Archives des performance — MAI | Montréal, arts interculturels

à suivre: a showcase of the alliance program

À suivre is a unique opportunity to discover what goes on behind the scenes at MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels), in the context of the Alliance program. Conceived in two distinct parts, this showcase illuminates the creative genius of artists working in visual and performing arts.

The first part of the event will take place in the MAI café-bar on November 15th, where artists Reihan Ebrahimi (21.22 cohort), Zahra BuAli (22.23 cohort), Marc-Alain Félix (22.23 cohort), Jongwook Park (22.23 cohort) and Hea R. Kim (21.22 cohort) will exhibit their work. An ASL and LSQ interpreter will be on-site to facilitate networking. Migration, the notion of rootedness and the quest for identity will weave the narrative thread of this exhibition.

The second part of the showcase will take place in the MAI theatre on November 17, with an evening dedicated to the performing arts. In the intimacy of the theatre, the public will be treated to performances by talents such as Willywonka (21.22 studio residency), Natsumi Sophia Bellali (22.23 cohort), Kozmic Joy (Joy Rider & Kozmic, 22.23 cohort), Myth (studio residency x Studio303, 22.23 cohort), & roots2reach (21.22 cohort). LSQ and ASL interpreters will be on site before the performances. Artist introductions and performances with dialogue will be interpreted in LSQ and ASL.

About Alliance

Hosting 10-15 artists, collectives and companies per year, Alliance is a unique support program conceived for artists from all fields who encounter systemic and structural obstacles. The program strives to eliminate barriers to their full participation in the arts by offering customized financial allocations and guidance that are adapted to the learning and creative needs and desires of each participant. Consult the alliance page for more information about the program.

À suivre : Visual Arts

Free entry

Opening: November 15th, 5pm

Exhibition: November 16th, 12pm to 6pm + November 17th, 12pm to 9:30pm

Accessibility: ASL + LSQ interpreters on-site during the vernissage

Artists: Reihan Ebrahimi, Zahra BuAli, Marc-Alain Félix, Jongwook Park et Hea R. Kim

→ More information on the works presented

À suivre: Performing Arts

November 17th, 7:30pm

Accessibility: LSQ + ASL interpreters on site before and during the performances

Artists: Willywonka, Natsumi Sophia Bellali, Kozmic Joy (Joy Rider & Kozmic), Myth & roots2reach

performances and credits

✦ IN NA

— Willywonka

Credits:

Lighting Design: Laure Anderson, Sound Design: Maucina Sone, Costume Design: Joanna Gourdin, Outside Eye: Jean-Pierre Mecdy, Showcase Lighting Designer: Lee Anholt

✦ Salam Tata

— Natsumi Sophia Bellali

Credits:

Choreography: Natsumi Sophia Bellali in collaboration with Saxon Fraser, Original text: Natsumi Sophia Bellali with consultation of Solomon Krause-Imlach, Mentor: Saxon Fraser, Sound Design: Solomon Krause-Imlach, Lighting Design: Marguerite Hudon, Dramaturgy Consultants: Sarah Elkashef, Aki Matsushita, Outside Eye: Alida Esmail, Artistic Consultant: Yvon Soglo (Crazy Smooth), Signer for the opening: Ashley Hefnawy, Costume: Mayumi Ide-Bergeron, Showcase Lighting Designer: Lee Anholt

✦ Mad About The Girl

— Kozmic Joy (Joy Rider & Kozmic)

Credits:

Video: Becca Redden, Costume Design: Joy Rider, Performers: Marbella Carlos aka Joy Rider, Chloé Seyrès aka Kozmic, Showcase Lighting Designer: Lee Anholt

✦ Ode

— Myth

Credits:

Performer: Myth, Residency partner: Studio 303, Mentor: Shérane Figaro, Showcase Lighting Designer: Lee Anholt

✦ roots2reach

— Alida Esmail, Hodan Youssouf, Sophia Wright

Credits:

