What is that?: Spiralling swirls dedicated to dance in Toronto Music Garden
Posted April 27, 2016 8:48 am.
Last Updated May 27, 2016 12:33 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
What is that?: Toronto sculptures explained is a new series looking at a different sculpture in the city every week. Have you seen a piece of public art in your daily commute and wondered what it was about? Me too … so I’ve decided that I’d learn a little bit more about my own city and share it with you.
Courante, Music Garden | 475 Queen’s Quay W., west of Lower Spadina Avenue
This spiralling structure stands tall at Toronto Music Garden between the lake and the city’s skyline.
It’s called Courante and it caught my eye during a waterfront walk because the top of it looks like a bunch of birds. Upon a closer look, the birds are not birds – they’re flowers.
The sculpture is surrounded by trees waiting to bloom, some evergreens, and some wetland a tiny bit south.
I found a sign nearby that explained the sculpture’s meaning.
The courante is “originally an Italian and French dance form,” the sign reads. The sculpture is meant to interpret that movement with its “huge, upward-spiralling swirl through a lush field of grasses and brightly-coloured perennials that attracts birds and butterflies. At the top, a Maypole spins in the wind.”
The dance is from the 16th-Century, made up of quick steps in triple time.
Courante is the feminine present participle of the French word courir, which means to run. In Italian, a similar word, corrente, is the adjective “running” when referring to “running water.”
A Canadian artist, the late Anne Roberts, designed the sculpture.
The Toronto Music Garden the sculpture sits in is dedicated to music, designed by designed cellist Yo Yo Ma with landscape designer Julie Moir Messervy and landscape architects from the City of Toronto.
The Garden is open all the time, there is no cost for admission and it features free concerts in the summer.
