Night Shift , 2013

Brendan Fernandes - Toronto, Canada

Performance Art

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 in celebration of the new day, 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 (2007) and earned his MFA (2005) from The University of Western Ontario and his BFA (2002) from York University. In 2010 he was a finalist for the Sobey Art Award. His work has been exhibited internationally and he is based between Toronto and New York.

Schedule

Until Sunrise.

Learn More

www.brendanfernandes.ca
www.dancemakers.org

21

Bay Adelaide Centre, 333 Bay Street (Accessible from Temperance Street)

This project is both indoors and outdoors.