I just finished two weekends at the New Waves Festival - a brilliant, inaugural festival held at the beautiful Young Centre for the Performing Arts as part of Luminato that I'm proud to have organized, programmed and performed in, along with the other 11 resident artists.
This was a free festival for all ages that transformed the Young Centre into an artistic treasure hunt and playground, full of wonder, discovery, exploration, and a feast for the eyes and ears. This was the only place that you could find a dancer in a frog costume randomly running across a stage that held 24 musicians of such diverse backgrounds; a spontaneous performance of a beat boxer, tap dancer and Celtic fiddler; singers with amazingly crafted structures on their heads; a larger-than-life jukebox with choreographed dance and the live vocal jukebox provided by Retrocity, and the creative list of players and collaborations goes on and on.
All in all, this festival brought collaboration to the fore, it brought creativity to life and life to creativity with over one hundred emerging and established artists from our beautiful and culturally diverse city, and it effectively blurred the line between artist and audience. Thanks to all performers, staff, volunteers, organizers, the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, Albert Schultz, resident artists, and to all of the audience members who not only witnessed the inaugural New Waves Festival, but played along brilliantly as active participants.