Meet our new Programming Director: Welcome Kate Alton!
Public Energy Performing Arts is delighted to announce that Kate Alton has accepted the role of Programming Director, and will lead the curatorial and programming vision of the organization beginning in early January 2025. She comes on board as one half of Public Energy’s leadership team, working alongside Managing Director Eva Fisher.
“I couldn’t be happier about joining Public Energy Performing Arts as the incoming programming director” says Kate. “I have had family in Peterborough/Nogojiwanong since the 1980s. My connection with Public Energy goes all the way back to 1998 when I first performed at Market Hall with the company Dogs in Space. I came back again twice with my own company, Overall Dance, and later with Coleman, Lemieux & Compagnie. I moved here in 2022 during the pandemic, drawn by the beauty of the landscape and the vibrancy of the arts scene. In taking on this dream job, I have big shoes to fill. Bill Kimball is beloved in dance and theatre communities across the country. He was the first presenter to show my work and tour it in Ontario. As Bill has done, I want to make artists feel seen, heard, and supported. I want audiences to be challenged, awed, and overcome. I look forward to working with and for artists and audiences in the region and bringing in performance works that provoke thought, evoke delight, and give the community an overview of the performance scene nationally. I’m excited to embrace Public Energy’s values, making art more accessible, more balanced in its representation, and more inclusive to all. Huzzah!”
Alton will succeed outgoing Executive Director Bill Kimball, who founded what is now known as Public Energy Performing Arts in 1994. Bill’s over three decades of work in this role has had a profound positive impact on performing artists and audiences in Peterborough/Nogojiwanong and right across the country.
“We are thrilled that Kate Alton will be contributing her strong artistic vision to this role” says Public Energy Board Chair Colin MacAdam. “Her deep connection to both the local and national performing arts world puts Public Energy Performing Arts in a strong position to continue to fulfill our mission to create inclusive spaces where risk-taking artists and diverse audiences meet.”
Alton was a Toronto-based dancer, choreographer and multi-disciplinary theatre maker for decades before relocating to Peterborough/Nogojiwanong in 2022. A featured member of Toronto Dance Theatre from 1989-95, she has worked with numerous renowned choreographers from across North America.
In 1998, Alton formed Overall Dance to showcase her own choreography and bring choreographers from across Canada and beyond to work with Toronto’s finest contemporary dancers. Her shows with Overall Dance presented an exciting range of material, receiving tremendous support from the public and critics alike. Her touring programs brought dance to Guelph, Hamilton, Montreal, Peterborough, and Vancouver, as well as to the Blyth Festival, the Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa, and Festival Danse en Vol in Brussels, Belgium.
In 2004 Alton won a Harold Award and the K.M. Hunter Artist’s Award in Dance. In 2006 her renamed company, Crooked Figure Dances, presented its first show DESPAIR …and other conundrums to critical acclaim. For several years Kate danced with Coleman, Lemieux & Compagnie, performing James Kudelka’s masterworks In Paradisum and 15 Heterosexual Duets in Canada, China, Mongolia and the United States.
Kate was choreographer and co-creator/director with Ross Manson of the critically acclaimed dance and sound poetry production The Four Horsemen Project, which garnered four Dora Mavor Moore awards including Best Direction by Alton and Manson. It toured nationally and internationally, including an early presentation of the unfinished version presented by Peterborough New Dance in 2001 at the Market Hall. In 1999 Peterborough New Dance presented the Overall Dance program Calculated Risks in Peterborough, as well as Hamilton and Ottawa as part of its Dancing Across Ontario initiative.
Alton, Manson and Soprano/Actor/Dancer Neema Bickerwith together created Century Song, a live music and dance performance piece with original projection design by Germany’s fettFilm. Century Song has been presented in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, Ghent, Edinburgh, Kigali, Manchester, Birmingham and London.
