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Walking:Holding

Rosana Cade

What does your town look like from someone else’s perspective? How intimate can you be with someone you’ve just met?

Two people holding hands
Walking:Holding. Photo by Rosie Healey.

Rosana Cade, in association with The Bentway, brings Walking:Holding to Canada on 25 and 26 May 2024.

Walking:Holding invites you to walk hand in hand with a series of very different local strangers around nearby streets, parks and alleyways. It is a participatory performance for one audience member at a time, offering a gentle meditation on identity, touch and intimacy in urban public space.  

During a 45-minute stroll through the city, each spectator holds hands with seven Toronto participants of different ages, genders, social backgrounds, cultural and sexual identities. The duos follow a meticulously thought-out and previously established route. No interaction is scripted, leaving the space open to instinctive and organic connection.

This performance, created by Rosana Cade in Glasgow in 2011, has since toured extensively to over 35 locations, working with local participants as performers in each location. It comes to life for the first time in Toronto, and will be captured by local photographer Kirk Lisaj to create a series of photographic portraits that will then be installed along The Bentway in June 2024.

Rosana Cade is a Glasgow-based artist who mainly works in live performance. Their practice is rooted in a queer feminist discourse and straddles performance, live art and activism.

They are drawn to liveness as a potent site for connection with an ‘other’, and their work often dances between the joy and difficulty of connecting intimately with others. They create work in a range of forms and contexts to reach different people with varying approaches, and are passionate about collaborative practices.

Rosana was part of the SPILL National Platform and Showcase in 2013, a National Theatre of Scotland and Arches ‘Auteur’ in 2014, when they also received a Culture2014 commission to travel to India to make a new work. They were an Artsadmin artist bursary recipient 2014/15, and artist in residence at the Marlborough Theatre in 2015. Their work has been shown extensively in UK, and they also regularly tour across Europe, with strong connections to Kampnagel in Hamburg and Gessnerallee in Zurich. Their participatory performance Walking:Holding, which explores intimacy in public spaces, has been touring for over eight years to over 35 different locations, working with diverse groups of local people in each place. They recently completed a film about this project.

Rosana collaborates with their partner as Cade & MacAskill. In 2017 they were commissioned by Fierce Festival, The Marlborough and The Yard Theatre to create MOOT MOOT, which is currently touring and will be part of the Made in Scotland and British Council Showcases at the Edinburgh Fringe 2019.

Rosana is a co-founder of the radical performance collective //BUZZCUT// who support live art and experimental performance in Glasgow with a strong community focused ethic.
Rosana regularly creates and performs work under the direction of Nic Green, with Laura Bradshaw, and also works in various other collaborative partnerships.

https://www.rosanacade.co.uk/

By  Rosana Cade
With a dozen participants

Associated artists:

Aria Evans (Winnipeg)

Kirk Lisaj (Montreal)

In collaboration with The Bentway,

  • All-gender and accessible toilets will be available from 11am – 8:30pm
  • Any attendees under the age of 18 will need to be accompanied by a parent or guardian during the performance
  • The performance route involves mixed terrain such as pavement, gravel and gentle slopes
  • Please share any accessibility requirements on booking so they can be accommodated

Date and time

25–26 May 2024
Various times
Free, booking required

Please note
This is now a past event.

Venue

The Bentway, Toronto
Canada

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