CHRISTOPHER HOUSE
Photo Credit: Christopher House
New Tricks
New Tricks is an intimate solo work created and performed by Christopher House. It uses costume, disguise, ritual and 44 years of choreographic research to explore new ways of being in a veteran body. The work is personal and playful and is governed by a desire to embody liveness, the ambiguity of gesture, the poetry of failure and inefficiency, the beauty of the ordinary, and the queering of the imagination and the body.
Credits
Sponsored By
CHRISTOPHER HOUSE
New Tricks
October 27th & 28th, 8:00 PM
DANSpace (1800 Argyle Street, 3rd Floor)
General Seating – $25.00 Adults; 20.00 Seniors; $15.00 Students / Arts Worker / Under Waged
Run Time – 55 Minutes
Content Warning: Nudity
New Tricks is an intimate solo work created and performed by Christopher House. It uses costume, disguise, ritual and 44 years of choreographic research to explore new ways of being in a veteran body. The work is personal and playful and is governed by a desire to embody liveness, the ambiguity of gesture, the poetry of failure and inefficiency, the beauty of the ordinary, and the queering of the imagination and the body.
Created in residencies at Centre Q2, Citadel + Cie and the Banff Centre, New Tricks had a premiere at the Ross Centre for Dance in Toronto on March 24, 2022. The score consists of a series of covers by Thom Gill of familiar tunes and of original music composed for this work. Costumes are by Sarah Doucet and lighting by Simon Rossiter, with dramaturgical support from Tedd Robinson, Rosemary James, Ame Henderson and Jordan Tannahill.
“A piece about self-renewal, New Tricks taps intrepidly into hidden powers of artisitc expression, appearing as a testament to the artist House is today ”
Deirdre Kelly, Critics at Large
New Tricks
New Tricks is a co-production with Citadel+Compagnie (Toronto), the National Arts Centre (Ottawa), and Neighbourhood Dance Works (St. John’s NL), with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and individual donors Lindy Green and Sam Chaiton, Martha L.A. McCain, Jim and Sandra Pitblado and Kip Southam.
Christopher House
Born and raised in St. John’s, NL, CHRISTOPHER HOUSE is a choreographer, performer, educator, and curator. He was resident choreographer and a leading dancer with Toronto Dance Theatre from 1979-2020, the last twenty-six years as Artistic Director. He created over sixty works for TDT, diversified the company’s repertoire, and developed innovative programs in education, audience cultivation and support for young choreographers. He has collaborated with many leading companies and artists including The National Ballet of Canada, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Ballet Gulbenkian, Cirque du Soleil, Kimsooja, Ame Henderson, Jordan Tannahill, The Hidden Cameras, and post-modern icon Deborah Hay. His works have been performed in nineteen countries and he has taught creative process workshops for many organizations, often in collaboration with Ame Henderson. As a performer, he has enjoyed a wide variety of collaborations, notably with Henderson, Tannahill, and Deborah Hay, most recently in her work TEN for Tanz im August, Berlin. Recent projects include staging movement for I Forgive You (Artistic Fraud of NL) at the National Arts Centre and performing his solo New Tricks (2022) in Toronto, St. John’s, Vancouver, and Victoria. He is currently working with Dance Collection Danse as curator of an exhibition on the impact of HIV/AIDS on Canadian dance. He is a long-time Associate Dance Artist of the NAC, and a member of the Order of Canada.