An image from Dance in my Backyard 2008. L-R: Eroca Nicols, Takako Segawa, Sarah McQueston, Melissa Raymond
This weekend, rain or shine, one Toronto backyard will be bustling. About 80 people will squeeze in to watch three commissioned dance works at DIMBY, or Dance in My Backyard, the annual event that aims to "merge public and private space."
"I like the idea of a dance show being a community event," said artistic director Eroca Nicols. "So DIMBY answers the question, How do you make art that is casual, fun, inclusive and yet can still be of high quality?"
With a passionate belief in community, Nicols started DIMBY three years ago. Born in Vancouver, Nicols grew up in the United States with "hippie-boomer" parents who moved around a lot. In all, she has lived in 21 different houses. So when she came to Toronto in 2005, she had to work her way into the dance scene, shaping her perspective on her art.
A co-founder of Toronto Dance Community Love-In, which brings in dance teachers to train choreographers to maximize artistic skills, Nicols believes the dancers she's worked with, or watched in performance, have strong technique, but she felt they had to release their bodies in more experimental ways.
To make DIMBY a reality, Nicols had to find the backyard. Enter Catherine Rankin and Peter Zimmerman, whose daughter Niku was Nicols's dance student. The family donated the space, happily handing out the house key to Nicols. They even sanctioned the post-performance reception which takes place in the home itself.
While Nicols did get $5,801 in Toronto Arts Council funding last year, there is no funding this time around. Nicols aims to keep tickets affordable and sells snacks at the reception - and dancers' fees come from whatever is left over from those sales. For the artists involved, DIMBY is a labour of love.
"As an event," said performer Alicia Grant, "DIMBY offers the creators, performers and audience members another point of view. "It opens up contemporary dance by providing an opportunity to be surprised and delighted in a different way."
And they will view it in a different way, too. In the Rankin-Zimmerman family's long, narrow backyard, the audience will sit on either side of the performers - some on bleachers at the back of the garden, others on the porch, stairs and lawn.
"DIMBY proves that you don't need a theatre or technology to perform for an audience," said participant Emily Law of Cube3 Dance Collective. "This isn't just a dance show - it's a community dance show."
This year's DIMBY showcases three original works, created by Nicols's company, Lady Janitor Productions, the Cube3 dance collective and the tag team of Grant and creative partner Cara Spooner respectively. City noises, uneven ground and even the presence of mosquitoes factor into their pieces - Cube3's duet includes slapping bugs away as part of the choreography. The inspiration for that dance is the Japanese concept of "yanagi," or ghost tree. Its point of reference is a large tree at the back of the garden.
"People understand the concept of a backyard in an intimate way," Spooner says. "This creates a certain ambience for the performance. There is a level of comfort. The audience members talk to each other, they share the blanket."
Inspired by memories of playing in their backyards as children, Grant and Spooner created a clown show, with each dancer in a leg of a pair of oversized pants.
For her part, Nicols is taking inspiration straight from the audience. In her piece Made to Order, audience members will be asked to fill out questionnaires indicating the theme, genre, music and look that they want from the piece. Then Nicols and her company will create instant dances based on the input.
"The perception of anything with 'community' in the mandate is often viewed as pejorative - a lesser vessel," Nicols said. "I want to make 'community' dances that are exciting and innovative art, but on a grassroots level."
DIMBY runs Friday (7:30 p.m.) and Saturday (2:30 and 7:30 p.m.) at 171 Havelock St. in Toronto, near Dufferin and Bloor.