MARIE CHOUINARD / COMPAGNIE MARIE CHOUINARD (CA)

Something strong and earthly that shakes your very soul. Le Nouvel Observateur

When this new version of SACRE DU PRINTEMPS appeared in the 1990s, the world of dance rubbed its eyes in astonishment: For a century, the key work of modernism had been interpreted as the sacrifice of the individual which the masses must ritually destroy. The struggle between female and male, individual and group, appeared inextricably linked to the subject matter. With a single multiplied prop on the stage, a young Canadian suddenly offered a completely different version: Set to Igor Stravinsky’s original music, she prolongs time to a continuum. Everything takes place at once. “It is as if I were dealing with the very moment after the instant life first appeared,” says the choreographer. “The performance is the unfolding of that moment.”

It was fun, imaginative and utterly captivating. The Chronicle Herald

Huge and in black-and-white: When Marie Chouinard held the book by the painter and poet HENRI MICHAUX : MOUVEMENTS in her hands for the first time, she immediately read his abstract-surreal ink drawings as a kind of choreography. She has meanwhile “translated” it page by page into dance. Projected tall as a building, the audience can follow the inspiring dialogue between image and movement at every moment: Effervescent beings appear and vanish again. Towering flows of ink become narrower, while a female dancer almost disappears in the vertical between the pages. Electrified, thighs spiral up from their joints, a figure hurriedly tiptoes out of sight. Everyone rushes through the scenery in their very own manner, one traverses the room backwards on the knees of another accompanied by a lashing sound collage. Seemingly endless associations arise, surprising correspondences, explosions of human expression. Who is this polymorphic being?

Marie Chouinard, the current director of the dance section of the Venice Biennale, is known for her idiosyncratic movement language – energetically explosive in the expansion of space, technically highly skilled, permeated by amusing allusions to the history of dance. In 2016, the Quebecer Marie Chouinard received the Canadian Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for her lifetime achievement.

Concept, choreography, artistic direction: Marie Chouinard
Dance: Charles Cardin-Bourbeau, Sébastian Cossette-Masse, Catherine Dagenais-Savard, Valeria Galluccio, Morgane Le Tiec, Scott McCabe, Sacha Ouellette-Dequire, Carol Prieur, Clémentine Schindler, Megan Walbaum

LE SACRE DU PRINTEMPS
Music: The Rite of Spring, Igor Strawinsky, 1913.
With the kind support of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc. Publisher and copyright owner, 35 min.
Lighting: Marie Chouinard
Costumes: Liz Vandal
Props: Zaven Paré
Make-up: Jacques Lee Pelletier
Hair styles: Daniel Éthier
Production: Compagnie Marie Chouinard
Co-production: National Arts Centre (Ottawa), Festival international de nouvelle danse (Montréal)
and Kunstencentrum Vooruit (Ghent)

HENRI MICHAUX : MOUVEMENTS
Musical composition: Louis Dufort
Poem, projected drawings: Henri Michaux, from the book Mouvements (1951) with the kind permission of the right holders of Henri Michaux and Editions Gallimard
Sound Environment: Edward Freedman
Light, set design: Marie Chouinard
Costumes, hair styles: Marie Chouinard
Voice: Gerard Reyes
Translation: Howard Scott
Produktion: Compagnie Marie Chouinard supported by ImPuls Tanz, Wien
Supported by: Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts de Montréal.