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.