Compagnie Marie Chouinard (CAN)

The international reputation of the Compagnie Marie Chouinard stems from twenty-five years of work by the Montreal artist. A fixture on the world's major stages and festivals, the Company has its roots in Marie Chouinard's first creation in 1978, a solo entitled Cristallisation. This work, which immediately established her originality and integrity, was followed by some fifty choreographies, action-performances, vocal works and installations, in which she refined her unwavering interest in formal research and the mysteries of the human body in all its aspects. From 1978 to 1990, Marie Chouinard performed alone on stage, travelling throughout the world, absorbing various cultures, techniques and philosophies, which she would transform into a personal language with universal resonances. After these twelve years as a soloist, she retired from performing and founded Compagnie Marie Chouinard in 1990. In the works she has created since then, the choreographer has succeeded in communicating to her dancers the urgency, power and sensibility that characterized her own performances. She has also invented formal structures from which a deep and primordial humanity emerges to touch the imagination. By exploring the body's secret intelligence and inexhaustible complexity, by developing perfectly conceived formal constructions in her quest for truth and beauty, Marie Chouinard evokes the fragility of the human species within the cosmos, along with the unalloyed joy of being alive.