Little Pear Garden Dance Company 小梨園舞蹈團 (Toronto) 

Little Pear Garden Dance Company [LPGDC] 小梨園舞蹈團 (formerly Little Pear Garden Collective) develops and promotes Chinese dance in Canada via the production and presentation of performances, lectures, workshops, demonstrations, exhibitions on the local and national levels by creating an environment that supports Canadian artists practicing both Chinese traditional and contemporary artistic expressions. We aspire to develop a distinct voice in the opera and dance ecologies and to be the premiere Chinese performing arts company in Canada that features professional artists, innovative programming, stimulating workshops, and creative new works that reflect passion, honesty, integrity and excellence.

Under the leadership of current Artistic Director Miss Emily Cheung, LPGDC’s vision is in building Chinese contemporary dance vocabularies through innovations and creative works that are meaningful to the Chinese / Canadian Diaspora. Miss Cheung also seeks to collaborate with artists from various disciplines and culturally diverse backgrounds to create work that uniquely combines the different aesthetics and contemporary sensibilities. The main focus of LPGDC is to create repertoires that utilize unique contemporary dance vocabularies based on both traditional and classical Chinese dance/opera aesthetics. In order to achieve this, all of LPGDC dancers are required to conduct training in traditional and classical Chinese dance and operatic movements to preserve the authenticity of the Chinese elements in the new dance vocabularies.

Venom of Love
A four-act music/dance creation of 60 minutes. It is inspired by the mythical story of Legend of the White Snake 白蛇傳, one of China’s Four Great Folktales. Director/choreographer Emily Cheung looks into the demon’s world where she finds similarity in love, loss, hatred, abandonment, jealousy and sacrifice as the mortals. This work deals with elements of fantasy and eroticism from a primeval, magical world. The musicfuses synthesized and acoustic instrumental sounds with soprano voice and percussion.

produced by the Little Pear Garden Dance Company
Emily Cheung – director and choreography
Alice Ping Yee Ho – music and sound design
Vania Chan – soprano
Alejandro Cespedes – percussion
Dancers: Claire Wang, Megumi Kokuba, Irvin Chow, Sze-Yang Ade-Lam, Brandy Leary, Brendan Wyatt, Malgorzata Nowacka.