Harbourfront's World Stage Festival of performing arts in Toronto will feature three world premieres in its 2008-09 season, including new dance from Vancouver's Crystal Pite and Montreal-based collective bluemouth.inc.

Pite returns to the Toronto stage in November with Lost Action to World Stage, in which seven dancers from her company explore the threshold of what the human body can accomplish.

Bluemouth, which has been workshopping its piece Dance Marathon in Montreal, will get audiences involved in the newly commissioned work at the world premiere at Harbourfront in February 2009.

Dance marathons were a spectator sport and a way people attempted to make money during the Depression; this new work builds on that concept.

Also in its world premiere is Hospitality 3: Individualism was a Mistake, a piece of theatre/dance by Montreal's PME-Art.

The World Stage series brings ground-breaking performing arts works, many of them experimental, from around the globe to the Harbourfront stage. A full lineup was released Thursday for the Toronto-based festival.

Danish dancer Kitt Johnson returns to Harbourfront for the first time in four years with Rankefod, a solo performance about the origin of the species, making its Canadian premiere.

Other festival highlights:

  • The Spaghetti Western Orchestra from Australia, with renderings of composer Ennio Morricone's film classics.
  • Afterimage, a choral work and theatre piece by Newfoundland's Artistic Fraud.
  • Shakuntula, a work by 5th century Indian playwright Kalidasa coming to a Toronto stage for the first time.
  • Tshepang, a disturbing and moving show by South Africa's Lara Foot-Newton.

The season begins in October and extends to May 2009 at Harbourfront Centre.