Connected Collections

Kaya Joy Tsurumi
Duration: 6:01

PEACE PIECE is a short film made by Kaya Tsurumi and Taitania Higuchi. This film is loosely based on Kaya’s experiences folding origami throughout the course of the pandemic, and a collection of her photographs featuring paper cranes in spaces that feel like home. Unravelling, settling, repeating, fitting in - all aspects of the comforting mechanism that Kaya finds in the Japanese craft of origami, specifically the symbolic and iconic “tsuru” (crane). PEACE PIECE hopes to inspire the viewer to consider the great joys of their everyday activities.

Credits:

Director, Performer, Editor: Kaya Tsurumi
Cinematographer, Editor: Taitania Higuchi

This film was made with the support of Dance West Network's 2021/2022 Ancillary Project, which involved a mentorship with Lisa Gelley, collaboration with Taitania Higuchi and writing by Sarah Wong.

Candace Kumar
Duration: 7:48

CROSSING WATERS is a cultural reimagination film showcasing first-generation Filipino-Canadian dancers performing contemporized Philippine dance on Scarborough Bluffs Beach. The film depicts Pangalay, the fingernail dance performed by communities in the Sulu Archipelago in the southern Philippines. The movements are slow and meditative, imitating the Sulu Sea combined with modern hip hop music and street dance styles. This film aims to connect Pangalay across the Canadian Filipino diaspora and shed light on Filipino culture in the Canadian dance space.

Credits:
Director, Choreographer: Candace Kumar
Cinematographer: Ian Simon
Assistant Choreographers: Diana Reyes, Faye Roncesvalles
Cast: Candace Kumar, Diana Reyes, Faye Roncesvalles
Music Composition: Lex Junior
Indigenous Culture Bearer: Sitti Obeso
Co-produced by: Guelph Dance

Jeanette Kotowich
Duration: 14:25

The creative process of this work took many iterations in the embodied journey to uncover and reveal NIMÎHTOWIN ASKÎHK. What has taken shape is our dynamic and complicated, yet beautiful relationship to DANCING THE LAND - NIMÎHTOWIN ASKÎHK. As we sensitised ourselves to each landscape, it became clear that even in our heartfelt attempts to inhabit our surroundings without imposition, the Land itself has been imposed upon in irreversible & unavoidable ways. And so… we followed our intuition, senses and Spirit in the extraction and shaping of this work. In collaboration with the Land we attuned our ideas to site, weather, sun, cloud, sky, tide and time of day. This process called for our whole selves to be in observation, integration, reflection, and creative activation. Kinanāskomitinān. 

"We are born into a world that has both beauty and brokenness. How do we learn to dance with those contradictions and find healing for ourselves and the land?” - Chloe Ziner

Credits:

Concept, Direction, Design, Performance: Jeanette Kotowich
Collaborator, Cinematographer, Drone Operator, Editor: Chloe Ziner
Collaborator, Cinematographer, Projection Design: Jessica Gabriel
Original Sound Design: Roxanne Nesbitt (with Viola by John Kastelic)'Song for Today' Written and Sung by Jeanette Kotowich, Produced by Kathleen Nisbet