Artistes
x-fois gens chaise
Rearranging Reality
The director and choreographer Angie Hiesl is also known for her visual art work and performance installations, and has been a fixture on the German art scene since the 1980s. Her pieces have garnered several awards, including the Cologne Honorary Theatre Prize awarded by the SK Foundation for Culture in 2001, and the 1996 Förderpreis from the North Rhine Westphalia ministry of culture. She often presents her art in public spaces ranging from a bridge to former public baths, a train station and subway corridors, as she explores her interest in the notions of floating and suspension.
x-times people chair, initially created in her home town of Cologne, has since been presented in festivals all over Europe and also in South America. The show won awards at the Holzminden international street theatre festival, and at the Valladolid theatre festival in Spain.
Angie Hiesl Produktion was founded by Angie Hiesl, who since 1997 has been collaborating with the choreographer, director and visual artist Roland Kaiser. Their works include a disturbing meditation on identical humans in TWINS — how do I know I am me… (2001), and a number of interdisciplinary projects influenced by urban spaces. Art is made accessible to everyone; it’s simply a matter of observation. She is keenly interested in the relation between the body and architecture, between humans and their environment. This project is an invitation to take a new look at reality.
The Debacle
Collective Effort
The Debacle was created by actress-playwright Susan Leblanc Crawford and actress-director Ann-Marie Kerr, both of whom's innovative work has been seen in many Canadian cities. Their backgrounds include physical theatre work and although they have done classics as well as contemporary plays, their main interest is in creating new works that turn conventional thinking upside down. Ann-Marie directed 2b theatre company's Invisible Atom that has toured to 6 countries and continues to tour worldwide and she recently won the national Gina Wilkinson Prize for Female Director. She is a graduate of the Jacques Lecoq school in Paris and teaches Lecoq technique at the National Theatre School of Canada.
The Halifax theatre company Zuppa Theatre (formerly Zuppa Circus Theatre) was founded in 1998 by Susan Leblanc-Crawford, Alex McLean and Ben Stone. Its collective creations give pride of place to the physical energy of the performers. The dramatic structure consists of excerpts of texts, and the memories and desires of the actors. Five Easy Steps to the End of the World, the company’s first collaboration with Ann-Marie Kerr, received three Robert Merritt Awards in Nova Scotia. Created in 2011, The Debacle has been presented in Halifax and Toronto.
Seeds
Shifting the Focus
In January 2000, an atypical play entitled Novembre appeared on the Studio stage at Monument National, with sixteen actors speaking the exact words of several different individual voices recorded during the 1998 Quebec election campaign. Written by Annabel Soutar and directed by Alex Ivanovici (the co-directors of the company), Porte Parole made an impressive début with that piece. That play was indicative of the company’s artistic approach – collecting quotes, carefully editing the material so that several different points of view are heard, highlighting the ambiguous nature of social and political issues and digging beneath the surface to get at what is really at stake, with a perspective of social awareness where spectators become engaged citizens. Porte Parole has presented plays about financial markets (2000 Questions, 2002), Algerian immigration (Montréal la Blanche, 2004), trade between Canada and China (Import/Export, 2008) and the state of local road infrastructures (Sexy béton, 2009-2010). The company’s main writer, Annabel Soutar, was born in Montreal and studied documentary theatre with Emily Mann at Princeton University.
For this production Porte Parole is working for the first time with Chris Abraham, the artistic director of Crow’s Theatre in Toronto. A wide-ranging artist, he is committed to exploring social and political issues and has staged diverse works by playwrights from Sophocles to John Mighton by way of Ionesco, giving theatrical shape to philosophical questions and contemporary political issues.
Cesena
Mathematics of Space and Time
A leading figure in contemporary dance renowned for her acute understanding of music, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker established an international reputation in the early 1980s with her duo Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich (presented in 2008 at Usine C), and the ensemble piece Rosas danst Rosas, which was the inspiration for the name of her company. In 1995 Rosas worked with the prestigious Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels – where she was artist in residence from 1992 to 2007 – to create the acclaimed international school P.A.R.T.S. (Performing Arts Research and Training Studios), training many up-and-coming artists. A regular presence (five different editions) at the FIND festival, her company will be appearing this year at the FTA with En Atendant (2010) and Cesena (2011), which feature ars subtilior music.
Updating Ancient Music
An ethnomusicologist and anthropologist by training, Björn Schmelzer lives in Antwerp where he founded the experimental collective graindelavoix in 1999. An ancient music enthusiast, he pursues unconventional paths in order to allow ancient music to fully flourish in the present, magnifying all the qualities and nuances of the human voice as a musical instrument. The singers’ knowledge and know-how are put to use to make the work come alive beyond the score through ornamentation, improvisation, phrasing and gesture in an exaltation of the music that gives magnificent life to the sounds of the past and the images they convey. His exceptional approach has found new forms of experimentation in this collaboration with Rosas.
En Atendant
Mathematics of Space and Time
A leading figure in contemporary dance renowned for her acute understanding of music, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker established an international reputation in the early 1980s with her duo Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich (presented in 2008 at Usine C), and the ensemble piece Rosas danst Rosas, which was the inspiration for the name of her company. In 1995 Rosas worked with the prestigious Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels – where she was artist in residence from 1992 to 2007 – to create the acclaimed international school P.A.R.T.S. (Performing Arts Research and Training Studios), training many up-and-coming artists. A regular presence (five different editions) at the FIND festival, her company will be appearing this year at the FTA with two recent works.
