Keeping Kathak Current
Rina Singha claims she’ll take a step back and focus on herself after Kathak Mahotsav Canada this weekend (August 18 – 20), but I have my doubts. The 74-year-old founder of the Rina Singha Kathak Dance Organization is indefatigable, still teaching – albeit less than she once did — and still dancing, despite wearing braces on both of her knees. She takes blood pressure medication and has lost an inch in height these past few years due to osteoporosis but I found the 4′ 11″ dynamo in a St. Paul’s Trinity rehearsal studio Monday afternoon, sharpening her chops before this weekend’s performances.
“I have to be careful,” she tells me. “I can’t do pivots anymore so I have to adjust the movements to make sure my weight transfer is done carefully. After this show I’m going to take my doctor’s advice and have injections in my knees but I wanted to wait until after the performance because I don’t know how I’m going to react to the medicine.”
Singha abides by the “use it or lose it” philosophy of Toronto’s famous jock doc, Michael Clarfield, and so she keeps dancing, a form of self-expression with deep spiritual significance for her.
“In the early 1970s I collapsed with a herniated disc,” she remembers, “and they told me I might never walk again; I had a 50 per cent chance. I made a bargain prayer with God saying, ‘If you make me well, I’ll dance for you.’ ” READ MORE
A One Minute Film? That’s TUFF!
There’s a lot more than a vowel separating TUFF from TIFF. The Toronto Urban Film Festival will see its share of line-ups but they’ll be on subway platforms where the short-listed one-minute films will be looping for the next week and a half. Eighty films in eight categories explore the urban experience from a variety of perspectives: The City is a Poem, The Emotional City and The Medium is the Message, are three of the quirkier themes.
Each category was whittled down and in a sense curated by a filmmaker who then passed their top 10 picks on to this year’s guest judge, Deepa Mehta, who selected overall winners. “In the past, the grand prize hasn’t always been chosen from the shortlist,” explains Toronto-based documentary filmmaker Min Sook Lee, above, who elected to screen the Urban Ideas and Politics category.
“What struck me was the populist messaging and I thought that was kind of cool,” says Lee. “There’s something about the platform itself that is really appealing and I think some people made work with that in mind.”
WSFF: The Short List
As summer intern season gears up it’s encouraging to see an example of an industry leader who started as a volunteer, then became an intern and just a few years later, was running the place. Meet Eileen Arandiga, Festival Director of the Worldwide Short Film Festival, who is presently battening the hatches for the 16th annual edition of the fest running June 1 – 6.
When I suggest to Arandiga that she must be a real go-getter to have scaled the ranks so quickly, she demurs saying, “Well, I definitely persevere. I’ve always been an arts administrator and I have a genuine passion for short film. I love the challenge of working for a festival; no two days are ever the same. I also really like that the staff is often quite young, recent graduates who are full of enthusiasm, it’s nice to see them flourish.”
Arandiga was mentored by previous WSFF Director Shane Smith who now works for TIFF, which is where several of the current WSFF staffers came from. Others are at Worldwide Short following stints at Sprockets and Hot Docs. “It’s definitely a training ground,” confirms Arandiga. “The festival world is quite a small community.”
Doors Open Toronto Preview: Spotlight on Contemporary Architecture
How do you distill Toronto’s most exciting examples of contemporary architecture into concise, bite-size morsels? With great care and some difficulty say the authors of A Guidebook to Contemporary Architecture in Toronto (Douglas & McIntyre). Husband and wife team Margaret and Phil Goodfellow narrowed a list of about 250 contenders down to just 63 buildings or complexes, grouped by neighbourhood and stitched together into convenient walking tours. The book gets its official launch on Friday at the Royal Ontario Museum (4:30 – 9:30 pm) during the kick-off party for this weekend’s Doors Open Toronto (May 29 & 30).
The Mayor and the Movie Stars
Mayor David Miller was among the special guests at last night’s sold-out Hot Docs premier of Listen To This, a film about a Jane & Finch music program funded through the City’s Arts in the Hood program. Young songwriting proteges Jasmine (left) and Whitney (right) are two of the stars of the film, which left the audience enthralled and inspired. “Toronto is an amazing film city and Hot Docs gives us an opportunity not only to discover cinema from around the globe, but also to see and celebrate our own stories,” said the mayor.
Photo by Lilie Zendel
