In honour of Tedd Robinson, and with fond memory of insights that Tedd shared with Ziyian Kwan across several Odd Meridian creations, we’re pleased to welcome Tedd’s dear friend and collaborator, Crazy Smooth to our programming at Morrow.
Smooth is the artist who Tedd invited to carry on and transform the legacy of 10 Gates Dancing, the company that Tedd founded and directed from 1998 – 2023. Smooth is also one of Canada’s foremost Street Dance artists and the Artistic Director of Bboyizm.
10 Gates Creation Lab
April 19 – 20, 2025 / 12:30pm – 5:30pm
at Morrow, 910 Richards
co-produced by Odd Meridian Arts
and 10 Gates Dancing
This 10 Gates signature process is facilitated by Crazy Smooth with award-winning choreographer, Saxon Fraser, the 10 Gates Creation Lab is a micro-creation process that guides participants through two days of creation building exercises that are designed to develop capacity for translating a curiosity into being. Using street dance styles and foundational vocabulary, participants will engage in a guided choreographic lab to uncover the expression of a creative intent, and to lay bare a process for accessing it. At the end of the two-day lab, the participants will have co-created a short 4-minute piece.
* Confirmed participants will be asked to submit a $100 deposit that will be refunded on the first day of the workshop. In the event of non-attendance the deposit will not be refunded and the opportunity will be offered to another registrant.
To register, please email info@oddmeridian.ca and provide the following information:
B-boy Crazy Smooth is one of Canada’s top street dance ambassadors, a choreographer, dancer, sought-after instructor, judge, and community leader. In 2004 he founded Bboyizm, an award-winning dance company that has earned an international reputation for authentic street dance theatre works.
Crazy Smooth’s contributions to street dance were recognized at the 2023 Dynastie awards in Montreal, where he was named Dancer of the Year. Later that same year, Crazy Smooth was named the Executive and Artistic Director of 10 Gates Dancing Inc., completing a conversation that he and 10 Gates founder Tedd Robinson had been having before Tedd’s unexpected death in 2022. Crazy Smooth brings his authentic street dance aesthetic and years of teaching experience to this new role, where he plans to continue Tedd’s work promoting the development and performance of contemporary dance creations across Canada, now with a focus on the street dance community.
A third-generation dancer with a B.A. in Dance Kinesiology, Saxon’s versatility has brought her together with Cirque du Soleil, Moment Factory, W&M Physical Theatre (Poland), and Dragonfly Orchestra (China). She was a prominent choreographer on Radio Canada’s series Les Dieux de la Danse, TVA’s Revolution, and the award-winning short film La Volière. As Artistic Director of Art-Terre, she brought her show Temnein to audiences in Haiti before creating the company Juxtapose, whose production disˈtraktəd was presented at 100LUX and Toronto’s world-renowned Breakin’ Convention. Saxon and Crazy Smooth premiered Patina at NAC’s Dance Forth in 2020, and she joined him as Associate Choreographer for Bboyizm’s recent creation In My Body, which received four Dora Awards in 2022. Her choreography for Olympic Ice Dancers Guillaume Cizeron and Gabriella Papadakis of France won Gold at Beijing’s 2022 Winter Olympic Games. Saxon has collaborated with the fashion industry, choreographing for Aubainerie, Y! D.N.A. Collection, Saco International, X-presion (Madrid), L’Oréal, Filler Magazine, and Noize (London). Travelling worldwide, her creations have been presented at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Vancouver Olympics, Le Zénith in Paris, and the incredible Kremlin Palace in Moscow.