Co-creators: Alida Esmail, Sophia Wright, & Hodan Youssouf, Performer: Alida Esmail, Sound and Vibration Designer: Samuel Thulin, Costume: Nalo Soyini Bruce, Dramaturg: Fatma Sarah Elkashelf, Consultant in Deaf Culture: Daz Saunders, Showcase Lighting Designer: Lee Anholt

deciphers

Deciphers is a physical performance by Naishi Wang and Jean Abreu that brings together elements of Chinese folk dance, Brazilian dance styles, spoken word, breath, and ink on paper. Both artists share a concern for the corporeal connections between immigration and translation as a linguistic phenomenon centering the immigrant experience. As co-performers and choreographers, Wang and Abreu make the stage their blank canvas, using raw, improvisational movements to highlight the body as the base of communication and meaning.

The February 16th performance will be followed by a talkback with the artists hosted by Guy Cools.

credits

Deciphers was created by Naishi Wang and Jean Abreu
Choreography and performed by: Naishi Wang + Jean Abreu
Lighting Design: Lucie Bazzo
Visual Design: Ivy Wang
Composer: Olesia Onykiienko
Dramaturgic advice: Guy Cools
Outside eye: Ginelle Chagnon
Rehearsal Director: Xing Bang Fu
Voice Coach: Fides Krucker
Access Consultant: Zed Lightheart
Technical Director: Emerson Kafarowski
Stage Manager/Technical Assistant in collaboration: A.J. Morra
Technical Manager: Cath Cullinane
PR and Marketing: Diagonal Dance
Management: Michael Peter Johnson, Jean Abreu Dance + Robert Sauvey, Dance Umbrella of
Ontario

partners

Partners in Canada: MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) + National Arts Centre + Harbourfront Centre + Citadel +Company + PuSh Festival + The CanDance Network + Canadian High Commission UK
Partners in UK: Fabric + Towner Gallery + Brighton Dome + Eastbourne Council + Take The Space + Arts Council England

Deciphers is supported by the National Arts Centre (NAC) visiting dance artist programme + The Candance Network small-scale creation fund + Canada Council for the Arts + Performing Arts Technical Residency programme at Harbourfront Center Toronto + PuSh walk special podcast

omaagomaan

Waawaate Fobister, a proud Anishnaabe from Grassy Narrows First Nation, is an actor, dancer, playwright, choreographer, instructor, and producer. In their work Omaagomaan, the multiple Dora-award-winning artist uses sound, movement, dance, and storytelling to embody Omaagomaan, a non-binary, two-spirit being who, in Anishinaabe cosmology and knowledge, represents the earth as well as the poisonous toxins humans have pushed into it. Omaagomaan themselves incorporates both beauty (onishishin = beautiful) and ugliness (maanaadizi = ugly). Fobister connects this collision of the beautiful and the ugly to the resilience of the Anishinaabe people, as they stitch back together fractured landscapes poisoned by mercury.

Talkback on February 9th after the performance hosted by Dominique Ireland.
Post-show discussion in English and ASL.
Two ASL interpreters will also be present before and after the show.

credits

Interpreter: Waawaate Fobister
Costume Design: Sage Paul
Lighting Design : Pierre Lavoie
Rehearsal Director: Carlos Rivera Martinez
Sound Design: Marc Merilainen
Original Direction: Troy Emery Twigg
2022 Remount Direction: Patti Shaughnessy
Anishinaabe and Clown Consultant: Don Kavanaugh

flesh and sound

Vías’ Flesh and Sound challenges how live art engages the audience. This two-part performance begins with an interactive installation in the gallery conceived by Siam Obregón, aimed at fostering a sense of attentiveness and contemplation in the viewer before transitioning into the performance in the theatre. This installation provides a unique opportunity for spectators to delve into the sounds that will later envelop them in the performance, offering a space for exploration, discovery, and reflection.

Following the installation, the theatre performance by Paco Ziel and Bernardo Alvarado Rojas features a rotating cast, ensuring a different perspective each night. Utilizing a 360-degree sound design, the performers elicit movement through reactions, disruptions, and amplifications. The choreography and sonic composition are intricately intertwined, drawing inspiration from creatures rooted in Mexican pre-Hispanic cosmology, bridging the past with the present. By integrating the study of pre-Hispanic instruments with contemporary technology and incorporating kinetic and acoustic vibrations from the human body, this performance invites the audience to break away from Western conventions of sound analysis, perception, and emotional resonance, posing a fundamental question: “How do you listen?”