Initially characterized by repetitive combinations and cyclical energy, the work of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker has evolved toward forms strongly marked by rhythmic complexity and spatial geometry. Punctuated by incursions into the world of film, her career has involved both abstract pieces of pure dance such as Fase, Rain and Drumming, and multidisciplinary presentations that integrate text, voice and filmed images, works such as Elena’s Aria and Stella. Her style is precise, rigorous and energetic. Over the years she has established a close working relationship with the composer Steve Reich, and her other musical influences range from Monteverdi to Ligeti, Mozart and Coltrane. After choreographing silence in The Song and plunging into the romanticism of the 19th century in 3Abschied (co-created with Jérôme Bel), she has recently gone back in time to explore ars subtilior in En Atendant (2010) and Cesena (2011).
&&&&& & &&&
Free Electrons
Antoine Defoort and Halory Goerger are, in no particular order, musicians, actors, philosophers, pranksters, artists and inventors. Their co-op, L'Amicale de production, presents projects produced by various members of the group, a system that offers each creative team complete independence.
Their wacky, ingenious and entertaining shows make sport of the usual codes of performance and portrayal. Merrily mixing genres together, each contributes different artistic elements, whether it be videos of fake dance commercials, sound poems, interactive installations or a Kraftwerk hit song sung by a choir. Each one has also mounted a solo piece, Indigence = élégance for Antoine Defoort (presented in Montreal and Quebec City in 2010), and Métrage variable for Halory Goerger. As the show jumps from one subject to another, the spectators create their own connections from a rush of stimulating, incredible experiences. The curious can view Season 1 of Bonjour Concert, an “advertising campaign commissioned by who knows what institution,” on http://vimeo.com/12710864.
&&&&& & &&&, subtitled “a cable and sword show”, was initially presented in France before going on to tour Belgium, Switzerland, Portugal and Austria. A “frontal” version, entitled simply &, is also available.
Chutes incandescentes
Benoît Lachambre, The Body as Communication
With dance that is firmly rooted in the body, this Quebec dancer and choreographer has made a big impression on the European scene in the past decade, and over the past fifteen years his workshops on a hyper-awakening of the senses have attracted many participants. In 1996 he founded par b.l.eux (Benoît Lachambre and them) to create interdisciplinary works in collaboration with artists of diverse backgrounds, including Boris Charmatz, Sasha Waltz and Marie Chouinard. With Meg Stuart and Hahn Rowe he created Forgeries, Love and Other Matters, which won a prestigious Bessie Award in New York. He was at the FTA in 2005 with 100 rencontres, and returned in 2008 with Is You Me (with Louise Lecavalier and Laurent Goldring) and in 2009 with Body-Scan (with Su-Feh Lee). He is involved with many different projects, creating commissioned pieces such as “I” is Memory for Louise Lecavalier and JJ’s Voice for the Cullberg Ballet in Stockholm. In 2011 he created a solo for Clara Furey in the collective project Danse à 10.
Clara Furey, Every Inch an Artist
A musician, singer-songwriter, actress and dancer, the very charismatic Clara Furey has been pursuing multiple artistic paths since graduating from the contemporary dance school LADMMI. She has worked with Benoît Lachambre on two previous occasions, and also with the choreographers David Pressault, Pierre Lecours, George Stamos and Danièle Desnoyers (Là où je vis, FTA, 2008). She recently danced to choreography by Damien Jalet in the opera Red Waters, directed by Arthur Nauzyciel. She has acted in three films, on the stage in Poésie, sandwichs et autres soirs qui penchent (FTA, 2008) and Dans les charbons by Loui Mauffette. She is currently working on a project with Céline Bonnier, with whom she co-created Hello… How are you? in 2011. Her concerts at Théâtre de Quat’Sous in 2010 showcased her musical talents, and she recently performed on a tour of France with her father Lewis Furey, who remains an invaluable mentor.
Cesena
Mathematics of Space and Time
A leading figure in contemporary dance renowned for her acute understanding of music, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker established an international reputation in the early 1980s with her duo Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich (presented in 2008 at Usine C), and the ensemble piece Rosas danst Rosas, which was the inspiration for the name of her company. In 1995 Rosas worked with the prestigious Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels – where she was artist in residence from 1992 to 2007 – to create the acclaimed international school P.A.R.T.S. (Performing Arts Research and Training Studios), training many up-and-coming artists. A regular presence (five different editions) at the FIND festival, her company will be appearing this year at the FTA with En Atendant (2010) and Cesena (2011), which feature ars subtilior music.
Updating Ancient Music
An ethnomusicologist and anthropologist by training, Björn Schmelzer lives in Antwerp where he founded the experimental collective graindelavoix in 1999. An ancient music enthusiast, he pursues unconventional paths in order to allow ancient music to fully flourish in the present, magnifying all the qualities and nuances of the human voice as a musical instrument. The singers’ knowledge and know-how are put to use to make the work come alive beyond the score through ornamentation, improvisation, phrasing and gesture in an exaltation of the music that gives magnificent life to the sounds of the past and the images they convey. His exceptional approach has found new forms of experimentation in this collaboration with Rosas.
