Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre is a repertory company of exceptional young artists founded in 1980 by Artistic Director Deborah Lundmark and Managing Director Michael deConinck Smith. Today the Company tailors programs for a diversity of audiences and venues, selecting repertoire from more than one hundred international commissions. Presentation highlights include appearances at Toronto’s Princess of Wales and Royal Alexandra Theatres and five invitations to the Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa. As a pioneering dance touring company, CCDT has introduced 300,000 young people to dance from Kenora to Ottawa and Rainy River to Lion’s Head, through our Ontario Arts Access program and has undertaken national tours spanning Vancouver to Quebec City. Farther afield, the Company has performed in Singapore, Malaysia, China and in Glasgow where The Scotsman acclaimed the performance “perfect alchemy”. Culminating a three-decade relationship with the José Limón Dance Company, CCDT performed to standing ovations at New York City’s storied Joyce Theater as part of its sister company’s historic 70^th anniversary International Dance Festival. Closer to home, since 1983 CCDT has been Canada’s most frequently presented company on the country’s leading dance stage, The Fleck Dance Theatre, where it’s performances have been described as “simply breathtaking” (Dance International) and the Company, “a national treasure” (The Globe and Mail).

From the outset, arts education outreach has been at the core of CCDT’s vision and is interwoven throughout the Company’s creation and presentation mandate. Subsidized movement workshops complement all performances, averaging more than 200 annually. Since 2011, as part of our SolarDance outreach program, 160 of these workshops have been fully sponsored for Toronto schools located in city-designated Neighbourhood Improvement Areas. SolarDance consists of four sessions in our studios for each forty Grade 3 to 8 classes followed by sponsored admission to one of eleven CCDT matinees at Harbourfront Centre’s beautiful Fleck Dance Theatre. Teachers receive both a curriculum-based Performance Guide and a DVD dance teaching aid, EveryDay Movement, co-created with the TDSB Arts Department. Performances conclude with a Q&A where young audience members get to know our young artists. Those workshop participants who show exceptional ability are eligible for a dance training scholarship which could lead to performing with the Company and to inspiring someone just like them!  SolarDance takes its name from our solar panel installation that provides $14,000 annually to our outreach programs.

Your support is essential to sustain CCDT’s four decade long commitment to sparking these young imaginations with the unique power and beauty of dance.