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Local Gestures

because the personal is cultural

Aider à vivre en 2015 / Making Life Better in 2015

22/12/2015

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L'échauffement, photo by Nathalie St-Pierre
Une fois l’an, je produis une liste de fin d’année tout en me demandant ce que cela veut dire. Pourquoi ces artistes et non pas bon nombre d’autres? Cette fois, la réponse est simple; ce sont les artistes qui, pour une raison ou une autre, m’ont aidé à vivre. Cette année, je voulais aussi relayer cet exercice aux artistes en question. Je leur ai donc demandé « Quel artiste vous a aidé à vivre en 2015? » Voici leurs réponses.
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Ève-Chems De Brouwer, metteur en scène, Docteur B. (Festival TransAmériques)
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Docteur B., photo de Jean Weill
« Leon Bridges. Sa voix et ses paroles m'emplissent d'une joie douce et profonde. J'ai eu besoin d'écouter son album en boucle. Tiago Rodrigues. Son spectacle By Heart est d'une rare intelligence. C'est une ode à la lecture, aux mots. Mommy de Xavier Dolan va de toute évidence m'accompagner de longues années. J'ai eu une maman qui m'a aimée passionnément et inconditionnellement toute sa vie. Elle aurait volontiers donné ses deux bras et ses deux jambes pour nous. Retrouver cet amour maternel dans ce film époustouflant m'a transmis une force incroyable et une confiance pour ma vie de maman de deux jeunes enfants. Marcel Proust. Lire Proust me permet de me formuler à moi-même, d'avoir une acuité encore plus grande à l'Humain qui m'entoure. »
 
Nicolas Cantin, créateur, Philippines (OFFTA)
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« J’ai beaucoup écouté Daft Punk en voyage cette année. Il y avait, par exemple, pour moi quelque chose de vertigineux à marcher seul dans les rues d’Honk Kong avec la musique de Daft Punk dans les oreilles. Et plus particulièrement le morceau Quo Veridis. Avec cette musique, ma solitude prenait une dimension métaphysique. Une véritable mise en orbite existentielle en 3D. Un voyage dans le voyage. »
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Geneviève C. Ferron, chorégraphe, Tout est dit, il ne reste rien (Studio 303)
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Tout est dit, il ne reste rien, photo de Sandra Lynn Bélanger
« En 2015 deux écrivaines m'ont aidé à vivre. L'œuvre d'Hélène Monette, que j'ai découverte à la suite de son décès en juin, et le recueil En Chair et en eau de la poétesse acadienne Judith Hamel. C'est avant tout leurs mots crus qui me touchent directement. Il n'y a pas de pudeur; c'est des grands sentiments qui ne se cachent pas derrière la forme ou la provocation. C'est aussi les femmes qui m'ont offert ces livres: Lili, la fille d'Hélène, ma demi-sœur, qui a voulu partager un peu de sa mère avec moi; et ma tante Michèle, qui m'a offert de la poésie acadienne pour me faire mieux comprendre ma mère, née en Acadie. »
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Julien Fonfrède, programmateur, La Cinémathèque interdite
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« L'expérience Valley of Love de Guillaume Nicloux. Un film qui épure tout. Un vrai tour de magie. Je ne comprends toujours pas comment il a réussi à faire que cela marche aussi bien. »
Every year, I put out some kind of year-end list, all the while wondering what it means. Why those artists and not countless others? This time around, the answer was simple; they’re the artists who, for one reason or another, have helped me live. This year, I also wanted to relay this exercise to the artists in question, so I asked them “Which artist made your life better in 2015?” Here are their answers.
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Sasha Kleinplatz, choreographer, L’échauffement (Département de danse de l’UQAM)
“The facilitators and the participants of the Get B(l)ack research project at Impulstanz in Vienna, Austria. This project focused on Black Aesthetics and Contemporary Dance. We looked at Afro-Futurism, queer black dance, black feminist thought, the Black Lives Matter movement, and white privilege, among a ton of other things. There were many arguments, tears, and deeply awkward/alienating moments. What blew my mind is that everyone stayed and worked their asses off to find a way to talk and work together, no one gave up, and many people had every right to. The facilitators, Thomas D. Frantz and Keith Hennesey, were so firm, so clear and so gracious, refused to humour any white fragility, and at the same time they were extremely patient and remained determined to keep the group moving forward in thought and action. In a year where I felt a lot of confusion and disenchantment about the narrowness of the contemporary dance milieu (artistically, philosophically, and politically), I was so grateful to have this wakeup call that IT IS possible to work rigorously and ethically. And that there is a community of people doing it; we just have to keep finding each other.”
 