(M)IMOSA
No Boundaries, No Taboos
Cecilia Bengolea, François Chaignaud, Marlene Monteiro Freitas and Trajal Harrell met while participating in the DanceWeb program at the 2008 Impulztanz festival in Vienna, where they started high discussions together. Two years later the four of them joined forces for the co-directed adventure of (M)IMOSA, first presented in New York in 2011. The piece was the result of research that Harrell had been conducting since 2001. It is the (M) (medium size) version of his multipart work Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church that the New York choreographer and dancer has arranged in five formats, from (XS) to (XL). His work explores the possible hybrids that might emerge by combining the codes of voguing (which originated in Harlem’s homosexual and transsexual milieu in the 1960s) with the postmodern dance that also came about in Greenwich Village in that era.
While all of these artists have successful individual careers, the French dancer François Chaignaud and the Argentine Cecilia Bengolea have made a strong impression with the work they have been creating together since 2005 as part of the VLOVAJOB structure. They explored, for example, the dance territory of body intimacy using dildos in Pâquerette, which together with Sylphides received the critics’ “Prix de la révélation chorégraphique” award in Paris in 2009. They also performed while suspended over an audience lying on the floor in Castor et Pollux. As for the Cape Verdean Marlene Monteiro Freitas, she is based in Lisbon. With Tânia Carvalho she founded the collective Bomba Suicida (But from me I can’t escape, Have patience, FTA, 2010), and has a half dozen choreographies to her credit.
Seeds
Shifting the Focus
In January 2000, an atypical play entitled Novembre appeared on the Studio stage at Monument National, with sixteen actors speaking the exact words of several different individual voices recorded during the 1998 Quebec election campaign. Written by Annabel Soutar and directed by Alex Ivanovici (the co-directors of the company), Porte Parole made an impressive début with that piece. That play was indicative of the company’s artistic approach – collecting quotes, carefully editing the material so that several different points of view are heard, highlighting the ambiguous nature of social and political issues and digging beneath the surface to get at what is really at stake, with a perspective of social awareness where spectators become engaged citizens. Porte Parole has presented plays about financial markets (2000 Questions, 2002), Algerian immigration (Montréal la Blanche, 2004), trade between Canada and China (Import/Export, 2008) and the state of local road infrastructures (Sexy béton, 2009-2010). The company’s main writer, Annabel Soutar, was born in Montreal and studied documentary theatre with Emily Mann at Princeton University.
For this production Porte Parole is working for the first time with Chris Abraham, the artistic director of Crow’s Theatre in Toronto. A wide-ranging artist, he is committed to exploring social and political issues and has staged diverse works by playwrights from Sophocles to John Mighton by way of Ionesco, giving theatrical shape to philosophical questions and contemporary political issues.
Chutes incandescentes
Benoît Lachambre, The Body as Communication
With dance that is firmly rooted in the body, this Quebec dancer and choreographer has made a big impression on the European scene in the past decade, and over the past fifteen years his workshops on a hyper-awakening of the senses have attracted many participants. In 1996 he founded par b.l.eux (Benoît Lachambre and them) to create interdisciplinary works in collaboration with artists of diverse backgrounds, including Boris Charmatz, Sasha Waltz and Marie Chouinard. With Meg Stuart and Hahn Rowe he created Forgeries, Love and Other Matters, which won a prestigious Bessie Award in New York. He was at the FTA in 2005 with 100 rencontres, and returned in 2008 with Is You Me (with Louise Lecavalier and Laurent Goldring) and in 2009 with Body-Scan (with Su-Feh Lee). He is involved with many different projects, creating commissioned pieces such as “I” is Memory for Louise Lecavalier and JJ’s Voice for the Cullberg Ballet in Stockholm. In 2011 he created a solo for Clara Furey in the collective project Danse à 10.
Clara Furey, Every Inch an Artist
A musician, singer-songwriter, actress and dancer, the very charismatic Clara Furey has been pursuing multiple artistic paths since graduating from the contemporary dance school LADMMI. She has worked with Benoît Lachambre on two previous occasions, and also with the choreographers David Pressault, Pierre Lecours, George Stamos and Danièle Desnoyers (Là où je vis, FTA, 2008). She recently danced to choreography by Damien Jalet in the opera Red Waters, directed by Arthur Nauzyciel. She has acted in three films, on the stage in Poésie, sandwichs et autres soirs qui penchent (FTA, 2008) and Dans les charbons by Loui Mauffette. She is currently working on a project with Céline Bonnier, with whom she co-created Hello… How are you? in 2011. Her concerts at Théâtre de Quat’Sous in 2010 showcased her musical talents, and she recently performed on a tour of France with her father Lewis Furey, who remains an invaluable mentor.
Heart As Arena
Conquering New Territories
A choreographer and dancer for more than 20 years, Dana Gingras changed the landscape of Canadian dance with her company The Holy Body Tattoo, co-founded with Noam Gagnon in Vancouver in 1993. For almost 15 years they presented works characterized by intensity and demanding movement, and their 1996 piece our brief eternity received a Dora Mavor Moore award for best ensemble performance. Eager to pursue a dialogue with multimedia and to do more work with film, and also to be clear of rising expectations on the part of critics and audiences, in 2006 Dana Gingras founded a parallel company, Animals of Distinction, which soon became her main focus.
