingeniously simple physical recreations of film language, Dimanche observes the ingenuity and stubbornness of humans as they try to preserve their day-to-day habits, going to absurd extremes to keep up a sense of normalcy despite the chaos of an ecological collapse.
Photo credit: Mihaela Bodlovic
Credits and creative team
Written and directed by
Julie Tenret, Sicaire Durieux, Sandrine Heyraud
With
Denis Robert, Christine Heyraud, and Julie Dacquin
Dramaturgy
Alana Osbourne
Lights
Guillaume Toussaint Fromentin
Sound
Brice Cannavo Sound for Backup: Loïc le Foll
Scenography
Zoé Tenret
Stage set construction
Zoé Tenret, Bruno Mortaignie (LS Diffusion), Sébastien Boucherit and Sebastien Munck
Puppets
Waw! Studios/Joachim Jannin and Jean-
Raymond Brassinne
Puppet creators’ assistants
Emmanuel Chessa, Aurélie Deloche and Gaëlle Marras
Video and photography
Tristan Galand
1st AC
Alexandre Cabanne
Key grip
Hatuey Suarez
Underwater filming
Alexandra Brixy
Video post-production
Paul Jadoul
Sound (video)
Jeff Levillain (Studio Chocolat-noisette) et Roland Voglaire (Boxon Studio)
General stage management
Léonard Clarys
Stage management
Leonard Clarys with David Alonso Morillo, and Liane Van De Putte
Tour manager
Chiara Christoffersen
Co-produced with Le Théâtre les Tanneurs, Le Théâtre de Namur, La Maison de la Culture de Tournai/Maison de la Création, Le Sablier - IFS (France), Arts and Ideas New Haven (USA), Adelaide Festival (Australia), Auckland Arts Festival (NZ), Théâtre Victor Hugo de Bagneux, Scène des Arts du Geste/ EPT Vallée Sud Grand Paris and the Coop ASBL.
Produced by Le Théâtre les Tanneurs. An Associate Production of Le Théâtre de Namur and La Maison de la Culture de Tournai/ Maison de la Création.
With the support of La Fédération WallonieBruxelles - Service du cirque, des Arts Forains et de la Rue et de la Loterie Nationale, De Wallonie Bruxelles International (WBI), De La Bourse du CAPT, de la Commission Communautaire Française, De Shelterprod, Du Taxshelter.be, Ing and Du Tax-Shelter du Gouvernement Fédéral Belge.
With thanks to Escale Du Nord - Centre Culturel D’Anderlecht, Centre de la Marionnette de Tornai, La Roseraie, Latitude 50 - Pôles des Arts Du Cirque et de la Rue, Espace Catastrophe, Centre Culturel Jacques Franck, Maison de la Culture Famenne-Ardennes, Centre Culturel D’Eupen, La Vénerie, Le Centre Culturel de Braine L’Alleud, Le Royal Festival de Spa, Le Théâtre Marni, L’Escaut, Bronks, AD LIB Diffusion, AD LIB Production: Résidences au Libitum, LookIN’out and Le Festival XS.
Backstage with...Bryce Taylor
Bryce Taylor is a Tkaronto-based breaker who began their dance journey at 13 in Colebrook, Ontario, later joining Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet and Ballet Edmonton.
Taylor is a TO Live explorations artists, and was awarded $7,000 through the initiative to research something new. Alongside their crew TUFF, Taylor has been researching what is possible at the intersection of breaking and partnered dance.
Taylor is also part of TO Live’s Making Space program, which provides subsidized access to spaces for artists. We chatted with them during a recent rehearsal at Meridian Hall to learn more about breaking and their work.
What do you love about dancing?
I’ve always been the kind of person who gets very intense about things very quickly. So if you talk to my mom, she’ll tell you about all the phases I went through; it was acting, then it was sports, then card magic.
But dance was the first thing that really stuck. It’s the only thing that I’ve stuck to for over a decade. And I think it’s because no matter how much you learn about it, you only learn there’s so much more to get into. It’s like as you dig your hole or you go on your journey, all you discover is that there’s more to be discovered. And that cyclical nature just keeps pulling me back in.
What motivated you to focus on breaking?
With breaking, I think it’s the fun, the style itself, the community and the culture, which is about liberation in many ways.
A lot of the styles that I practiced in other phases of my career are about getting it right. So I appreciate the freedom and individuality in breaking, and the assumption that everyone will have their own unique style, whereas in other genres that only happens if you start choreographing.
To get a little technical, breaking is made up of four main groups: uprock, downrock, freezes, and power moves. Each one is almost a dance style unto itself, so it’s almost like four different dance styles in a trench coat pretending to be one. What’s so engaging is that no matter where you want to go, you can class into one of these styles. And all that freedom is very alluring.
What are you working on these days?
Because I was privileged enough to see institutional dance, I thought I might be able to help push the envelope forward in breaking and in street dance. So that’s where most of my energy goes now.
I represent a group called The Unknown Floor Force, or TUFF. We’re working to
become Toronto’s first breaking crew that is also a dance company. Lots of work that needs to be done still because we started in 2023, but we’ve got the ball rolling in some fairly interesting ways.
How important is it for artists to have access to subsidized rehearsal space?
I think it’s extremely precious that TO Live is able to give artists space, and to give it for longer periods where we don’t need to come in all rushed. I think it’s important to understand that breakers generally don’t practice in studios. We never have access to a studio space. They ’re too expensive.
Some of the cheapest studio spaces in Toronto are $75 an hour. So we practice in public buildings. We bring a little boombox, it sounds very beat street with the cardboard and the boombox, but that’s what we do. We go to a public space that has a nice buffed concrete floor where we can spin on it and we get down, and we practice for four hours a night just throwing our bodies onto a concrete floor. So to be able to come into a space that is heated, clean, has a sprung floor, all of these things that help prevent injury, help take care of your body…it’s extremely precious and very appreciated.
What does it mean to you to have your worked supported through TO Live’s explorationsand MakingSpaceprograms?
It’s really incredible. And I don’t mean that just for myself as an artist; for our group it’s a huge deal. TUFF is trying to format itself as a crew, but also as a professional entity. And in Toronto, there’s not a lot of things we can point to in order to be legitimized. And these opportunities lets us know that this work is important and that there is a space for groups like us in this arts ecosystem.
TO Live’s explorations initiative is made possible by supporters of the TO Live Foundation. explorations is generously supported by Power Corporation of Canada.
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TO Live staff and board
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Lori DeGraw
Chair
Councillor Lily Cheng
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Robyn Citizen
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and Special Projects
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Redevelopment
TO Live staff and board list as of January 2025. For the updated version, please visit tolive.com.
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Visit tolivefoundation.com to learn more about how our Foundation is committed to building a better city through the arts.