Canada Dance Festival

Jeanne Holmes, Artistic Director
P.O. Box 1376, Station B
Ottawa ON K1P 5R4

Tel: (613) 947-7000 ext. 576
Fax: (613) 943-1399
E-Mail: jholmes@nac-cna.ca
Website: www.canadadance.ca
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The Canada Dance Festival celebrates the vitality of Canadian dance. Through creative partnerships, the CDF provides a national focus, inspiring artists, audiences, presenters, educators and funders to create contemporary excellence in dance culture. It is dedicated to the creation, development and presentation of new Canadian dance.

The CDF presents annual activity – on even years, it presents a showcase of the best in contemporary Canadian dance, and on uneven years, a presentation of thematic programming. The festival presents recent works representing a diversity of contemporary dance practices created by established, mid-career, and emerging Canadian choreographers. Thematic programming is developed by the artistic advisory team in response to current innovations in dance. The CDF is committed to the commissioning and presentation of new works.

Centred in the National Arts Centre and using other sites throughout the National Capital Region, the CDF uses theatre spaces ranging from 100 to 2200 seats, site-specific or alternative venues and outdoor locations. The events are held in June each year.

The festival showcase is a critical meeting place for the professional Canadian dance community. In addition to presenting 30 or more dance companies and independent artists, the schedule includes dance literacy sessions, community meetings, conferences, special workshops, master classes, and film and video screenings.

The Festival is looking for choreography that is contemporary in nature and has a strong point of view, regardless of its cultural heritage. Final selections are made by the Artistic Producer who is advised by an artistic committee and a presenter committee. There is no set application deadline, and artists are encouraged to get in touch with and/or send proposals with videos to the Artistic Producer. However, we are primarily interested in seeing your performances, and we try to attend as many shows as possible throughout the country. Artists should keep us informed of when and where they are presenting their works, giving us as much lead time as possible. Programming is usually finalized by the December before each event.

The Canada Dance Festival is co-produced by the Canada Dance Festival Society and the National Arts Centre.