The City of Toronto’s annual WinterCity festival kicks off tonight in Nathan Phillips Square with the first of many spectacular performances. The City’s Special Events programming team scoured the globe to select talent from near and far; France’s Compagnie Les Passagers and San Francisco’s Flaming Lotus Girls (see above) headline tonight beginning at 6 pm, plus there’ll be skating parties, ice sculptures and a host of tandem indoor events dubbed the Warm Up Series taking place around town through Februrary 7. Pictured left is Ottawa’s Jesse Stewart who’s inventive Ice Orchestra makes its world premiere Sunday (5 pm, 6 pm and 7:40 pm) in Nathan Phillips Square. A professor of music composition at Carlton University, Stewart also has a background in fine art, which helped enormously when it came time to create his ice instruments. Stewart will also play the waterphone: “I’m very interested in elemental things,” he says, “water, fire, metal, ice. And if you want to make music using those things, you pretty much have to make the instruments yourself.”
Toronto’s own Peter Jarvis, above, will also be on the square Saturday and Sunday offering a series of performance pieces including The Cube, the Subtonic Monks (”Dr. Suess meets Stomp”), the Three Legged Man, and the world premier of something called the Tubafish. Best known as his alter ego, Silver Elvis, Jarvis trained with renowned Canadian clown Richard Pochinko. “I’m a performance artist,” says Jarvis. “What interests me is the interactive and emotional elements of clown and mime. I’m also fascinated by the surreal.”
Dress warm and don’t forget your sense of wonder — see you at WinterCity.
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