Thursday, February 11, 2010

In French. Beware the power of the siren song, all sailors who venture near: your ship will surely break up and be lost on the reef. What brings these girls together is Heartbreak. Marie Davidson, Alice Tougas St-Jak and Géraldine Bureau use the lure of echo, reverb and feedback to bewitch. Bits of improv thrumming with the tension between melody and pure noise. Combining prepared instruments, vocal tweeking and entirely feminist rage, they create an ambient cinematic experience that is both ethereal and unruly. For the brave only, prepare to be hypnotized. With guest poets Olivier Gourde, Shawn Cotton, Damien Blass and Jean-Philippe Tremblay.

“Few performers have the raw charisma of d’bi.young, her ability to command attention every second she’s on stage… (benu is) a riveting journey through her psyche, equal parts blood and magic.” —Serafin Lariviere, Eye Weekly

Having recently given birth and now negotiating her own mortality, benu, a 30 year old woman, contemplates life and death. Her blood pressure mysteriously rises, like a phoenix, in a Toronto hospital, triggering a series of strange physical and mental ailments that lead her down a path of fear, discovery, and renewal. Reality meets myth, magic meets ritual, and a bio-myth-o-graphical narrative unfolds in firesome ways, paralleling the mythology of the Egyptian predecessor to the phoenix, the benu bird.

d’bi.young is an Afrikan-Jamaican-Canadian visionary who has performed, published, and lectured internationally. An award-winning dubpoet, writer, and theatre practitioner, she has produced five dubpoetry albums, authored two dubpoetry collections and is the playwright/performer of the published double Dora Award-winning, one-person show blood.claat. d’bi.young recently launched the radical arts centre anitAFRIKA! dub theatre and she is presently completing her first non-fiction on dubpoetry and dubtheatre.

A La Chapelle and Festival Voix d’Amériques coprésentation. An anitAFRIKA! dub theatre production.

In French. One soapbox, ten people, six minutes each. No right of reply. No comeback.

Open mic, bilingual. The Bird Messengers is an independent female duo composed of Aboriginal artists Moe Clark and Émilie Monnet. "Our vision is to serve as messengers, to follow the migration and support the reconnection and reconciliation of peoples on Mother Earth. We want to celebrate traditional knowledge through contemporary performance, passing it on in an ethical manner using artistic action and reflection."