Mario Lombardi, organizer, The Atomic Cosmoline Electric Symphony Orchestra & Plasmatic Choir performs Terry Riley’s In C
“This past year was difficult for me; 1) as a human being dealing with mental illness, and 2) as an artist trying to fight against the creative oppression of my mental illness. The following artists have been important to me throughout 2015 not only as a form of relief, but more importantly for offering profound inspiration. In the fall, I rediscovered the brilliance of Magma. While introducing their album 1001° Centigrades to my friend in the midst of an exceptionally beautiful psilocybin trip, I had an epiphany! I felt as if I was discovering this masterful work all over again for the first time. The musical ideas were so inventive and creative. We both were so mind-blown that we ended up listening to the album repeatedly. I was fascinated by the unique and insanely creative singing of Klaus Blasquiz. In ‘contemporary classical’ music, I became entranced by Claude Vivier's work. For the first time, I felt I reached a profound understanding of his sonic expressions. These inspirations have heavily influenced my most recent compositional efforts for acoustic ensembles. Punk has had a huge presence in my life this year: artists like Flipper and No Trend; the gorgeously filth-obsessed, uncompromising work of Lydia Lunch; the deathrock pioneers Christian Death and Mighty Sphincter; the legendary Iggy Pop and the Stooges; hardcore bands Minor Threat and Bad Brains; anarcho-punk artists Crass and Flux of Pink Indians; the avant-garde punk experimentalists This Heat. Punk has always been at the foundation of my artistic mind ever since it took over my life as a teenager, but the fact that it has repossessed such a high place in my art diet might just be the most important and impactful thing to artistically happen to me this year. There is one more artist I'd like to bring praise to, an ensemble with whom I've been enamored for years; CAN have become one of my most cherished musical inspirations. Their sound, even 40+ years later, still manages to be incredibly fresh and insanely ahead of its time. Their mixture of extensive improvisation, acousmatic music elements and monotonous trance-like grooves; their exploration of noise, electronic soundscapes and unconventional sonic textures; the level of ingenuity in how they smash genre boundaries while sticking to a traditional rock ensemble instrumentation; the magnificent Damo Suzuki's exciting explorations of new expressive vocal possibilities (singing in improvised gibberish, electronically manipulating his voice, using unconventional sounds). CAN has enhanced my life this year more than any other artist and I have a feeling they'll keep doing so. There's still so much I feel I can learn from their art.”

LISTEN to the recording of the performance.
 
Jon Mueller, musician (Suoni Per Il Popolo)
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“Over the past year I was struck numerous times by the work of photographer Niki Feijen, whose studies of abandoned places are like the graveyards of Gregory Crewdson photos. There's a sense of lost presence in his work, yet somehow a new presence, or the feeling that you, the viewer, are the only one present. There is a compulsion to look and to be within the photos, which has been an interesting experience to me. I think the bigger effect is that this work has inspired imagination within me in ways that were more familiar when I was really young – mystery, the unknown, and the idea of building something imaginary out of that in whatever way I wish.”
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Anders Yates, writer & performer, Playday Mayday (Wildside Festival)
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“The Pajama Men. I've been a fan of theirs for at least a decade and they've been a huge influence on Uncalled For's style, and this past March I was once again able to watch them perform together live for the first time in years and it was pure magic. They know how to play with each other in a way that is both disciplined and reckless and clearly fun. I got to enjoy the perfect mix of classic sketches I loved and new material I got to discover and a couple minutes of one just spanking the other. What more could I possibly want?”
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Vauban : une critique