Commissioned by and presented at the FTA in 2008, the series of solos and duos entitled Smash Up combines dance and animated film with intelligence and originality. It led to the short films Aurelia and Double Bubble, which were produced by Bravo television, as was the dancer-with-bear duo Dances for Dzama. An associate dance artist at the National Arts Centre of Canada, this ardent film buff also produced the video installation What is Mine is Yours before creating Heart As Arena in 2011 and New Animal for The 605 Collective.
Solitudes solo
Choreographer of the Impossible
Daniel Léveillé trained with the Groupe Nouvelle Aire, where he got his start as a choreographer in 1977, and worked as an independent choreographer before founding Daniel Léveillé Danse in 1991. He created works for several dance and theatre companies, and also taught composition and choreography at UQAM from 1988 to 2012, pursuing a double career and perfecting his vision without submitting to the diktats of the art market. He established an international reputation in 2001 with Amour, acide et noix, followed by La pudeur des icebergs and Lecrépuscule des océans (FTA, 2007), the two other component pieces of his Anatomie de l’imperfection trilogy.
Marginality, passion and sexuality were the themes of earlier works such as Voyeurisme and Écris-moin’importe quoi, pieces that were highly theatrical. In 1989 he explored organic intimacy and, starting with the series Traces, moved toward the style of movement that characterizes his work. With choreography based on repetitions and short phrases, he creates challenging dance pieces that reveal the beauty of men and women in all their imperfections, opting for nudity in order to dispense with sham and pretence. In Solitudes solo he has returned to costume and less static movement, as was also the case in his previous piece Le crépuscule des océans.
Sous la peau, la nuit
Abstraction and Emotion
When she began her career in 1986 with Des héros désaffectés, Danièle Desnoyers went against the general trend of the day by seeking expressiveness of the body through minimalist movement. She took from anatomy the name of her company, Le Carré des Lombes (quadratus lumborum abdominal muscle), which she founded in 1989. Although she developed a more lavish dance vocabulary (plus dexterity and speed) in Du souffle de sa tourmente, j’ai vu, which won international acclaim starting in 1994, it was with Discordantia, presented at the FIND festival in 1996, that she embarked on a creative cycle where she placed the body in a dialogue with complex and sometimes dissonant sound environments. Duo pour corps et instruments is one of her most striking pieces from that period, which ended with Play it again! After Là où je vis (FTA, 2008), which combined dance and visual arts, she put a temporary end to interdisciplinary collaboration in order to extol the pleasure of dancing in Dévorer le ciel and the expressiveness of the body in Sous la peau, la nuit.
With solid casts composed of strong personalities, the works of Danièle Desnoyers convey the duality of the world. Navigating between formalism and deconstruction, order and chaos, rigour and folly, and fiery spirit and release, they reflect a voluble, generous and highly refined style full of humour and sensuality.
Nathan
Singular Artist, Singular Vision
An actor, musician, director and playwright, Emmanuel Schwartz has, since graduating from the theatre program at Collège Lionel-Groulx in 2004, been simultaneously pursuing a series of radical artistic adventures in collusion with artists such as choreographer Dave St-Pierre, director Denis Villeneuve, writer and director Olivier Kemeid, director Marc Beaupré – Schwartz’s performance as Caligula mirroring contemporary nightmares – and the writer and director Wajdi Mouawad, with a memorable performance as Wilfrid in Mouawad’s Littoral. An atypical artist with a fiery creative drive, in his work Emmanuel Schwartz aims to harness the ancient power of myths so as to reveal the underpinnings of the civilized conflicts woven into contemporary life.
In 2005 Emmanuel Schwartz and Wajdi Mouawad founded the company Abé Carré Cé Carré. Directed by these two artists (one Jewish, the other Arab), each works for and with the other, whether in Mouawad’s tetralogy Sang des promesses (2009) or Schwartz’s Chroniques (2010). Their company is a place for creative artists to engage in dialogue. A locus for new work, it is very much open to long-term projects for which conventional production methods are inadequate.
Too Late! (antigone) contest #2
Artists Without Borders
For the Italian company Motus there are no borders, no frontiers between countries or eras or disciplines, no separation of art from involvement in society. Free thinkers who have performed all over the world, the playwright Daniela Nicolò and the director Enrico Casagrande, who founded Motus in 1991, combine video, installations, poetry and dance in their theatre. They also integrate well-known works such as Jean Genet’s Splendid’s, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Preparadise Sorry Now into thoroughly contemporary productions where artistic innovation and taking a political stance are one and the same. The originality and quality of the Motus oeuvre have earned the company a number of honours, including the prestigious Ubu Award for their Rooms project. The Italian actress Silvia Calderoni, who has been working for Motus since 2006, recently received an Ubu Award as best new actress under 30.
The company was in Montreal in 2002 with CRAC, and back again with Twin Rooms in 2005. This year the FTA will be featuring their new piece Too Late! (antigone) contest #2,as well as Alexis. Una tragedia greca, both of which are part of the Syrma Antigónes quartet, the other two being Let the Sunshine In (antigone) contest #1andIovadovia (antigone) contest #3.Created between 2008 and 2010, the series is a contemporary reflection of the spirit of Antigone, a symbol of integrity and of the revolt in contemporary societies against uncaring or corrupt authorities.
