Beginning this Thursday, the fifteenth annual Junction Arts Festival will be swarming the streets with an entourage of innovative musicians, performers, and visual artists hailing from Canada, Denmark, Brussels, and the United States.

Taking place on the one kilometre stretch between Quebec Avenue and Keele Street on Dundas Street West, the festival will present the works of over fifty visual artists as selected by the 2007 Juried Art Exhibition—and for the first time, will be presented in traditional art gallery settings. Spread across four locations, the main exhibition sites include Latitude 44 Gallery (2900 Dundas Street West), Urbanscape Gallery (2959 Dundas Street West), the Academy of Realist Art (2968 Dundas Street West), and Gallery One Zed Two (2975 Dundas Street West). Although over 700 works of art are to be expected in the Juried Art Exhibitions, there will also be over 100 street vendors, 120 street performers, and an array of impromptu galleries (via Junction shops and restaurants) along Dundas Street West, hosting a variety of multimedia, music, video, and performance art of local artists.

Some performers include AlexCuba, The Brownman Electryc Trio, and r.a.d.—random acts of dance, who, as their name suggests, spontaneously perform in unlikely locations, "devoted to bringing dance into the lives of those who have not yet been fortunate enough to enjoy it." Also on the list are the Toronto Aerial Dance Company, the Hangman Improvisation Ensemble, and making their North American premiere, Belgium musicians Sigrid Keunen & Julie Haas. You can read about these artists and more here.

To accommodate all the artists, there will be a Centre Stage, a Keele Stage, and a KIDZONE at the Community Stage. Of course, the streets will be filled with performers just as well. In addition, during the weekend, the newest element of the festival, Green Village, will be in full swing, offering workshops, daily lectures, demonstrations, and activities on a variety of environmental topics.

Each gallery hosting the Juried Art Exhibition will hold an opening public reception Thursday evening from 6–9 p.m., where the Juried Art Exhibition award winners will be announced. The festival runs from September 6–9 with varying schedules that can be found here. Some events are free, while others may require some cash at the door.

Image compiled via the Junction Arts Festival website.