Sly and his Family Stone exhorted us to "dance to the music" as if it were possible not to, but our bodies know better. Intrinsically linked, sound and dance are waves moving through space and time and occasionally bumping into things.

Between the Ears 2015 is about these travels - we'll float our sounds on canoes through the lake at Victoria Park and origami boats in the Civic Square fountain and hear them in a dreamworld collage of coincident busking, and we'll see sound traced in wondrous choreographies from our most creative minds, performed by our amazing artists.

FRIDAY JUNE 19

SUPERCOLLIDER @ Communitech - 4:00 PM
Communitech Hub, 151 Charles St, Suite 100
FREE

Catch a free preview of Montreal’s Lori Freedman and Marc Boivin, as they collide in a spontaneous improvisation at the Communitech Hub. Music and dance meet in the moment, proof that the Waterloo Region is a centre of both cultural and technological innovation!

SATURDAY JUNE 20

SIRENS OF VICTORIA PARK - Noon to 1:30 PM
Various locations in Victoria Park culminating at the Boathouse (57 Jubilee Dr, Kitchener) at 1:00 PM.
FREE

Composer Peter Hatch is instigating this collaboration with the Kitchener-Waterloo Multicultural Festival (KWMCF), which will involve portable stereos, singers, musicians and a flotilla of canoes. We will present a 35-minute sound interpolation into the KWMCF set in Kitchener's Victoria Park. Hatch will be building on MyAudia, his compilation of work that infiltrates and hyper-illuminates urban environments using the cloaks of expectation and convention. Featuring Lori Freedman and Kathryn Ladano on clarinets, with the MyAudia Superurban Ensemble.

OPEN EARS REGATTA and DREAMWORLD JUKEBOX - 11:00 PM
Carl Zehr Square at Kitchener City Hall, 200 King St. W., Kitchener
FREE

In this collaboration with the Our World Festival and Summer Lights Festival, Open Ears is holding the first Open Ears Regatta at the 125,000 litre Reflecting Pool at Carl Zehr Square. We will begin the evening with our Parallel Universe Jukebox, where multiple groups and sound sources ringed around the square simultaneously play an identical set list in their own style. Audience members and unsuspecting passersby can drift from one overlapping sound world to the next with strange continuity, while folding colourful origami boats and floating them with a lit tealight cargo in the fountain. Featuring: the Ladano/Borkovic Duo, Ben Grossman, Jason White, the Sorbara/Aldcroft Duo, David Jensenius, James Harley, Supercollider, the Freeplay Duo (Suba Sankaran and Dylan Bell) and Colin Labadie.

SUNDAY JUNE 21

SOUNDGLIDING: MUSIC AND DANCE - 7:30 PM
Registry Theatre, 122 Frederick St., Kitchener, ON
Advance: General $25/ Student $15 / EyeGO $5
Door: General $30 / Student $20

Purchase tickets: http://www.ticketscene.ca/events/12995/

Is there a glimmer of sound you can see as it unfolds? Is there a hint of music hidden in every phrase of dance? Our #BTE15 mainstage show offers both an eye and ear into the fascinating intersections between music and movement. Join us for a night of SOUNDGLIDING.

A CRAZY KIND OF HOPE - Directed and Conceived by Sarah Chase, in Creation with Andrea Nann with music by Antoine Bedard and Justin Rutledge.

SUPERCOLLIDER - Lori Freedman improvises music in the moment, while Marc Boivin improvises dance. Adding another layer of spontaneous creation, James Harley captures and filters sound, while video of Boivin is captured, processed and projected.

STUDY FOR A CROUCHING FIGURE - One of Marie-Josée Chartier’s most arresting and physically demanding choreographies, Montreal’s Brendan Wyatt will dance Study for a Crouching Figure at Between the Ears. This extraordinary solo is set to and equally extraordinary score by Rodney Sharman, an unrelenting sonically brutalist landscape for amplified string quartet and piano. Featuring Jeremy Bell, Leslie Ting, Miriam Stewart-Kroeker and Jody Davenport.

Volunteer with Open Ears

We are recruiting volunteers for #BTE 15 as well as our next festival in 2016. Volunteering with Open Ears is a unique way to participate in our events, get behind the scenes, and to get involved with other music and art lovers in the Waterloo Region. If you are interested in volunteering or would like more information, please email us at info@openears.ca.