Alexis. Una tragedia greca
Artists Without Borders
For the Italian company Motus there are no borders, no frontiers between countries or eras or disciplines, no separation of art from involvement in society. Free thinkers who have performed all over the world, the playwright Daniela Nicolò and the director Enrico Casagrande, who founded Motus in 1991, combine video, installations, poetry and dance in their theatre. They also integrate well-known works such as Jean Genet’s Splendid’s, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Preparadise Sorry Now into thoroughly contemporary productions where artistic innovation and taking a political stance are one and the same. The originality and quality of the Motus oeuvre have earned the company a number of honours, including the prestigious Ubu Award. The company was in Montreal in 2002 with CRAC, and with Twin Rooms in 2005. This year the FTA will be featuring their new piece Too Late! (antigone) contest #2, as well as Alexis. Una tragedia greca, both of which are part of the Syrma Antigónes quartet, the other two being Let the Sunshine In (antigone) contest #1and Iovadovia (antigone) contest #3. Created between 2008 and 2010, the series is a contemporary reflection of the spirit of Antigone, a symbol of integrity and of the revolt in contemporary societies against uncaring or corrupt authorities.
Dance with Me
Cyberartist
Gregory Chatonsky has followed an eclectic path. Initially a painter, he is interested not only in art works but in discussions about art. He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne and multimedia art at the École des Beaux-arts in Paris. That combination led him to create digital art projects that question our connections to new technologies.
In 1994 he founded the collective incident.net, a site that queries the unpredictable and explores IT fiction. He has designed sites for Villa Medicis in Rome and the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and in 1999 was the recipient of a Mobius award for his Memories of the Deportation project. Extremely active on the international scene over the past decade, he is involved in several multimedia projects in Europe, the United States, Australia and China. Some of his works can be found in major institutions such as the Maison européenne de la photographie. A lecturer, researcher and author of several specialized articles, he has been teaching media arts at UQAM since 2006.
His installations surprise and impress by their technical virtuosity and the emotional response they trigger. His piece Notre mémoire was presented at the 2011 Biennale de Montréal, and he continues to research the narrative possibilities of new technologies.
Sideways Rain
Dance-Theatre and the Meaning of Life
A native of São Paulo, Guilherme Botelho fell in love with dance at age 14 after seeing a performance by Oscar Araiz. Five years later, he joined the Argentine choreographer at the Ballet du Grand Théâtre in Geneva, where he danced for 10 years before founding his own company, Alias, in 1994. His choreography touches on major aspects of the human condition such as the frantic quest for love (En manque, his first work), marital abuse, social masks and genetic manipulation (Frankenstein!). The notion of fate or destiny is an ongoing theme in his work, replete with happenstance, accident or things falling from the sky (water, paper, light, plaster plates). His set designs are often impressive, such as the cabin floating on an immobile wave in Vaguement derrière, now part of the repertoire of the Tanztheater Bielfield. While his most recent piece, Iyouhesheitweyouthey, follows along the lines of Sideways Rain in its more abstract theatrical dynamic, the principle of repetition both adhere to was already apparent in Approcher la poussière and Le poids des éponges. Some twenty of his Alias works have been presented on four continents, and he is a much sought-after choreographer. He created a Roméo et Juliette for the 25th anniversary of the Ballet junior in Geneva, and worked with that company from 2008 to 2010.
&&&&& & &&&
Free Electrons
Antoine Defoort and Halory Goerger are, in no particular order, musicians, actors, philosophers, pranksters, artists and inventors. Their co-op, L'Amicale de production, presents projects produced by various members of the group, a system that offers each creative team complete independence.
Their wacky, ingenious and entertaining shows make sport of the usual codes of performance and portrayal. Merrily mixing genres together, each contributes different artistic elements, whether it be videos of fake dance commercials, sound poems, interactive installations or a Kraftwerk hit song sung by a choir. Each one has also mounted a solo piece, Indigence = élégance for Antoine Defoort (presented in Montreal and Quebec City in 2010), and Métrage variable for Halory Goerger. As the show jumps from one subject to another, the spectators create their own connections from a rush of stimulating, incredible experiences. The curious can view Season 1 of Bonjour Concert, an “advertising campaign commissioned by who knows what institution,” on http://vimeo.com/12710864.
&&&&& & &&&, subtitled “a cable and sword show”, was initially presented in France before going on to tour Belgium, Switzerland, Portugal and Austria. A “frontal” version, entitled simply &, is also available.
The Body in Question (s)
Dance – Encounters and Experiences
Known for the rich dialogue she establishes between dance and music, the choreographer Isabelle Van Grimde above all has a strong passion and interest for the body. Focused on probing its mysteries since 1987, the tiltes of her early works Au sommet de tes côtes, Par la peau du cœur and À l’échelle humaine aptly reflect this. In 1992 she named her company Van Grimde Corps Secrets and, starting in 2004, began extensive interviews and research on the body that deeply influenced her work, culminating in the present exhibit-performance The Body in Question(s). The desire to multiply possible perceptions of the body is one of the elements that lie at the very heart of her artistic approach,as is exemplified in the pieces Trois vues d’un secret, Vortex and Bodies to Bodies. Similarly, since 2005, her desire to open up avenues of perception has guided her decision to present her pieces as open works and often as part of interdisciplinary collaborations. She has worked with artists from other disciplines in Perspectives Montréal (FTA, 2007) and with scientists in Duo pour un violoncelle et un danseur and Les gestes, where digital musical instruments became extensions of the body.
