In May Trafó invites you to discover the cutting edge of Canadian dance. Daniéle Desnoyers and her company Le Carré des Lombes (founded in 1989) are performing in Budapest for the first time, but the fame of Canadian dance has already been established by such well-known companies as Compagnie Marie Chouinard, Compagnie Flak, The Holy Body Tattoo and O Vertigo who have all presented their work in Trafó.
Duos pour corps et instruments is a choreographic piece created by Danièle Desnoyers as artist in residence at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. During the course of this six-week residency, an invitation extended annually by the museum to a performing artist or filmmaker, Danièle Desnoyers chose to continue a cycle of works in which the choreography and the dancers’ physical movement are indissociably linked with their immediate sound environment. This symbiosis between body and music, which she began investigating in 1999 with the creation of Concerto grosso pour corps et surface métallique and has since sustained with her close cooperation with sound designer Nancy Tobin, also underlay Bataille, first performed in 2002, and forms the artistic foundation of Duos pour corps et instruments. What does this mean exactly? When entering the performance space, one sees three guitar amplifiers and a few effect pedals on stage. The audience sits on three sides of the stage and only a few meters from them the dancers perch on the amplifiers. By employing speakers as microphones – attached to the dancers’ legs or carried by the dancers – Nancy Tobin creates a game of movement and sound. At the slightest movement of the dancers, at the slightest change of position feedback from the amplifiers becomes the basic acoustic element, randomly producing a variety of fascinating, intense and somewhat raw sound effects.
Le Carré des Lombes’ performance is the combination of sound and movement in space, the dialogue of the different artistic disciplines in which the choreographer has been keenly interested for the past five years. In the interpretation of three amazing dancers, Sophie Corriveau, Anne Bruce Falconer and Sioned Watkins, the dialogue of the arts with little electronic amplifiers on their legs turns into a seductive flirtation of dance and sound, an elegant, sensuous interplay of body, motion, electronic music and space. With each little (inter-)action, sometimes made up of just a coquettish sketch, a single gesture, little spicy dialogue miniatures come about on the open playing area.
Since the early 1990s, Danièle Desnoyers has distinguished herself as one of Quebec’s leading choreographers, creating intense and perceptive works that have opened up new perspectives in dance. Rich and innovative, her work derives from a process of reflection and exploration that appeals strongly to the senses. With her company Le Carré des Lombes, formed in 1989, she has undertaken singular choreographic projects whose creative set designs and sound environments have strongly influenced the language of the body. Throughout her career, the choreographer’s artistic path has been fostered by creative residences in such institutions as the Yellow Spring Institute, Agora de la danse, Centre d’art Vooruit, Le Groupe Dance Lab, and more recently, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and Fondation Jean-Pierre Perreault. The works of Danièle Desnoyers have been performed on the major stages of North America, Europe and Asia. They have also played at some of the world’s most important festivals, including the Festival international de nouvelle danse in Montreal, the Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa, Danse à Lille, the Spring Dance Festival in Utrecht, the New Moves Festival in Glasgow, Les Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis, the Biennale nationale de danse du Val-de-Marne, the Tanz-Im-August Festival in Berlin, and the International Festival of Contemporary Dance in Munich.
Duos pour corps et instruments a co-production of Le Carré des Lombes and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.
Duos pour corps et instruments (50 min) Choreography and space design: Danièle Desnoyers Dancers: Sophie Corriveau, AnneBruce Falconer, Siôned Watkins Sound design: Nancy Tobin Lighting design: Marc Parent Video fragment design: Danièle Desnoyers and Steve Montambault Costumes: Denis Lavoie Makeup: Angelo Barsetti Music research: Kevin Ei-lchi de Forest Rehearsal: France Roy and Ken Roy Photo credits: Luc Senécal Technical crew: Lucie Bazzo, Jean-François Marsan
Le Carré des Lombes receives the financial assistance of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Montreal Arts Council, the Fonds de stabilisation et de consolidation des arts et de la culture du Québec, and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada.
