GUELPH – The 2025 Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium will take place in the ImprovLab at the University of Guelph from Sept. 11 to 13.
Presented by the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) and curated by its director, Dr. Eric Fillion, this year’s colloquium is titled Dance with the Music: Movement in the Improvised Arts.
This edition of the Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium provides attendees with an opportunity to engage with academics, dancers, and musicians, including Heather Cornell, Patricia Nicholson and Julie Richard.
Discussions, performances, artist interventions and films will all be showcased in the institute’s ImprovLab research and performance space.
The colloquium program will also highlight two special sessions by artists Ravish Momin, Val Jeanty and Ivvy as part of their week-long residency at the ImprovLab, which will culminate with a performance at the Guelph Jazz Festival.
The first of these sessions, by Momin and Jeanty, will feature a discussion and examples of their unique take on global music, an approach that is characterized by the notable absence of traditional instruments and a vision of cultures as dynamic and continuously adaptive, say officials.
A two-part session, it will address both Haitian culture and Mumbai street bands.
The second session will see Ivvy speaking about the aesthetics of FlexDance, demonstrating this art form’s interdependence with music while reflecting on the communities that developed around it as an outgrowth of Black urban/working class culture in Brooklyn. This catered event is free and open to all, with RSVP via Eventbrite.
