lightbulbheart childhood, collaboration, creativity, fancy cat, performance, writing

Porch View Dances Meets Fancy Cat

Porch View Dances is a site-specific celebration of dance put on by Kaeja every summer in Toronto for the past 13 years. I’m thrilled to say that Sid Ryan-Eilers and Raphael Roter (Fancy Cat collaborators extraordinaire) are respectively choreographing and composing for one of the pieces this year! “Joy is a Home With Many Rooms” will be performed by three young dancers and their caregivers and features the chorus of one of Fancy Cat’s songs (Our Story is Joy). It was such a delight to sit in (via Zoom) on a rehearsal and hear these transcendent performers singing one of our songs!

Porch View Dances will be performed on:

  • July 17, 2024 @ 7pm
  • July 18, 2024 @ 7pm
  • July 19, 2024 @ 7pm
  • July 20, 2024 @ 7pm
  • July 21, 2024 @ 2pm

Performances are Pay What You Can. FAQ and other details available on Kaeja’s Porch View Dances page.

We’ll make the world such a beautiful place
We’ll make a mark no one can erase
Whoever we are
Whoever we’ll be
Our story is joy
And we will be free!

lightbulbheart storylady

New Storytime Video! Beyond Words by Dana Hall, illustrated by Shruti Prabhu

It’s been almost three years since I recorded something for the channel, so it would take something special to get me back in the studio. Beyond Words is a sweet and simple story of a child diagnosed with Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS). According to Apraxia Kids, “CAS is a motor speech disorder that makes it difficult for children to speak.” As it says in the book, “not being able to speak is not the same as having nothing to say.”

Beyond Words is available for purchase on Amazon at https://a.co/d/70AVx7Z

lightbulbheart collaboration, fancy cat

More Fancy Cat Grant News!

Congratulations to Sid Ryan Eilers and the entire Fancy Cat Ensemble are due: Sid has been awarded a Canada Council for the Arts Explore and Create Grant! Between this grant and the Ontario Arts Council Music Creation Project Grant awarded to our composer, Raphael Roter, we have garnered 40% of our Fancy Cat creation budget. We still have several grants in the works and some additional fundraising to go, but we are now on track for a development workshop in Spring/Summer 2025!