With sky, sunlight, clouds, wind. With ground, grass, trees, songbirds. (We are held)

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About

With sky, sunlight, clouds, wind. With ground, grass, trees, songbirds. (We are held) is a series of site-specific open rehearsals by Tanya Lukin Linklater taking place over four afternoons in High Park leading up to and during the opening of the 2024 Toronto Biennial of Art. Building upon her 2023 project presented with TBA, The sky held me and her sculptural work Held in the air I never fell, featured in the 2022 Biennial, the program extends recent research and conversations between Tanya and Anishnaabe and Cayuga knowledge holders around High Park’s Black Oak Savannah and thunderstorms’ physiologic and metaphoric meanings. With invited dance artists, Tanya leads a choreographic process in relation to plant life, weather, and other structures in our lived environment that sustain us. Through sensory investigations grounded in place (the prairie ecosystem of the Black Oak Savannah nestled within the Great Lakes watershed), the rehearsals generate structured improvisational dances, deepening our understanding of and connection to our environment and the weather.

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Note: This program is drop-in. Visitors are welcome to attend these performance-based open rehearsals anytime between 1:00 – 4:00pm to observe the processes that Tanya and dancers work through while in High Park.

*Events subject to change; for more up-to-date information, visit www.torontobiennial.org/whats-on.

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This program is a part of Your Timing is Perfect: Moments and Movements of Inquiry, a performance series in which artists investigate the body as a living archive, exploring its extraordinary strength and resilience, as well as its tenderness, vulnerability, and limitations.

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This program is generously supported by ĀNANDAM Dance Theatre.

Links

• Toronto Biennial of Art Calendar torontobiennial.org
• With sky, sunlight, clouds, wind. With ground, grass, trees, songbirds. (We are held) Program page torontobiennial.org

Organizer

Toronto Biennial of Art

The Toronto Biennial of Art’s mission is to make contemporary art accessible to everyone. A ten-week event every two years, the Biennial commissions artists to create new works for a city-wide exhibition in dialogue with Toronto’s diverse local contexts. Year-round public and learning programs bridge Biennials and invite intergenerational audiences to explore the ideas that inspire our events. Building upon past editions and offering new ways of seeing and listening, each Biennial connects people to spark meaningful dialogues and imagine new futures.

The Toronto Biennial of Art launched in 2019 and was a popular and critical success. The Biennial provides expanded understandings of contemporary art practices and is building a legacy of free, inclusive, and accessible contemporary arts programming in Toronto and surrounding communities.

As conversations about Truth and Reconciliation as well as inclusion, equity, and accessibility continue to evolve, the Biennial is committed to developing new ways of seeing and listening.