22/10/2014

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Le critique de danse que je suis se pointe à l’Usine C pour assister à une pièce de théâtre et ne se retrouve que dans le mouvement. Vauban, texte d’Alain Farah mis en espace par Marie Brassard, se veut une contre-utopie où le mouvement des gens est régi par les Oligarques. Ce futur proche, raconté par Brassard, est vu à travers les yeux d’un architecte dont les labyrinthes aident à circonscrire les déplacements de la population, et ceux de son fils, dont les migraines créent des obstructions dans son champ de vision. Ces obstructions prennent la forme des labyrinthes de son père, une touche de réalisme magique qui rejoint la mise en espace de Brassard.
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Vauban, photo de Magali Guyon
C’est ainsi qu’un écran situé au milieu d’un mur, sur lequel est projetée une vidéo de feux solaires, se transforme en fenêtre alors que des techniciens plient le mur en deux pour créer un coin de chambre d’enfant. C’est d’abord de sa propre voix que Brassard nous livre le texte, faisant fi du genre des personnages ou de leur âge. Toutefois, les couleurs de ses vêtements et de ceux du gamin sont similairement sombres, noir ou marin, nous donnant l’impression que cette voix pourrait passer d’un corps à l’autre, de la femme au garçon à la femme à l’homme. Lorsque le timbre de sa voix est modifié (comme Brassard aime bien le faire) pour lui donner une voix masculine, sa propre voix persiste en soupirs et chuchotements sous celle des haut-parleurs.

À travers l’imagination de cet enfant d’architecte, Vauban démontre que, lorsque le littéral est défendu, le symbolique vient à la rescousse et prend sa place. Le garçon construit des structures à partir de blocs, une ville de son propre cru où il pourrait bouger comme bon lui semble. Alors qu’il sommeille dans son lit, Brassard passe un large balai muni de petites lumières qui projettent l’ombre de cette ville imaginée sur les murs de la chambre. La pièce prend place dans une nuit perpétuelle, une nuit qui fait appel aux rêves, espace de toutes les libertés. La nuit qui permet aussi – à l’encontre du jour qui accentue la visibilité – un peu plus de liberté à ceux qui demeurent éveillés, leurs corps dissimulés dans la pénombre. Évidemment, cette nuit symbolise l’aveuglement grandissant du garçon.

La nécessité d’une liberté de mouvement, quelle qu’elle soit, se voit dans les paroles du personnage qui dit, « Je ne bougeais plus que dans ma parole. Je parlais car je ne voyais pas. » Alors qu’il réussit à naviguer les labyrinthes de son père à l’aide des plans que ses migraines lui imprègnent dans l’œil, sa nouvelle liberté de mouvement efface l’importance du symbolique : « Toute parole me paraissait désormais veine. »

Malgré son sujet contre-utopique, Vauban est d’une belle simplicité, un petit trente minutes aussi doux que les rêves dans lesquels il baigne. À cet effet, la musique ambiante de Tim Hecker (Ravedeath, 1972) est judicieusement utilisée pour colorer le récit, planant entre l’inquiétude du réel et la beauté de l'imaginaire.

21 & 22 octobre à 20h30
Usine C
www.usine-c.com
514.521.4493
Billets : 10$
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Fields in Motion: A Review

8/3/2012

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When Joann Kealiinohomoku published “An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance” over 40 years ago, it caused quite a stir in dance studies. Ballet? Ethnic? It was like someone had finally held up a mirror to white people so they could see themselves instead of assuming they were a normative non-ethnicity.

