Dance Nation

By Clare Barron
An Outside the March & Coal Mine Theatre Experience
In Association with Rock Bottom Movement

Somewhere in America, an army of pre-teen competitive dancers plots to take over the world. And if their new routine is good enough, they’ll claw their way to the top at Nationals in Tampa Bay. A play about ambition, growing up, and how to find our souls in the heat of it all.

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We’re teaming up with Coal Mine for the professional Toronto premiere of Clare Barron‘s Pulitzer-nominated script. Directed by recent Dora Award-winning director Diana Bentley with OtM’s new Artistic Producer Lucy Coren as Associate Director, Dance Nation is taking over Coal Mine’s entire venue using Outfit the March equipment—from the main theatre downstairs to The Vault upstairs and everywhere in between—in an immersive take on this hilarious, sharp play that’s become something of a cult favourite.

The production features movement direction by Alyssa Martin of Rock Bottom Movement, one of the city’s most exciting avant garde contemporary dance companies, as well as set and lighting design by OtM’s Nick Blais and costume design by Kathleen Black.

“If you were ever a 13-year-old girl, Clare Barron’s daring, raw Dance Nation will probably hit you hard […] It’s a brave, visceral, excitingly off-kilter barbaric yawp of a play. And it gets at something excruciatingly tender: the burden of modesty on young American women.” – New York Magazine