DANCING DARKNESS Peggy Baker conjures ‘who we are in the dark’

Get tickets here! This Program will premiere starting on Saturday, July 18th at 4:00pm ET and will be available for 72 hours.

Featuring a conversation with V. Tony Hauser, Ellen Tolmie, and Peggy Baker, moderated by Wendy Perron

Dancing Darkness explores the distinctively personal and profoundly collaborative creative process through the conjuring of Peggy Baker’s latest and most ambitious work, “who we are in the dark.” Renowned American choreographer Mark Morris calls Baker a “living treasure of Canada”. She burst into modern dance in 1971, working with dance greats Morris, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Lar Lubovitch, James Kudelka and others in New York and Canada, dancing into her late 50s before turning full-time to choreography. 

Baker’s accomplices for ‘who we are in the dark’ match this ambition, including celebrated Canadian contemporary dancers as well as violinist/singer Sarah Neufeld and drummer Jeremy Gara (of the famed indie-rock band Arcade Fire) who composed and perform the dance’s fast-paced, haunting score. 

In three acts, Dancing Darkness examines Baker’s passionate, creative odyssey (including a bio brief on her career); human responses to darkness, in the dance and as the artists otherwise express; and the mystery and necessity of art itself. The dance’s technical/dress residency provides the film’s rich visual backbone and extensive interviews with principal collaborators form its narrative ‘voice’.