Director's Message

"Silence Heroes"

Baffling the minds with the bumps, scrapes and achievements, Festival Accès Asie in our 12th edition this year of 2007, once again and miraculously, presents an eclectic program. As a Festival of multi-disciplinary delights, we are proud to feature innovative and world class artists as well as artists that are secrets that need to be shared.

Accès Asie celebrates the month of May as Asian Heritage Month with 10 other cities across Canada. Festival Accès Asie joins hands in Montreal with 15 contemporary local, national and international artists in 6 venues in a multi and inter-disciplinary splendour of visual arts, dance, music, animation, video, film and new technology.

"Silence Heroes", a theme that is prominent throughout this program, consists of a dancer's dance as his gift for a fundraising gala and an artist's creation with a youth group that is led by an ex-streetgang leader turned hero for disenchanted teens. As one of the many proud moments in our program, "Silence Heroes" is about the Festival's first series of short animations."Silence Heroes" is inspired by an exceptional short animation by Jonanthan Ng, Asthma Tech which is a tale about a shy boy who turns into a flying caped hero!

The Festival opens with a visual arts gallery installation, From the Pearl of the Orient to Uptown by Marissa Largo, a Toronto based arts activist. Marissa explores with Kabataang Montreal, a Filipino youth group and creates a visceral experience from darkness to light, from despair to joy and from horror to courage.

In the same week is aXes, an inter-disciplinary dialogue between tradition and unexplored frontiers with percussion duo Ganesh Anandan & Patrick Graham from Montréal and dancer/ choreographer, Hideo Arai from Tokyo. aXes takes the form of a series of tableau, blending composed and improvised music with choreographed and improvised movements, shadow play, projected images, and minimalist stage and sound design.

Ending this week will be a screening of young film animators with works such as Asthma Tech and The Girl Who Hated Books. The animation films held on a relaxing Sunday afternoon will awe you with a punchy series of amusing animations and quarky fictional stories. The flourishing talents of emergent creators includes Jo Meuris, who is presently doing her master's in animation at UCLA and Lilian Chan. Jeff Stearns will endear you with his personal animated story as an Eurasian living in a small B.C. town and Florence So's twisted fictional tale will leave you with a grin and in wonderment. The afternoon finishes with award winning documentary trilogy, Chinese Restaurants On the Islands visiting Cuba, Mauritius,Trinidad and Tobogo with the smells and tastes of Chinese food, the fantastic sagas of the Chinese diasporas.

The 2nd week features a gala, workshops, a round table discussion and solo performances by Vancouver's Alvin Tolentino, a Phillipino Canadian dancer and choreographer. Digging into his uprooted history in Field: Land is the belly of man, this piece is at the cross-roads of artistic cultures and disciplines — dance, video, music and is an homage to the harvest. With his generosity, Alvin Tolentino will dance in a gala fundraiser for NAPWC, National Alliance of Philippine in Canada), a centre supporting the struggle for democracy and freedom of the Phillippino people. Acclaimed throughout the world for his multi-disciplinary works, Alvin Erasga Tolentino knows how to provoke and enthral his audiences. Born in Manila, this artist studied at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, York University's Fine Arts Department, the Toronto Dance Theatre, as well as at SUNY and the Limon Institute, in the United States.

The cyberspace new technology of 9 Moments, that is, our 9th year, is a tribute to 2 wild and crazy dancers mixing styles and influences based from the Silk Road to Bollywood to pop and who will turn and twist your heads around. 9 Moments is an on line dance exploration in 2 cities and 2 venues with Toronto's choreographer and dancer Emily Cheung who specializes in Chinese classical dance traditions and Montreal's Bollywood Bunghra choreographer, Ina Bhowmick who, easily bored, pushes limits and beyond.

Silk n' Jazzy will be held in the idyllic church of Gesù of an intimate setting of musical splendour with a classical stringed music duo of Latin, jazz, world with ex-Montrealer/Vancouverite André Thibault on guitar and Qui Xia He on pipa (chinese lute).

The third week wraps up the Festival with a poetry booklaunch of Les Porteurs d'orients with Francophone Asian writers such as Nadine Ltaif and Hussain Sharang. Ending the festivities will be a party dance extravaganza at Cabaret Juste pour rire featuring Bollywood dancers, a film dance tradition in India that is a craze invading the news. A closing bash with good eats, fine company and a grand time.

See you there!

Janet Lumb, Director, Accès Asie