Open Projects: SINS Dance
SHIRTS + SKIRTS: a tournament of many skills
July 31, and August 1 and 2, 2012
Halifax Commons

A new sport will debut at the Halifax Commons this summer. Performed by SiNS Dance, SHIRTS + SKIRTS: a tournament of many skills combines dance, improvisation, contact dance and park games. Performances are scheduled to take place daily at 5:00 and 5:30 p.m., Tuesday-Thursday,  July 31 - August 2, 2012.

SiNS (Sometimes in Nova Scotia) dance is a collective of contemporary dance artists that frequently traverse Canada, who create rich contemporary dance work through collaborations and cross-Canada partnerships. The collective was co-founded in 2005 by Jacinte Armstrong, Susanne Chui, and Sara Coffin. SHIRTS + SKIRTS was first staged in Vancouver’s Stanley Park as part of the Dancing on the Edge Festival in 2008. Alongside the co-founders, the Halifax premiere will also feature Vancouver-based dance artists Monica Strehlke and Amanda Sheather, Montreal-based Gillian Seaward-Boone and acclaimed Haligonians Ruth-Ellen Kroll Jackson, Rhys Bevan-John and Kathleen Doherty.

Following a strict set of guidelines the players in SHIRTS + SKIRTS play out the rules of several afternoon park games combined into one. The event is a rousing match that seamlessly flows from dance to sport to contact to highflying action framed in the energy of the survival of the fittest. The score is designed so that each player’s prescribed task becomes the choreography and the outcome is different every game. Playing football (soccer) in one direction, handball in the other and wrestling in the middle the players play to exhaustion while flying over each other, deeking around one another, and stopping at nothing to win the game. A secondary character called “referee” oversees the event keeping the players in check, and tallying the score of the game.

The project specifically designed for the outdoor setting will take pace in the Halifax Commons in sports field 16 adjacent to Trollope Street and across from the Citadel High School. Open-air on-site rehearsals take place July 27, 29, 30 and 31.

This project is supported by HRM Open Projects.