La pérégrin chérubinique
Shock Troupe
Pol Pelletier has been enchanting Quebec theatre for more than 35 years. She co-founded the Théâtre Expérimental des Femmes, after having been part of the core nucleus of Théâtre expérimental de Montréal with Ronfard and Gravel. In 1976 she was a writer and actor in the mythical collective play La nef des sorcières, a radical, socially activist piece. In the 1980s she established her Dojo, a unique training space for actors. During the 1990s her epic performances of Joie (1993) and Or (1997) electrified FTA audiences. The final piece of the trilogy, Océan, tells the story of women and theatre in Quebec via her own journey as an artist. From 2004 to 2008 she presented Nicole c'est moi in both Quebec and France, where she also created Une Contrée sauvage appelée Courage.
Jovette Marchessault is a writer, painter and sculptor. Major female characters, renowned historical figures, have been the focus of many of her works: La terre est trop courte, Violette Leduc (1981), Alice et Gertrude, Natalie et Renée et ce cher Ernest (1983), Anaïs dans la queue de la comète (1985). She received the Governor General’s Award in 1992 for Le voyage magnifique d'Emily Carr.
Jean-Jacques Lemêtre is a colleague of Ariane Mnouchkine, composing the music for Théâtre du Soleil presentations since 1979. A prodigious multi-instrumentalist and an inventor of sounds, he performs his music live onstage. Past presentations in Montreal include Le cycle des Atrides (1990) and Tambours sur la digue (1998), presented at the Festival de théâtre des Amériques.
Nature morte
Body, Space and Time
Julie Andrée T. studied visual arts in Montreal. Placing the body and space at the core of her approach, she initially made her mark as a performance and installation artist. Professionally active since 1996, she has presented her work in Canada, the United States, Europe, Asia and South America. In 2003 the Festival de Théâtre des Amériques featured her piece Problématique provisoire, which explored the theme of loss of identity. With a certain disregard for the conventions and codes of performance, the staging highlighted the graphic dimensions of the piece. But it was with Not Waterproof / L’érosion d’un corps erroné and Rouge, presented at Festival TransAmériques in 2009, that she achieved the theatrical object she was aiming for, an installation-performance that was a perfect amalgam of graphic elements (body, painting, props, costumes, lighting) plus sound. Viewed as an object, the body is often subject to hardships.
Those two works were followed by Nature morte, and all three were created in collaboration with Jean Jauvin and Laurent Maslé, who often work in contemporary dance. Jean Jauvin seeks to create lighting that comes alive, with an architectural approach to lighting design. Laurent Maslé is known for the organic nature of his sound environments, and is also interested in acoustic ecology.
Julie Andrée T. was invited to the Avignon Festival in 2010 to present Not Waterproof and Rouge. She has collaborated with various artists such as Jacob Wren, Martin Bélanger, Xavier LeRoy, Benoît Lachambre and Dominique Porte, and has been a member of the collective performance group Black Market International since 2003. An occasional curator, she has also taught performance art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Life and Times - Episode 1
Off-off-Theatricality
Kelly Copper and Pavol Liška met during a Dadaist theatre class at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. A couple both in life and onstage, they have presented several works over the past fifteen years. In 2003 they founded the Nature Theater of Oklahoma. The company takes its name from the mysterious troupe in Kafka’s unfinished novel Amerika that promises work in their theatre for everyone. Their “off-off-Broadway” theatre constantly questions the limits of theatricality by placing everyday life onstage and masking it with theatrical devices. The playful, eccentric and often critical result combines artificial constraints with observations of banality. Liška and Cooper refuse to set a definitive version of any piece, leaving a lot of room for randomness and uncertainty in performances, thus obliging the actors to be fully available to the story and to the moment.
Life and Times – Episode 1, presented for the first time in Vienna in 2009, is the starting point for a musical saga that will eventually consist of 10 episodes, all using as their source the telephone recordings in which Kristin Worrall answer the simple but so vast question Liška asked her: “Tell me your life story”. In the past few years the company has created other shows based on sound recordings: No Dice (2007), Romeo and Juliet (2008) and Rambo Solo (FTA, 2009).
Goodbye
Art as an Instrument of Change
Mélanie Demers studied dance, theatre and literature in Quebec City before returning to her home town of Montreal. After completing her studies at LADMMI in 1996, she created her first choreography, Les oubliettes, and collaborated with various choreographers including Danièle Desnoyers and Ginette Laurin. For close to eight years she danced with O Vertigo, resigning in 2006 to pursue her own projects. She founded Mayday in 2007, leaving behind the playful theatricality of her younger work for an approach with a focus on observing the human condition and questioning the role of the artist in society.
In a world that she believes to be on the verge of collapse, Mélanie Demers considers being an artist a privilege, and aims to create work that mingles politics and poetry and stimulates debate. The first two pieces produced by her company Mayday, Les angles morts and Sauver sa peau, this last one co-created in 2008 with the choreographer Laïla Diallo, are marked by dramatic power and surrealist iconography. While the stage was full of costumes and props in her 2010 piece Junkyard/Paradis, she has adopted a bare bones style for Goodbye. Mélanie Demers is also involved in various social action projects in Haiti, Kenya and Brazil.
