Wildflower Dance Arts
growing & inspiring young dance artists in Grey & Bruce
Wildflower Dance Arts is the Owen Sound Dance Academy's new youth dance company, focusing on the creation and performance of new contemporary dance works to share with the communities of Grey & Bruce Counties.
Wildflower Dance Arts has two main artistic goals. The first goal is to expand the creative potential of our most keen and dedicated contemporary dancers through additional training, workshops with professional dance artists, and opportunities to choreograph their own dance works to express their own feelings, fears, and passions in life. There are not a lot of opportunities for young dancers in rural areas to find inspiring educational and performance experiences without travelling to big cities, which is not always feasible for a lot of dancers and families. So why not make opportunities for ourselves in our own community?
The second goal of the company is to share the beautiful art of theatrical contemporary dance across our community, where so many people have never had the opportunity to experience this art form. Whether due to financial barriers (tickets and travel are expensive!) or because the world of theatrical dance is often a mystery to those who are not a part of it, many people do not even know what they are missing! The focus of Wildflower Dance Arts will be to share our love and knowledge of dance while creating and performing works that bring awareness to topics that are important to our dancers and our communities.
Mission
Photos by Steve Roberts @ floto.ca
Wildflower Dance Arts performance programs run two times a year
and are open to OSDA students ages 12+ with at least 2 years of Intermediate-Advanced contemporary dance training and 1 year of ballet training. Dancers must be enrolled in at least 1 Intermediate-Advanced Contemporary class and 1 Elementary-Advanced Ballet class (or RAD exam class equivalent) at the Academy in order to participate.
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Our spring company is an 8 week session in February, March, and April, consisting of classes, workshops and rehearsals that will expand dancers' creativity and movement practice while preparing for a community performance in the spring.
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Our summer company is a week-long intensive in August, training and exploring contemporary dance and creating a variety of full group, solo, duet, and small group pieces for a community performance at the end of the week.
About the Program
Photos by Steve Roberts @ floto.ca
Wildflower Dance Arts started in February 2022 with a pilot spring program. Five dancers participated in a series of workshops and classes over the course of 8 weeks and collaborated on creating a piece centred on environmental advocacy, which they had the opportunity to perform at the first annual Earth Day Grey Bruce event in Owen Sound this April. You can see a video of the performance below!
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The blossoming of creativity and artistic growth we saw in these dancers through this program was truly inspiring, and we look forward to providing even more exciting opportunities for our dancers in the future.
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