Double Bill of The Direction of Ease & Less + More

 Double Bill of Direction of Ease and LESS + MORE 

The Direction of Ease inquires into the performativity of touch and proposes a kinaesthetic choreography. It is an intimate participatory performance whereby 3 dance artists, with a background in touch-based therapeutic and/or movement teaching practices, perform artful bodywork on an audience-of-one. A larger audience is welcomed to join. The Direction of Ease creatively engages at the intersection of touch therapy modalities, dance and performance. As music is made to be heard, a meal to be tasted, The Direction of Ease is a performance to be felt directly through touch by an audience-of-one and empathetically for the larger audience.

60-80 minutes in duration.

Creator/Performers: Jacinte Armstong, Kelly Keenan, Elise Vanderborght

Dramaturge: Lois Brown

LESS + MORE
A performance created using individual pieces of past audience feedback collected over the last decade of Secret Theatre.

Dustin has been thinking about his life, about all the audiences he has stood in front of, danced with, looked into the eyes of and walked through the streets of the city with. He has written the audience a letter, part love-letter part breakup note, and over the course of an hour or so, he will read and reread this letter over and over again, and each time his performance of it will be transformed by following the advice of his former audience members. The performance will contain less eyes closed parts, less clothes, and less endings. There will be more beer, more dancing, more confetti. If that sounds like a mashup, that’s because it is. It is also an attempt at the impossible, at achieving perfection, or at least a shared moment of grace together.

Please Note: Performance may require audience participation culminating in having everyone on stage - euphoric, heroic, attempting to achieve the impossible.

DRAMATURG’S STATEMENT
As long as I have known him, Dustin’s work has had a kind of fearlessness to it. Unafraid to be different, to take risks, to be nakedly sentimental, defiantly hopeful, to exist literally and figuratively at the very edge of Canada’s theatre establishment. Less + More is all those things. It is a show that only Dustin could have made - courageously honest, wildly innovative, sad and silly and beautiful all at the same time. It is an attempt to consider the biggest possible questions about our lives and how we choose to live them in a way so charming and playful it could be the set-up for a party game, rather than the premise for an hour of theatre.

Created by Dustin Harvey (Dartmouth, NS) ⎮ Dramaturgy Andy Field (London, UK) ⎮ Project Mentor Dr. Tom Payne, Doppelgangster (Sheffield, UK) ⎮Produced by Tori Morrison | Residency Support Iceland Academy for the Arts in Reykjavik ⎮ Funded by ArtsNS, The City of Halifax, Canada Council For The Arts


WHAT AUDIENCES SAY ABOUT LESS + MORE
‘lovely warm honest thoughtful’ ‘engaging playful earnest venerable’ ‘heartfelt funny communal alive’ ‘immersive fun quirky alive’ ‘endearing collective of togetherness’ ‘lovely touching warm comfortable’ ‘five out of five’ ‘one of a kind’ ‘good fun interesting playful’ ‘emotional community-building venerable philosophical’


About XOSECRET
Established in 2003 as a vehicle for the interdisciplinary projects of Halifax-based actor/writer/tinkerer Dustin Harvey, Secret Theatre has grown to encompass a myriad of people and places come, gone and soon to be. Through the exploration of site and exploitation of media art, Secret Theatre creates meaningful moments that offer new ways of being together while shedding crooked light on how it is we've grown apart.

Moving between diverse contexts like dance, live art, public art, and theatre, XOSECRET projects have presented in Wales, Denmark, Ireland, Iceland, Scotland, and across Canada.

“Secret Theatre and Dustin Harvey’s work represent a unique and integral voice in the Canadian performance ecology. Their work is incredibly imaginative, boundary-pushing and rigorous; the experiences they create are unique in our approach to content and form, and unforgettable for audiences that witness or participate in them.” Laura Nanni, SummerWorks in Toronto

If you would like a ticket, but can't afford one please email xosecrettickets@gmail.com 

Thank you to North Brewing who has sponsored us by generously donating to our pay-it-forward ticket program!!