Irakese Geesten
Dramatic Entrance
At the ripe old age of 30, Mokhallad Rasem has created outstanding works that have been highly acclaimed. His clear aesthetics and his fragmented storytelling make for stunning pieces that convey a contagious dynamism. The son of a celebrated Iraqi actor, Rasem grew up with a love of theatre. He began his career at the National Theatre of Baghdad, where he presented works from the Western canon such as Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Strindberg’s A Dream Play, in addition to staging works with the theatre troupe Fadaa El Timrin El Moustemer. Their presentation of Sorry, Sir, I Didn’t Mean It won the best play award at the 2004 International Experimental Theatre Festival in Cairo.
While the company was touring Germany in 2005, Mokhallad Rasem decided to stay in Europe and settled in Belgium. In Antwerp he joined forces with the Monty theatre company, creating BagdadBelgië.com, which focused on cultural differences between Belgians and Iraqis, and BagdadMonde.com, an exploration of Iraqis’ relations with the outside world. After its première in 2010, Irakese Geesten was presented at the Vlaams Theaterfestival 2010 in Belgium, and won the KBC Creation Prize for Young Theatre at the 2010 Theater aan Zee festival in Ostend.
Mygale
Always on the Margins
After not quite completing his studies at the Conservatoire de théâtre in Avignon, followed by a sojourn in Paris, Nicolas Cantin found his true calling in masks and clowning. Stimulated by working with masters such as Mario Gonzales he developed his own dramatic style, characterized by a strong, sensitive presence, the dramatic force of minimalist gesture, a keen sense of the tension between comedy and tragedy, and a taste for breaking established codes without being too casual about it. He made his dance reputation in 2005 with Jachère, a solo by Christiane Bourget that received the Paula Citron Award in Toronto. He then settled in Montréal, where he performed as a horse in the conceptual piece Glass House, and also in the solo Falaise. He later danced for Frédérick Gravel in Tout se pète la gueule, chérie (FTA, 2010), and mounted Honolulu Punch for students at Montreal’s École nationale de cirque. He teaches there, and also at the National Theatre School. A recent piece, Grand singe, is a brilliant study of an encounter between a man and a woman. In 2011 he co-created Patinoire, presented by the circus troupe Les 7 doigts de la main. His duo Belle Manière is confirmation of his mastery of time and his talent for creating powerful works, for which he also composes the soundscapes.
Damned Be the Traitor of His Homeland!
Agitator
A writer, director, theorist, choreographer and actor, Oliver Frljić is truly the enfant terrible of ex-Yugoslavian theatre, moving freely from street theatre to performances in established institutions, from small intimate spaces to the large National Theatre. His plays provoke discussion and generate contrasting reactions. He pushes the limits, blending reality and fiction, and public and private spheres.
Not yet 40, Oliver Frljić got his start in performance art. His satirical and fiery theatre has been attracting a growing following in the Balkans. After winning two awards at the 17th Small Scene Theatre Festival in Rijeka, Croatia, in 2010 with Turbo Falk and Bacchantes, in 2011 he was awarded the Golden Laurel Wreath at the 51st edition of MESS, the Sarajevo International Theatre Festival, for his adaptation of the classic Yugoslav film When Father was Away on Business, with script by Abdulah Sidran. In November 2011 he received the best director award at the Brčko theatre festival in Bosnia for Letter From 1920, a play about contemporary Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The Mladinsko (“youth” in Slovenian) Theatre was founded in 1955. It presented plays for children and adolescents until the 1980s, before gradually moving toward interdisciplinary pieces, experimental theatre and plays with political content. In 2008 it became the first Slovenian theatre to be awarded the European Ambassador of Culture title by the European Commission.
Chante avec moi
Restoring the Present to the Present
Olivier Choinière has established a reputation as one of the most innovative figures in Quebec theatre with his remarkable writing – works such as Félicité (2007), presented in England, France, Germany, Switzerland and Australia – and the originality of his staging of plays like Chante avec moi (2010) and ParadiXXX (2009), which featured live dubbing of a porno film. Preoccupied with the invisible codes of mass culture and its attendant social and political conditioning, Choinière aims in his work to divert and twist familiar forms in order to show spectators the filters that prevent them from accessing the present. Borrowing from B movies (Agromorphobia, 2001), familiar history (Autodafé, 1999) and audioguided tours (Bienvenue à – (une ville dont vous êtes le touriste), 2005), he focuses on destabilizing the expectations of the audience in order to redefine his perception of reality. In 2000 he founded L’Activité Répétitive Grandement Grandement Libératrice (ARGGL, or L’Activité) to produce his more atypical work, including the meteorological tragedy Jocelyne est en dépression (2002), the walkabout Beauté intérieure (2003) and Projet blanc in 2011, a comment on theatre and staging of the classics craftily slipped into a performance of L’École des femmes at Théâtre du Nouveau Monde. Olivier Choinière and L’Activité are co-founders of Aux Écuries, a new centre of theatre creation in Montreal.
x-fois gens chaise
Rearranging Reality
The director and choreographer Angie Hiesl is also known for her visual art work and performance installations, and has been a fixture on the German art scene since the 1980s. Her pieces have garnered several awards, including the Cologne Honorary Theatre Prize awarded by the SK Foundation for Culture in 2001, and the 1996 Förderpreis from the North Rhine Westphalia ministry of culture. She often presents her art in public spaces ranging from a bridge to former public baths, a train station and subway corridors, as she explores her interest in the notions of floating and suspension.
x-times people chair, initially created in her home town of Cologne, has since been presented in festivals all over Europe and also in South America. The show won awards at the Holzminden international street theatre festival, and at the Valladolid theatre festival in Spain.