The article pushed dance scholar Dena Davida (better known in Montreal as the artistic director of Tangente) one step further, as she wondered what the ethnographic project for post-modern and contemporary dance would be. The result is now an anthology exploring the issue from a multitude of perspectives, Fields in Motion: Ethnography in the Worlds of Dance.

The irony is that, because of globalization, white people are becoming a normative non-ethnicity after all. As a consequence, the authors in Fields in Motion sometimes explain experiences that might now be familiar to most, including those who have never even attended a contemporary dance show. Not that all writers or subjects discussed are white, by any means.

In the first section, “Inventing Strategies, Models, and Methods,” authors focus on establishing their methodology. It makes one curious and it would have been interesting to discover what findings their methodology yielded. It might be the nature of the beast (in this case, anthologies), as many of the chapters are the introductions to theses. Still, it might have been better to select subsequent thesis chapters to offer readers some meat, at the risk of losing them a bit along the way.

Some authors (like Anne Cazemajou) understandably rely heavily on description, as most readers do not have access to the object of study. Less acceptable is when writers relying on introspective ethnography become unnecessarily wordy. Michèle Moss writes, “I have always been the happiest, indeed most comfortable, when inquiring with my arms and legs as they manipulate time and space.” “Dancing” would have done just as well, if not better.

In a similar vein, the second section on “Embodying Autoethnographies” is, as can be expected, the least scholarly, as writers (like Priya Thomas) get lost in novelistic descriptions that rarely engender knowledge. It is as though writers (Inka Juslin is another one) believe that, if they focus on the details, they might be able to make the reader forget about the big picture; often, there is none. Thesis statements remain hard to identify, if they are present at all.

Karen Barbour even openly states that she is not concerned with “traditional research expectations of reliability and validity,” (!) which makes it hard to take her essay seriously. Indeed, it reads like a LiveJournal entry as she recounts conversations in detail, when she could have made the same points in fewer words. She references her own writing more than anyone else’s, and it accounts for almost a third of her sources. It’s being self-referential in a way that was popular almost two decades ago. While one can easily understand the value of embodiment to dance research, it does not need to be communicated as an unedited, continuous stream of consciousness.

With the third section, “Examining Creative Processes and Pedagogies,” it finally feels like we are getting somewhere. Pamela Newell and Sylvie Fortin examine the power relationship between choreographer and dancers, and how it affects the creative process and outcome.

In what is probably the best essay in the entire book, “Black Tights and Dance Belts: Constructing a Masculine Identity in a World of Pink Tutus in Corner Brook, Newfoundland,” Candice Pike proves that one does not need to be urban to make a worthwhile contribution to knowledge. She notes how, while male is usually the unmarked gender in society, it becomes the marked one in ballet. By interviewing the men attending a ballet class in a small town in the Maritimes, Pike is able to achieve insights into why the subjects took up ballet (to fulfil their unrealized potential) and about the need to question generalizations.

In the final section, “Revealing Choreographies as Cultural and Spiritual Practices,” Emily Wright offers the most humour with her look at American Protestant dance. With just the right amount of self-consciousness, she writes, “When one hears the phrase ‘American Protestant dance,’ many things may come to mind. Or, perhaps, nothing at all.” Perhaps more naïve is her statement that “Auditions for roles in performances were competitive. This led to frustration, disappointment, and disillusionment for dancers who had a strong desire to worship God through dance but lacked the technical excellence required.” Another personal favourite is when she explains, “A more basic understanding is that a Christian dancer is a dancer who is Christian, or a Christian who dances.” Or both, Wright. Or both.

Fields in Motion: Ethnography in the Worlds of Dance
Dena Davida, editor
486 pp.
Wilfrid Laurier University Press
39.95$

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    Sylvain Verstricht

    has an MA in Film Studies and works in contemporary dance. His fiction has appeared in Headlight Anthology, Cactus Heart, and Birkensnake.

    s.verstricht [at] gmail [dot] com

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