OTTAWA, CANADA – From May 3 to August 31, 2021, experience the innovation and creativity of professional Canadian dance artists who have had to deftly pivot their art onto the digital stage.

CAPSULE is an exciting new video dance series hosted by the National Arts Centre’s Dance Department, and developed in close collaboration with F-O-R-M (Festival of Recorded Movement) and Dumb Instrument Dance.

“At the beginning of 2021, I was moved to initiate Capsule because I realized that I, and many dance colleagues, had limited means to share videos we had created during the first year of the pandemic. The resulting partnership with the NAC and F-O-R-M has been a journey that inspires my faith in collaboration and cooperation. I think of Capsule as a free and virtual gallery: a selection of digital works that are but a few of the myriad creations devised by artists who, this very moment, are dancing their brave and beautiful resilience,” says Ziyian Kwan, Artistic Director of Dumb Instrument Dance.

In response to an open call, artists submitted short films created between March 2020 and March 2021. From a total of 139 submissions, 60 films were carefully selected by a committee of Canadian dance artists: Angie Cheng, Karla Etienne, Brian Solomon and Tamar Tabori.

CAPSULE is national in scope, providing audiences with the opportunity to explore films by artists from across Canada that feature a wide range of dance styles, techniques, and expressions.

“Capsule celebrates and supports the work of Canadian dance artists who have sustained their practice by producing short films in the last year - a challenging yet generative capsule of time. As the global pandemic took centre stage, dance artists across the country continued to create incredible works despite the shuttering of theatres and cancellation of live performances. We’re very proud to host this community-initiated project, and we invite audiences to this gathering space to discover the ingenuity and artistic breadth from a selection of Canada’s professional dance milieu,” says Cathy Levy, Executive Producer, NAC Dance.

 

ABOUT THE NATIONAL ARTS CENTRE 
 
The National Arts Centre is Canada’s bilingual, multi-disciplinary home for the performing arts. As part of its Strategic Plan, the NAC’s vision is to lead and support the renewal of the performing arts sector. The NAC presents, creates, produces, and co-produces performing arts programming in various streams — the NAC Orchestra, Dance, English Theatre, French Theatre, Indigenous Theatre, and Popular Music and Variety — and nurtures the next generation of audiences and artists from across Canada. The NAC is located in the National Capital Region on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe. 

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FOR MORE INFORMATION: 

Andrea Ruttan 

Communications Strategist 

1-343-998-4244