International Dance Day Celebration

Join us on April 29 at 7: 30 p.m. as Grand OnStage celebrates International Dance Day. Featuring four remarkable, award winning choreographers and dance artists, this Grand OnStage live stream presentation will include previously recorded dance performances followed by a lively Q&A with the viewing audience.

Total time of presentation is approximately 75 mins

Crazy Smooth 

Founder & Artistic Director Bboyizm Dance Company  

Dancing since 1997, Crazy Smooth is one of Canada’s top street dancers, performers, choreographers, instructors, judges, and community leaders. He is the founder and artistic director of Bboyizm, an award-winning street-dance company that has been instrumental in the preservation and proliferation of street dance in Canada and internationally. 

He was the first b-boy to obtain a Canada Council grant to hone his art and is the recipient of numerous awards including the Banff Centre’s Clifford E. Lee Choreography Award (2020). He has performed, taught, coached and judged competitions in cities and events throughout North America and Europe.  

In 2004, Smooth founded Bboyizm and the company has successfully brought authentic street dance into the professional theatre setting. Three of his full-length creations— The Evolution of B-boying, IZM, and Music Creates Opportunity—have toured across Canada. The company has been nominated for a Dora award (2012) and won both the Ontario Presenters Network Emerging Touring Artist of the Year (2012) and the Atlantic Presenters Association Touring Performers of the Year Award (2013).  

Crazy Smooth collaborated with NYCs Shook Ones collective to create SORRY which showcased at the LaGuardia Performing Arts Centre in January of 2016. In the April of that year, Bboyizm performed an excerpt of Music Creates Opportunity during the UK Breakin’ Convention at Sadler’s Wells. Bboyizm has toured their educational show The Evolution of B-boying through MASC (Multicultural Arts for Schools and Communities) and Prologue to the Performing Arts every year since 2014, performing for tens of thousands of students over the last six years. Crazy Smooth was recently selected as the 2019-2022 Long Term Artist in Residence at the Centre de Création O’Vertigo in Montreal. With support from the CCOV, the NAC National Creation Fund and the CanDance Creation Fund, he is currently working on In My Body, a large-scale full-length production exploring the relationship street dancers have with aging.   

Kay Kenney

Kay Kenney is a professional contemporary dance artist from Kingston who began her journey in 1994 with the Kingston School of Dance, studying Cecchetti Ballet. After years of training, she decided to pursue dance as a career and attend the Professional Contemporary Dance Programme at The School of Dance in Ottawa, where she was trained by many great national and international dance artists. After graduating from the Professional Contemporary Dance Programme, she organized Dancing in the Street, an improv-based series of outdoor performances throughout Ottawa. In the spring of 2013, she was hired as a guest choreographer by the Kingston School of Dance and through a City of Kingston Arts Fund grant to return to her hometown of Kingston to create and perform at The Grand Theatre. 

Kay has performed works for Caroline Barrière, Cathy Kyle-Fenton, Sylvie Desrosiers/Dorsale Danse, Jocelyn Todd/Lawless Dance Co and has worked in collaboration with Andrea Nann/Dreamwalker Dance Co (2014-2015), Dark Horse Dance Projects (Ottawa) and MayDay Danse (Montreal). She has been a company dancer of Ottawa Dance Directive since 2013 and with the Social Growl Dance (Toronto) for the past seven years. Kay has also been commissioned to choreograph the students of The School of Dance Professional Contemporary Dance Programme and continues to teach throughout the province. 

In 2016, Kay moved back to Kingston permanently and was selected as a Youth Arts Ambassador to create a unique, collaborative dance project for Ontario Culture Days. She is also the only Fletcher Pilates Instructor in the city. Since returning to her hometown, Kay Kenney has collaborated with local festivals, such as The Skeleton Park Arts Festival, The Juvenis Festival, The Kick & Push Festival, AnArch Theatre, The Cellar Door Project, Reelout Queer Film Festival, Calliope Collective, and many other independent artists in the city.  Most recently Kay was one of the recipients of the 2020 Kingston Mayor’s Arts Award. 

Kay is the creative director for Movement Market Collective, a group of pre-professional and professional artists that come together to support and present local, professional contemporary dance in Kingston.  Recently completing a residency through The Isabe Bader for Performing Arts IMAGINE Project, where she choreographed and performed in a new dance film, “a day not owned here, revered” in collaboration with Cinematographer Josh Lyon and lighting designer Rachel Shaen.  Kay has recently opened Movement Market Studio in Kingston’s Portsmouth Village where she continues to inspire the community through movement and dance. 

Nova Bhattacharya

Nova Bhattacharya is a groundbreaking and award-winning artist and cultural leader based in Toronto, Canada.  She is the Founder and Artistic Director of Nova Dance, established in 2008.  Her creations breathe rich life into the world of Canadian performance, with lush, vivid images that invite the viewer on a journey of heart and mind.  Her creative inspiration is found in her Bengali culture, Bharatnatyam technique, Hindustani and popular music, visual arts, literature, nature, rituals and the unending cycles of life and death. 

Her critically acclaimed works have toured Canada, Germany, India, Japan, the United Kingdom and Uganda.  Her choreography has been commissioned by several dance and theatre companies and she is the recipient of multiple awards and nominations for artistic achievement and contributions to community, including the 2012 Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement.  

Nova believes that dance expresses the essence of our humanity and has tremendous transformative power to bring us together.  

Santee Smith

Santee is a multidisciplinary artist from the Kahnyen’kehàka Nation, Turtle Clan, Six Nations of the Grand River. Santee trained at Canada’s National Ballet School, completed Physical Education and Psychology degrees from McMaster University and a M.A. in Dance from York University. Santee premiered her debut work Kaha:wi - a family creation story, in 2004 and one year later founded Kaha:wi Dance Theatre which has grown into an internationally renowned company. Santee’s artistic work speaks about identity and Indigenous narratives. Her body of work includes 14 productions and numerous short works which tour nationally and internationally. She is the recipient of numerous awards including Dora Mavor Moore Awards for Outstanding Choreography in Dance for Susuriwka – willow bridge (2012), Outstanding Production and Outstanding Performance Ensemble in Dance for Blood Tides (2019), 5 awards for The Mush Hole (2020); and the inaugural Johanna Metcalf Prize for the Performing Arts (2019). Santee is a sought-after teacher and speaker on the performing arts and Indigenous performance and culture. Her life and works have been the topic of TV series and films and most recently on CBC Arts - The Move and Rematriation Media's Indigenous Women's Voices Series. Santee is the 19th Chancellor of McMaster University.