BIO

Bill Coleman is a choreographer, dancer, costume designer, and teacher known for “taking dance to places where it has never been before” (Toronto Star). His productions unfold in remote rural landscapes, urban environments, art galleries, and theatres, and include independent creations, commissioned works, strolling animation, and large-scale community events. His projects bring together world-class artists, local residents, schools and community groups in ways the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described as “mystical, unpretentious, and full of wonder.”

Coleman’s collaborators have included media artists Edwin van der Heide and Gordon Monahan; dancers and choreographers like David Earle, Margie Gillis, institutions such as Orchestre Métropolitain (Montréal), Toronto Symphony and Indigenous artists Keith Secola, Lee Maracle.; composer John Oswald; jazz’s legendary Sun Ra Arkestra; the designers of Toronto’s Haux Couture; Stó:lo author and Indigenous activist Lee Maracle; Métis visual artist Edward Poitras; and Anishinaabe director Patti Shaughnessy. He is the recipient of the Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts and the Canada Council’s Jacqueline Lemieux Prize. His own creations have been presented in Mongolia, Greenland, China, the UK, Europe, and across North America, and he has danced with such luminaries as The Martha Graham Dance Company, Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane & Co., and Toronto Dance Theatre.

His dance embraces the totality of the arts while being rooted in the body’s integral mode of perception. His dramaturgy plays with the primacy of the proscenium, loosening the theatrical frame and allowing the work to be experienced beyond it – in breathtaking landscapes and on city streets, as well as on international stages. What emerges is a supple and adaptable theatre composed of extraordinarily rich images, beguiling movement, and poignant humour.