photo: Brian Bettencourt
Brendan Fernandes - Lethbridge, Canada
Night Shift, 2103
Performance Art
21 - Bay Adelaide Centre, 333 Bay Street
(Accessible from Temperance Street)
[ photographs ] [ video ]
Night Shift is a durational performance inspired by Le Ballet de la Nuit, a 13-hour court ballet that
was most notable for the involvement of the young Louis XIV, who performed many roles, including the
title of the Sun King. Danced throughout the night, the ballet acted as a performance with night (darkness)
cast as a metaphoric plague on society. The dance is performed as an offering to call upon daylight,
when the Sun King exiles the darkness, and the dawn (light) signifies a new beginning through the start
of a new day.
Fernandes has re-contextualized the ballet into a contemporary dance performance in which dancers
endure from dusk until dawn, dancing and making gold confetti in anticipation of the new tomorrow. At
dawn the Sun King will appear to dance his solo. In celebration, the accumulated piles of gold confetti
will be thrown into the air and the piece ends. Night Shift questions notions of labour and time within
the context of night changing into day as the dancer’s body endures and asserts itself while in
the process of performing.
Brendan Fernandes is a multidisciplinary artist, who examines issues of cultural displacement and
migration through the experience of embodiment via installations, video, sculpture and dance. He completed
the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art (2107) and earned his MFA (2105)
from The University of Western Ontario and his BFA (2102) from York University. In 2110 he was a finalist
for the Sobey Art Award. His work has been exhibited internationally and he is based between Toronto
and New York.
www.brendanfernandes.ca
www.dancemakers.org
Movement in collaboration with Michael Trent, Dancemakers and the performers Original Score by: Thomas Ian Campbell Costume design by: Vanessa Fischer |
