To coincide with Pride Month, DanceWorks is offering a double-bill exploring queer intimacies. Sweet Ephemera will be presented from Thursday (June 18) to Saturday (June 20) at the Theatre Centre (1115 Queen Street West), featuring pieces choreographed by Eilish 미정 Shin-Culhane and Jose Miguel “Miggy” Esteban.
Through dance, each Toronto artist spotlights identity, faith, queerness, and parts of the Self that people are taught to hide.
Shin-Culhane’s piece, Peel Me, makes use of grapefruits and fortune cookies to reveal what lies beneath the surface. There are five dancers—Morgyn Aronyk-Schell, Steph Harkness, Shona Kiyama, Hannah Shikatani, Barbara Simms—who perform to music composed by Aidan McConnell.
“This experimental Western contemporary dance work examines nuanced states of control, release, greed and care, all while building a truly sensory experience,” DanceWorks declares on its website.
Shin-Culhane graduated with a BFA from Marymount Manhattan College and has performed in works by Peter Chu, Bill T. Jones, Nicole von Arx, Angela Blumberg, Nova Bhattacharya, Vim Vigor, and Esie Mensah. According to Shin-Culhane’s bio, they “centre joy, discussion and catharsis through their collaborative process, prioritizing deep connections and continual growth”.
Esteban’s piece in Sweet Ephemera, pahinga ka muna, is “influenced through disability/crip/mad arts practices of engaging access as creative provocation”, according to DanceWorks. The Filipinx choreographer also wrote and performs, with JJ Omelagah servings as composer and sound designer. Meanwhile, Elaine Cagulada is the audio description voice performer with Courage Bacchus as Deaf interpreter.
“Returning to rest as a crip space of memory, dreaming, and worldmaking, Miggy invites you to take part in an improvisational ritual of mourning that traces the multisensorial mad and queer routes of their Filipinx diasporic inspirations,” DanceWorks states.
Esteban is a PhD candidate in social justice education at the University of Toronto. According to Esteban’s biography, their choreographic work “explores improvisational practices of navigating mad and queer routes to embody Filipinx (un)belonging”.
For tickets and more information about Sweet Ephemera, visit the DanceWorks website. Learn more about the communities that make up Canada on the Toronto Spark website. The Toronto Spark is on Bluesky @torontospark.bsky.social.
