Roxane D’Orléans Juste, The Limón Dance Company’s Principal Dancer and Associate Artistic Director, will be in Toronto October 3rd and 4th to rehearse CCDT dancers in Limón’s iconic The Winged (1966).  Her visit is in preparation for the company’s performances at the Limón Company’s International Dance Festival celebrating their 70th anniversary.

Requests for interviews with Ms D’Orléans Juste and CCDT dancers are welcome.

CCDT will perform at the storied Joyce Theater in Manhattan alongside a stellar cast of international companies as Canada’s only representative at the two-week Festival.

Hosted by the world’s oldest modern dance company, the Festival is the dream opportunity for CCDT’s emerging artists who, with an average age of 16, are the youngest group invited. It also will mark the company’s first time performing in New York City. In addition to the José Limón Dance Company, CCDT will be sharing the stage with sjDANCEco (California), Royal Danish Ballet (Denmark), CoreoArte (Venezuela), and Bayerische Staatsballett (Germany), among many others.

This momentous opportunity grew from CCDT’s long history with the Limón Company and its Artistic Director, Carla Maxwell, who has nurtured two former company members, Kristen Foote and Belinda McGuire. Foote, now among the Limón Company’s most senior artists, will return to mount The Winged on CCDT dancers.

The company’s relationship with the Limón legacy stretches back to 1988 when Canada’s leading proponent of the Limón technique, Donna Krasnow, introduced CCDT to José’s timeless movement qualities that inform his choreography. After years of experimenting, company members were suddenly immersed in a fluidly expressive language so suited to young artists as to seem made for them. Now led by the company’s third generation of Limón teachers, CCDT’s training program, beginning at six years of age and balanced with Royal Academy of Dance ballet, is unique worldwide.

Over the following decade, several Limón Company dancers led CCDT summer intensives, bringing a taste of José’s seminal repertoire. This growing kinship reached a new level in 2000 when Foote, still in her teens, was accepted into the renowned company. José Limón has profoundly shaped CCDT and generations of its dancers. It is an honour to be given the opportunity to pay tribute to his artistic genius as part of this historic event.

I saw a company of young artists, challenged artistically to their maximum, who understood and demonstrated the highest standards of professionalism. …I was overwhelmed by what I saw and experienced.  – Carla Maxwell, Artistic Director of the Limón Dance Company, upon her first visit to CCDT

[CCDT is] as slick and polished as its adult contemporaries…among the ranks of  Toronto’s top dance companies.    – Paula Citron, The Globe and Mail, Toronto

 

 

The José Limón International Dance Festival: The Next Generation Performances

Saturday October 24th, 2:00pm

Sunday October 25th, 7:30pm

 

The Joyce Theater

175 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10011

 

Tickets available online and by phone:

JoyceCharge: (212) 242-0800—

Founded in 1980 by Artistic Director, Deborah Lundmark and Managing Director, Michael deConinck Smith, Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre has staged more than 1,500 performances from Barrie to Beijing. CCDT’s young artists perform a diverse contemporary repertoire by leading international choreographers, from historically timeless revivals to cutting-edge premieres. Hailed by Toronto’s Globe and Mail as “a national treasure”, the company has recently represented Canada at the Commonwealth Youth Dance Festival in Glasgow, Scotland.  CCDT tours nationally and internationally, performing over 30 shows each season, and has been a biannual part of Harbourfront Centre’s prestigious NextSteps national dance series at Toronto’s Fleck Dance Theatre since 2008.

Roxane D’Orléans Juste, a native of Montreal, Canada, has been a member of the Limón Dance Company since 1983. She has also performed with the Eleo Pomare Dance Company and Annabelle Gamson Dance Solos.  Ms. D’Orléans Juste’s choreography has been presented by Toronto’s DanceWorks, Shoenberg Dancycle, Dia Center for the Arts, L’Agora de la Danse, The Yard, and the Museé du Quebec. She was honored with the Canadian Dance Award, Le Prix Jacqueline Lemieux (1980), and is the recipient of several grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Foundation for Creation in Fine Arts. An active master teacher, she also stages José Limón’s choreography for companies and ensembles around the world. She was appointed Artistic Associate in 2002.