The 21st edition of Public Energy’s annual new dance and performance festival is set to grace the stage at the Market Hall Performing Arts Centre, along with the festival’s showcase of “Myrmidon” at The Theatre on King. Emergency #21 features over 15 acts and dozens of artists, performers, and artistic collaborators beginning Thursday, March 26th and running until Sunday, March 29th.
“Emergency” comes from the Latin emergere (“arise, bring to light”). It is this spirit that gave rise to the first festival back in 1993 — a showcase committed to new work from emerging dancers and performing artists in the Peterborough area.
The first Emergency was produced by Peterborough’s artist-run-centre Artspace, back when it was still housed in the old Market Hall. A year later, Public Energy was founded (as Peterborough New Dance) and the rest, as they say, is history.
The festival has grown and evolved, and with it so too has the Peterborough arts community.
Now there are several senses to “Emergence-y”: an opportunity for not only new artists to spread their wings, but also a launching ground for established artists to grow and experiment with new forms of artistry. These performances may be outside the artists’ usual artistic practices and embrace the risk-taking willingness to blend art, dance, performance, and theatre in exciting new ways.
In recent years, for example, we’ve seen the growth of circus arts performance here in Peterborough. A new generation of performers inspired by the splendours of Cirque de Soleil took root here and now the city is home to the newly established Peterborough Academy for Circus Artists.
Choreographer and circus artist Opal Jennifer Elchuk is creating a new aerial dance performance with support from an artist residency at Market Hall. “Studio” will see Opal descending from the rafters of the Hall on aerial silks in tandem with live electronic music created by Jared Bremner. Each artist will influence the other in real time. It’s just one of seven acts in the Program A line-up.
Another pair of circus artists appear in Program B. Geometric patterns unfold as four skillfully manipulated shiny hoops are wielded in a high-energy display by Tegan Moss and Caitlin Bragg called “Circular Spaces”.
Kate Story has been a mainstay at the festival and the writer/performer has had perhaps her most prodigious year of artistic production to date. Her science fiction story “The Yoke of Inauspicious Stars” was published in the sci-fi anthology Carbide Tipped Pens and her shows Ice Miners of Europa and damned be this transmigration delighted sold-out audiences at The Theatre On King in the past year.
Story has developed the poetic one-act play “Myrmidon”, written by the late great Bernie Martin, in which she appears with performer and musician Curtis Driedger. Driedger is a veritable legend in the community, whose more recent exploits include founding and conducting the Peterborough Mandolin Society.
This feature play, appearing at The Theatre On King alongside the Program A and Program B performances at Market Hall, is based in part on the Grimm fairy tale “The Magic Flounder”. It depicts the struggle to live with integrity in a world where one is doomed to fail. The magical, mystical, ethereal journey down a river features Story and Driedger in a real Newfoundland Dory with costumes and set design by Martha Cockshutt. The new exploration of Martin’s work is directed by the The Theatre On King artistic director Ryan Kerr.
This barely scratches the surface in a festival that includes musical performances, dance, theatre, comedy, burlesque, video projection and light shows, social media, and a clown. At many times performances which combine several of these elements.
Singer/songwriter Nick Ferrio will appear accompanied by strings and a live light projection show in his debut of “Tumbleweed”.
Old Men Dancing will be returning with Brian Dimrock, Brian Ling, Brian Nichols, Colin MacAdam, Hugh MacMillan, Jim Angel, John Anderson, Pete Hewett, Ravi-Inder Soligo, Ray Barker, Rob Steinman, and Sandy Burnaby in a new dance performance of their own making called “Legacy”.
Ken Gibb stars in and directs a theatrical piece that takes an intimate look at contemporary life and the grip that technology and social media can exert on the modern relationship. Angela Sorensen co-stars with live musical accompaniment by Jana Farrell.
In addition to many more performances in the two programs (each program approximately 70 minutes with an intermission), there are also two stand-alone performances that accompany those programs at Market Hall.
Artist Jess Rowland will be outside the hall as the instigator of a mysterious happening she performs called “this is silence”.
“Vertep” is the name for a style of travelling puppet theatre that originated in 17th-century Ukraine. Brackenridge describes the five-minute performance, which will be viewed by one person at a time, as “more of an experience than a story. I want to immerse people in something where time and space fall away.”
He found a mentor in Peter Balk of the Olde Trout Puppet workshop during a puppet intensive at The Banff Centre several years ago. Since then, he’s been an enthusiastic participant in the what he describes as the “puppet scene”, a scene more active in Quebec and Europe than here in Ontario.
The experience involves you listening with headphones while sitting inside a confessional-style booth attached to the puppet stage. To view the work, audience members who are attending Emergency must put their name on a viewing list being compiled by the special “Vertep” attendant; there are no advance reservations.
Brackenridge’s collaborators are Leslie Menagh, who has designed costumes for the puppets; singers Zorana Sidiq and James McLennan; multi-media artist Dan English; and carpenter John MacEwen.
Singing, dancing, puppets, circus arts, theatre, and music. Emergency #21 truly is a festival where there is something for everyone.
Single tickets for Program A, Program B, and “Myrmidon” are $15 ($5 for high school students), but the best deal to see all the festival has to offer is the ticket bundle — see any three of the scheduled shows for $35. Tickets are available in advance from the Market Hall box office, by calling 705-749-1146, or online at www.markethall.org.
