Set 500 years in the future, this outdoor performance turns Toronto into an apocalyptic desert

The centrepiece of The Bentway's new summer production is a pile of sand. An enormous heap that's sitting under the Gardiner Expressway.

The show is Sand Flight, an original work of contemporary dance created by choreographer Ingri Midgard Fiksdal and theatre director Jonas Corell Petersen, and it takes audiences 500 years into the future — when the Toronto we know has been swept away by wandering dunes.

The production will have its world premiere Thursday at The Bentway, less than a week after another monumental, climate-conscious performance debuted in the city. Thaw, an eight-hour aerial spectacle in Sankofa Square, was presented by Luminato Festival last weekend, and it featured performers grappling with a melting iceberg on a moving crane. In Sand Flight, eight dancers will take to a manufactured sand dune, where they'll be joined by 50 vocalists from Viva Singers Toronto, a local all-ages choir.

It's a compelling sci-fi premise, but Sand Flight doesn't tell a "straight up story," Fiksdal explains. 

"We are circling around the theme of shade and sun and how cities might change in the future when — or if — global warming continues," she says. But according to the choreographer, the piece has a hopeful point of view despite its existentially dreadful subject matter. To survive, humanity must unite, and in the hour-long performance, the dancers gradually adapt to their strange and unstable environment, becoming stronger when they collaborate and rely on each other.

Performances will be happening at The Bentway June 12 to 15, and the piece is expected to tour internationally after its Toronto run. (Dates in Copenhagen and Oslo are already scheduled.)

We are circling around the theme of shade and sun and how cities might change in the future when — or if — global warming continues.- Ingri Midgard Fiksdal, Sand Flight choreographer

Both Fiksdal and Petersen live in Norway, but the piece was directly inspired by a trip to Toronto — and The Bentway site, specifically. Located under the elevated portion of the Gardiner Expressway, The Bentway technically stretches from Dufferin Street in the west to the Don Valley Parkway in the east, and the artists were struck by the unusual grandeur of the space.  

"It's so far from human scale in a way. It's so extremely large," says Fiksdal. "We were thinking, 'How can we work with human performers in this context and still make an impact somehow, [so] it just doesn't become this teeny tiny thing that you look at from afar?'"

The solution was sand. Lots and lots of sand. They could build something enormous with it — and sand, they realized, was rich in symbolic meaning. "Underneath the Gardiner Expressway, this used to be the shoreline, the old shoreline of Toronto. So it has been a sandy ground in the past," says Fiksdal.

"Cities are built on sand in a way, or this kind of material. And then cities also disappear and reappear as new cities," adds Petersen. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust … sand to sand. As Fiksdal sees it, everything under the sun will eventually become sand somehow. And with sand, they could create the illusion of a desert. What if the setting was a city forever transformed by climate disaster?

It was a concept that hewed to the curatorial theme of The Bentway's summer program, Sun/Shade. The outdoor art exhibition opened last month, and it features a variety of original works including a mixed-media installation by Sobey Art Award finalist Tania Willard. "As our cities are getting hotter, there's a need for shade," says Alex Rand, The Bentway's manager of programming and lead producer on Sand Flight. Shade is something the venue has always provided in spades. It is, after all, sheltered below a 6.5 km stretch of freeway. 

"While we were developing a work with [Fiksdal and Petersen], we invited them to respond to this idea of shade and rising temperatures," says Rand. "The sand is meant to represent the desert-ification of our cities," he says — and last Monday, sand began arriving at The Bentway by the truckload.

There's 700 tonnes at The Bentway right now. (After the show's run, all of that sand will be returned to suppliers.) "The priority was to get [the dancers] on the sand as quickly as possible," says Rand, and the ensemble — which includes several members of Toronto Dance Theatre — has been rehearsing daily at The Bentway in the lead up to Thursday's opening. 

"They are navigating the sand dune in different ways," says Fiksdal, describing the dancers' movements in the show. "On one level, they're working with the sand — how to traverse the sand or how to be with the sand," she says. "And then they're also in negotiation, because the sand obviously affects how they can move."

To create the choreography, Fiksdal rehearsed on actual sand dunes, and spent time at the Råbjerg Mile, a migrating coastal dune in Denmark. There, she experienced harsh winds and blowing sand. But she also discovered the creative potential of such an unpredictable environment. Sand is soft. "It offers a lot of possibilities in terms of tumbling down or operating differently with gravity," she says.

Sand Flight will be staged at Strachan Gate, under the concrete arches of the Gardiner. During performances, the cyclists and dog-walkers who frequent the area are in for a surprise. Rand hopes the outdoor spectacle motivates them to buy a ticket to the show. (Same-day rush passes will be available, he says.) 

"Seeing the performance, you will get this kind of frame from the highway with a lush background of the green trees and parks and then the sand dunes," says Petersen. "If you turn your head, you will see the skyline of Toronto. So it's really a unique possibility to create a piece that is something in itself, but also takes in the city and relates to Toronto as well." 

Sand Flight. Created by Ingri Midgard Fiksdal and Jonas Corell Petersen. June 12 to 15. The Bentway, Toronto. www.thebentway.ca