Presented in Association with Buddies in Bad Times Theatre
November 2009

Performers
Allison Cummings
Nilan Perrera – Live Sound Design

Set Design- Laird MacDonald
Costume Design – Cheryl Lalonde

Outside Eyes / Dramaturgy
Vivine Scarlett
Chad Dembski

Devouring Lions is a performance piece that was built over an intense 3-year process based on a fourteen year love affair with West Africa. The movement while not African in form draws it’s inspiration from personal experiences in speciifcally Ghana, West Africa. Devouring Lions is an intimate and personal journey with the people, culture and the interactions of myself as an artist on an intellectual, philosophical and spiritual level. The poignant relationships built, nurtured and solidified are the subject for questions that arise with each visit. It’s manifestation is a metamorphosis on a creative level, uniting work in West Africa with local dancers and producing a show commissioned by the Canadian High Commission in Ghana.

The piece is engaging in its angst and equally refreshing in its portrayal of confidence, characters and aspiration. Strength sought, found proves invaluable as the artist reaffirms experiences within this country, among its people, it’s artists and varying geographic landscape over the past 14 years. It’s about the resources one seeks to find personal strength; the tenacity and hardship they endured to conquer it, and equally the danger in the reality that perhaps one’s strength also manifests an understanding of one’s weakness.

Photos by Omer Yukseker