The Flesh and Sound installation in the MAI gallery will be open to the public from 12pm to 6pm, from Wednesday November 8th to Saturday November 11th, 2023.

Rotating performers :

Nov 8th → Paco Ziel + Bernardo Alvarado Rojas
Nov 9th → Rachelle Bourget + Bernardo Alvarado Rojas
Nov 10th → Isabel Cruz + Rachelle Bourget
Nov 11th → Isabel Cruz + Paco Ziel

credits

Co-creators: Siam Obregón, Bernardo Alvarado Rojas, Paco Ziel.

Performers: Rachelle Bourget, Isabel Cruz , Bernardo Alvarado Rojas, Paco Ziel

Artistic advisor: Ami Shulman

External eye: Diana León

Visual direction, art installation design and set design: Siam Obregón

Sound Design: Eric Saucke-Lacelle

Technical Director: Benoit Lariviere

Lighting Designer: Benoit Larivière

Costume Design: Camille Thibault-Bédard

Official photo: Damian Siqueiros

Partners: MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels), Àgora de la Danse, Danse à la Carte, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, Conseil des Arts de Montréal, Vidéographe, Maison de la Culture Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, École Supérieure de Ballet du Québec, Consulado General de México en Montreal, Espacio México.

Creative team biographies

Paco Ziel, Co-Creator and Performer
Born in Mexico City, Paco began his career in classical dance at the École Supérieure de Ballet du Québec. Alongside his studies, Paco developed an interest in deep body awareness, leading him to discover different ways of training such as the Rubberband method, Gaga, Yoga , Feldenkrais and meditation. Since 2015, he has been a dancer with RUBBERBAND, under the direction of Victor Quijada, and has toured with the company in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Germany and Poland. In 2014, he founded the multidisciplinary laboratory Quantum Collective, presented twice by Tangente in Montreal. Paco has worked with other Montreal artists and companies such as PPS Danse, Anne Plamondon Productions, Martin Messier, Je suis Julio and independent choreographers. He has been a guest teacher at Springboard Danse Montréal, Domaine Forget, Transformation, l’École de Danse de Québec, l’École Supérieure de Ballet du Québec and Danse à la Carte. He is a self-taught filmmaker, photographer and electronic music composer who focuses primarily on the human body, movement and natural landscapes. Since 2019 Paco has been co-director of Vías alongside Diana León, for which he participated in the creation of the works Sur ce chemin, tu es sûr de te perdre, Sabor de mi corazón and Flesh and Sound.

Bernardo Alvarado, Co-Creator and Performer
Bernardo Alvarado Rojas is a music producer, composer and sound designer interested in finding ways to provoke vitality, self awareness and an enhanced perception of our relationship to our planet Earth and its habitants via his artwork. He makes use of a blend of ancestral and modern acoustic instruments, sound recording, and electronic instrumentation to create music and sound that attempts to explore the depths of our humanity.

Bernardo was born and raised in Mexico City. At age 19 he started his formal training as a producer, classical composer, pianist and guitarist at Concordia University. After graduating with honors in 2015, he started producing and collaborating with other artists to create electronic, traditional and classical music as KALMO. He also started offering professional music composition, sound design and sound post-production services to music supervisors, video editors, film directors, video production companies and dance choreographers with his label VibroSounds.

Siam Obregón, Visual direction, art installation design and set design
Siam Obregón is a Mexican independent filmmaker, visual artist, and curator based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. She graduated with honors from Concordia University, earning her BFA degree with a specialization in Film Production.

With a diverse artistic background in dance, theater, and photography, she is driven to experiment with various mediums. Her focus centers on observation, intimacy, and themes of cultural identity. Her latest works have been featured in multiple festivals, including HotDocs, Festival International du Film sur l’Art (FIFA), REGARD, and the Rhode Island Film Fest.

