Ground UP Dance Festival is Kingston’s dance series focusing on building community, providing performance platforms for emerging and established choreographers, and supporting artists throughout their journey in creation and development.
Launched in summer of 2022, Ground UP has acted as the first annual festival for professional dance in Kingston, Ontario. Each year the festival features Second Stage live performances in a black-box theatre, dance workshops with leading industry artists, free community performances in Springer Market Square, and Mainstage sunset show on our paved performance pad at Lake Ontario Park.
The Festival’s 2026 Season is live! Click the schedule image below for full festival details.
What’s On
Montreal company Grand Poney will be performing ON/OFF for Kingston on June 10 at 7:00pm. This dance work designed for teenagers and adults where five dancers perform on an unusual and wondrous machine: an oversized treadmill. On this rolling and confined surface, movement is restrained and ecstatic & exhilarated!
ON/OFF by Grand Poney
Following the performance of ON/OFF, performer Félix Cossette leads a movement workshop focused on improvisation on June 11 at 10:00am. Participants begin with individual exploration, shifting to group improvisation, emphasizing listening, responding to others, and building material collectively.
Masterclass with Félix Cossette
Choreographic Thinking for Artists
with Christopher House
Canadian choreographer, performer and educator Christopher House leads a playful weekend workshop that explores the elements of choreographic thinking in relation to all artistic disciplines.
This workshop is for professional and experienced amateur artists making work in forms other than dance (e.g. visual arts, theatre, architecture, theatre, writing, music or cinema) who are curious about the potential of choreographic thinking in their practice and for choreographers working in dialogue with other art forms.
The goal of the workshop is to explore how the elements of choreographic thinking– spatial, temporal and sensory –can enhance a diverse range of creative gestures. We will work together with an optimistic rigour that foregrounds play, risk, pleasure and the generative nature of failure.
Participants must be willing to take turns engaging as performer-collaborators in the work of their peers. As such, it is helpful to have experience in a physical practice (not necessarily dance-based) and an appetite for the pleasures of movement.
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