• Artistic Directors Message
• Performances
  • Theatre Location & Parking
  • Performance History
• On Tour
  • For Young Audiences
• Dancers
• Events
  • Jazz Roots Club Events
  • The Black & White Ball
  • Hepcats Club Events
• Acclaim & Accolades

On Tour

Let DJD bring jazz to life for your audiences in a way they’ve never experienced before. DJD invites audiences to experience how jazz shapes movement and feeling; to explore the connection between personal expression and collaboration; and to move.

Our touring company includes eight to twelve dancers and three to eight musicians, depending on the work that is being offered. We have an extensive variety of full evening works in our repertoire. DJD has toured various locations on a biannual basis since 2005. Past tour highlights include Japan, Cuba, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Chicago and all corners of Canada, including International Jazz Festivals in Montreal, Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon and Winnipeg.

JULIET & ROMEO – ON TOUR 2019-2020

DJD’s take on Shakespeare’s classic tale
Artistic Direction and Choreography by Kimberley Cooper | Adapted and narrated by Cory Bowles
Featuring the DJD Company of dancers and live, original music by the Nick Fraser Ensemble

Two households… This is dance, this is theatre, this is a jazz concert. This is Shakespeare’s tale of love and violence re-imagined, re-visited, re-loved hyper-realized, sampled, questioned recognizable but twisted, current and classic, gritty and glorious. Passion, pheromones, pick-up lines, I want you I need you I love you These violent delights have violent ends.

Acclaim for Juliet & Romeo

“Bowles is a charismatic narrator…His story is quirky, at times quite brilliant, sometimes wacky, always compelling… Choreographically, the show is masterful. Cooper’s choreography switches up pace and mood to keep us engaged, even enthralled.” – Anne Georg
“This is dance.” – This Calgary Life
“…entrancing, exciting, and best of all, steamily on message…” – Calgary Herald
“…a lucid, smart and sassy contemporary commentary on Shakespeare’s classic tale.” – Edmonton Journal
“… there’s plenty here in dance and dream to delight and deconstruct R and J into a powerful new J and R.” – Calgary Herald
“…an exciting, vivacious new dance piece.” – Stephen Hunt
“It looks beautiful.” – Metro News, Calgary

MIMIC – ON TOUR 2020 – 2021

A COLLUSION OF DANCERS, PUPPETS AND LIVE MUSIC
MIMIC – CONCEIVED AND CREATED BY KIMBERLEY COOPER (ARTISTIC DIRECTOR – DJD) AND PETER BALKWILL (CO-ARTISTIC DIRECTOR – OLD TROUT PUPPET WORKSHOP) | ORIGINAL ALL PERCUSSION SCORE PLAYED LIVE BY THE NICK FRASER ENSEMBLE, DANCED BY THE DJD COMPANY

Dance and Puppetry are tied to our original forms of communication – when we stamped our grubby feet in primitive caves, moving with crude shapes to convey the terror of hunting ferocious beasts. Drawing from the Romantic period, MIMIC is beautiful, carnal and cheeky. Two wordless forms ebb and flow together, animating the inanimate and colliding in ways that reinvent our understanding of how we tell stories. As sophisticated creatures, advanced from the simplicity of brute animals — we then ask the terrifying question: have we have advanced as far as we think?

ACCLAIM FOR MIMIC

“The more MIMIC digs into the civilization of humanity, the more it reveals that underneath the rouged cheeks and witty repartee of high society, humans are still as consumed by ancient rituals as we ever were.” – Globe and Mail
“The Nick Fraser Ensemble “spins a truly exquisite musical score, full of dexterity and rich intricacies running through a colourful gamut of tension and pure pleasure.” – BeatRoute
“A masterpiece in carnivorously creative colours… I couldn’t take my eyes or my ears off the stage for a second.” – Calgary Herald
“Engaging, provocative and highly-imaginative…a captivating story… full of beautiful moments as DJD’s dazzling, synchronized choreography moves from one bold, bursting breakout to another.” – BeatRoute
“The dancers are as theatrically versatile as they are athletic. They sashay and stomp, seduce and threaten, tease and preen, moving seamlessly from playful and funny to fluid and sensuous to wild and spectacular.” – Anne Georg blog

BOOKING Enquiries:
Contact DJD Agent, Sarah Rogers, for booking informatioN

TOUR HISTORY:

2016 TOUR – GREAT JAZZ HISTORY MYSTERY

Northern College Auditorium, Kirkland Lake, ON
Geraldton High School, Geraldton, ON
The Centre, Dryden, ON
Red Lake Madsen Public School, Red Lake, ON
Evergreen School, Kenora, ON
Townsend Theatre, Fort Frances, ON
Atikokan, ON
Sault Saint Marie, ON

2013 TOUR – GREAT JAZZ HISTORY MYSTERY

Morinville, AB
Victoria School of the Arts, Victoria, BC     

2009 TOUR – WOWFLUTTER:

Dunn Theatre, Halifax NB
Rose Theatre, Brampton ON
Brock Centre for the Arts, St. Catherines ON
Port Theatre, Nanaimo BC
MacPherson Playhouse, Victoria BC
Yukon Arts Centre, Whitehorse YT
Vernon & District PAC, Vernon BC
The Arden, St. Albert AB