Angie Hiesl Produktion was founded by Angie Hiesl, who since 1997 has been collaborating with the choreographer, director and visual artist Roland Kaiser. Their works include a disturbing meditation on identical humans in TWINS — how do I know I am me… (2001), and a number of interdisciplinary projects influenced by urban spaces. Art is made accessible to everyone; it’s simply a matter of observation. She is keenly interested in the relation between the body and architecture, between humans and their environment. This project is an invitation to take a new look at reality.
On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God
Questions & Transformations
Founded in 1981 in Cesena in northern Italy by the painter and set designer Romeo Castellucci, the musician Chiara Guidi and the theorist Claudia Castellucci, Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio soon established an international reputation as one of the most fascinating contemporary theatre companies, renowned for the aesthetic radicalism and profound humanity of its plays. While inspired by classics of Western culture (works by Aeschylus, Dante and Shakespeare), the theatre that Romeo Castellucci and Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio produce follows the performance philosophy of Antonin Artaud where, much more than the text, bodies – often atypical – concentrate and condense meaning in a stage context of thunderous soundtracks and intense imagery. High tech is combined with the age-old crafts of dramatic art to create worlds that transpose reality through a series of diffractions. Spectacular by nature, Castellucci’s theatre questions the world we live in from an essentially humanist point of view. His previous FTA presentations include Orestea (una commedia organica?) (1997), Genesi. From the museum of sleep (1999) and Hey Girl! (2007). His major works include Tragedia Endogonidia (2002-2004), an 11-episode cycle of tragic theatre and his Dante trilogy La Divina Commedia – Inferno, Purgatorio e Paradiso. The first part was presented at the Avignon Festival in 2008, where he was an associate artist that year, and the trilogy was named by Le Monde newspaper as one of the best cultural productions of the decade.
Chaleur humaine
Body Media, Body Screen
He has danced for Daniel Léveillé and Nicolas Cantin, but Stéphane Gladyszewski started out studying photography and interdisciplinary arts, choices that have influenced his creative approach. After an initial video installation, he took to the stage in 2003 withIn Side, which combined video projection, performance art and theatrical objects. The fusion of bodies and images to create an illusion began in 2005 with Aura. Both pieces were presented at the “Nouvelles scenes” showcase at the Festival de Théâtre des Amériques. Three years later he further refined his approach in his first full-length piece, Corps noir, a self-portrait both fictitious and real. A trenchant plunge into the subconscious, it combined sensitive and intelligent use of a made-to-measure light box/camera/projector he constructed. He again experimented with thermal imagery and retinal retention inCorps noir Annexe II, presented at theMicro Climats event (FTA, 2009). Invited last year by La 2e Porte à Gauche to be part of the Danse à 10 adventure in a nude dancing bar, this creative inventor once again conjoined technology and the subconscious to create Chaleur humaine, a work that perfectly merges art and eroticism.
The Debacle
Collective Effort
The Debacle was created by actress-playwright Susan Leblanc Crawford and actress-director Ann-Marie Kerr, both of whom's innovative work has been seen in many Canadian cities. Their backgrounds include physical theatre work and although they have done classics as well as contemporary plays, their main interest is in creating new works that turn conventional thinking upside down. Ann-Marie directed 2b theatre company's Invisible Atom that has toured to 6 countries and continues to tour worldwide and she recently won the national Gina Wilkinson Prize for Female Director. She is a graduate of the Jacques Lecoq school in Paris and teaches Lecoq technique at the National Theatre School of Canada.
The Halifax theatre company Zuppa Theatre (formerly Zuppa Circus Theatre) was founded in 1998 by Susan Leblanc-Crawford, Alex McLean and Ben Stone. Its collective creations give pride of place to the physical energy of the performers. The dramatic structure consists of excerpts of texts, and the memories and desires of the actors. Five Easy Steps to the End of the World, the company’s first collaboration with Ann-Marie Kerr, received three Robert Merritt Awards in Nova Scotia. Created in 2011, The Debacle has been presented in Halifax and Toronto.
Aaléef
Transcending Traditions
It was in his home town of Marrakech that Taoufiq Izeddiou discovered a passion for contemporary dance after some classes in ballet and modern jazz dance. During training that he describes as brutal, he worked with master choreographers such as Joseph Nadj, Daniel Larrieu, Héla Fattoumi and Éric Lamoureux. His encounter with the French-Guyanese-Vietnamese artist Bernardo Montet, director of the Centre Chorégraphique National in Tours, opened the way to his professional career in 1997, and for eight years they pursued a questioning of origins and identity.
While pursuing his career as a dancer, Taoufiq Izeddiou created his first choreography in 2000. The following year his solo Danse Nord established his reputation as a choreographer. In 2003, the success in the Arab community of the ensemble piece Fina K’enti encouraged him to establish Anania, Morocco’s first contemporary dance company, with the choreographers Bouchra Ouizguen and Said Aït El Moumen. Two years later he created the On marche dance festival as well as a training program. To upgrade his qualifications, he decided to obtain a teaching diploma in France. He continues to work in both countries, and his pieces explore social hypocrisy, the tensions between tradition and modernity and between North and South, with the body only free under cover of darkness. Following after Cœur sans corps, Déserts désirs and Aataba, Aaléef is his ninth piece.
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