The mandate of SooRyu is to offer a stage for the highly artistic dance performance of both established dancers and emerging artists of diverse cultural backgrounds in order for the audience to experience something unique and exciting to enrich diversity and multiculturalism. The overall goal of this festival is to provide the audience with visually rich and emotionally enlightening experiences by showcasing dance as the means towards expression and movement.

The festival has proven to be a valuable service to the Canadian cultural community. Showcasing traditional, modern, contemporary creations of all dance forms, Soo Ryu has created a harmonious community in which artists from different countries and in different stages of their careers mingle and collaborate. Genres that we have presented include traditional African, Japanese, Butoh, Chinese, Mexican, Aboriginal, Korean, contemporary, modern ballet, classical Indian and many more.

We are proud to have supported many immigrant and culturally diverse artists, offering some of them the first professional stage to show their art to Canadians, an important boost in their careers. In 8 short years, we have presented 5 Canadian debuts and more than 5 world premieres. The Bon Won Temple (South Korea), for example, shortly received UNESCO intangible cultural heritage status for their Yeong San Jae ceremony after their debut at our 2008 Soo Ryu Dance Festival. They returned in the next year and offered a free performance for our Canadian Korean War veterans and Canadian–Korean community on Remembrance Day, as thanks to KDSSC and their Canadian supporters.

For more information and lists of performers in previous festivals, please see "Past Performances."

The Soo Ryu Dance Festival is a proud member of the CanDance Network.

Soo Ryu Dance Festival 2012––Call to Artists

We are inviting independent artists, dance ensembles and companies to submit proposals for pieces that honor and explore their culture/heritage. Dances of any genre, by established or emerging artists, are accepted.

New to the 2012 Soo Ryu, we will celebrate the cross–disciplinary collaboration and how it enriches the artists’ as well as audience’s experience. We welcome submission of multi–disciplinary pieces that are dance–centered. Conventional dance performances are still accepted and will form the core of our festival next year.

Selection will be made by our artistic director and festival committee based on artistic quality, originality and how well it matches our festival’s artistic vision and theme.

Requirement: dancers’ and/or company’s biography, piece description and video samples of your work

Deadline: December 31, 2011.

Submit:

by email at kdance@koreandance.net or by mail to: 61 Billington Crescent, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3A 2G7

* We thank all those who have submitted, but only the selected few will be contacted before the spring of 2012.

The name SooRyu was bestowed on Mi Young Kim by Kum Sil Lee, the award–winning poet for Holding Hand In Hand – Quest for Harmony. The title and poem were given to Mi Young Kim in dedication of her fifty years of work in Korean dance.

Holding Hand In Hand – Quest for Harmony
Written by: Kum Sil Lee
Translated by: John U K Lee

Swiftly lifting up the soul
To flutter about, shivering with colours of seething yearning,
The drum is suspended in midair with such brilliance –
Spirit of Korean race gushes forth upon the Lake Ontario!

Oh! Should you be created through my death?
Or else, should I be created through your death?

Father raised the tender bones with the compassion of an indigent, while
Mother opened the eyes of a needle to clothe with each drop of sweat –
Grasping the brethren’s hands
To lay out a path of fire onto the Korean peninsula,
The longing movement of dance of her heart’s desire
Fluctuates between this world and the world beyond

Rise up, all you races!
Holding each other’s hands of various skin colours,
The dazzling movement of dance corralling multitudes of evil spirits from
hundreds of races –
You, the Apostle of Multiculturalism!

Boom, boom, tum–de–dum–de, boom, boom –
Striking forcefully with a fiery ball
The drumming resounds onto the heart of the living!
The reverberation propitiates the spirit of the dead!
Piteously lifting up the soul –
As if the yearning of the living permeating the grave,
As if the thunder toppling onto the blade of grass –
Like a ray of life wandering this world,
The movement of dance plays homage to the Heavens.

Upon each town and village
Where you have lightened with such devotion,
You have raised them with brilliance of all your might.
May your quest of spreading the vision of
The diverse races mingling harmoniously under one roof,
Holding each other’s hands, and dancing oh so round about,
Be boundless –

Raising the five oceans and six continents,
The waters and trees with exhilaration –
To uncover the world where peace reverberates –
May your quest be everlasting!

Oh, the exuberance of the waters!
Oh, the splendour of the fields!
You, the holy Apostle of culture
Embroidering stitch by stitch upon heaven and earth!