Isabel Cruz, Performer
Isabel Cruz graduated from l’École Supérieure de Ballet du Québec in 2022. She is now working with Margie Gillis as part of the Legacy Project. Her creative background has evolved through the years, including dance and music performance. Isabel is also interested and enjoys playing with music, choreography, design, painting, and photography, all of which she does for her own pleasure but as well as to serve her community. Isabel aims to reach a profound knowledge of dance’s breathtaking language in order to convey her feelings, ideas, and emotions through the practice, and consequently reach a level of communion both with herself and as a consequence with
the audience.

Rachelle Bourget, Performer
Based in Montreal, Rachelle Bourget is a contemporary dance artist from Winnipeg, Manitoba. A graduate of The School of Contemporary Dancers, she has worked with numerous choreographers, including Daina Ashbee, ENTITEY/jason martin, VIVUS – James Viveiros, Danse K par K, Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers, @tendance/C.Medina, Pablo Bronstein, and in works by Ming Hon and Riley Sims.

She was a founding member of Nova Dance Collective, a Winnipeg-based contemporary dance collective, between 2011 and 2016. She later focused on developing her artistic practice through the creation of solo works, mainly AFTER THE CAUSE, which was presented in Winnipeg at the Rachel Browne Theatre (2019), and in Montreal at Tangente Danse (2021) and Festival OFFTA (2022).

graveyards and gardens

Graveyards and Gardens – a collaborative performance installation created and performed by composer Caroline Shaw and choreographer Vanessa Goodman – displays the beauty of how the body remembers, while interrogating the intimacy between our surroundings and the body. This immersive theatrical work examines memory as a process of reconstruction rather than as an exact recall of fixed events. By embracing the various elaborations, distortions, and omissions of embodied memory, the artists create generative performance systems; a “living album” that continues to fold and unfold into itself.

The October 27th performance will be followed by a talkback with the artists hosted by Andrea Peña.

Trigger warning: mild strobing

credits

Co-creators/Interpreters/Set Design: Vanessa Goodman / Caroline Shaw
Costume Design: Vanessa Goodman
Artistic Producer: Hilary Maxwell
Sound Design: Kate De Lorme/Eric Chad
Technical Director and Lighting Designer: James Proudfoot
Video: David Cooper
Tour Agent: Brent Belsher

biographies

Vanessa Goodman respectfully acknowledges that she lives, works and creates on the ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō, Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations. She holds a BFA from Simon Fraser University and is the artistic director of Action at a Distance Dance Society. Vanessa is attracted to art that has a weight and meaning beyond the purely aesthetic and uses her choreography as an opportunity to explore the human condition. Her choreographic practice is driven by weaving generative movement and audio into performative environments. Her work creates a sense of intimacy between our surroundings and the body. She has received several awards and honours, including The Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award (2013); The Yulanda M. Faris Scholarship (2017/18); The Chrystal Dance Prize (2019); The Schultz Endowment from Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (2019); and the “Space to Fail” program (2019/20) in New Zealand, Australia and Vancouver. Her work has toured Canada, The United States, Europe and South America. Recent collaborations include works with Loscil, Graveyards and Gardens with Caroline Shaw and BLOT with Simona Deaconsecu. www.actionatadistance.ca

Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She works often in collaboration with others, as producer, composer, violinist, and vocalist. Caroline is the recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music, several Grammy awards, an honorary doctorate from Yale, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. This year’s projects include the score to “Fleishman is in Trouble” (FX/Hulu), vocal work with Rosalía (MOTOMAMI), the score to Josephine Decker’s “The Sky Is Everywhere” (A24/Apple), music for the National Theatre’s production of “The Crucible” (dir. Lyndsey Turner), Justin Peck’s “Partita” with NY City Ballet, a new stage work “LIFE” (Gandini Juggling/Merce Cunningham Trust), the premiere of “Microfictions Vol. 3” for NY Philharmonic and Roomful of Teeth, a live orchestral score for Wu Tsang’s silent film “Moby Dick” co-composed with Andrew Yee, two albums on Nonesuch (“Evergreen” and “The Blue Hour”), the score for Helen Simoneau’s dance work “Delicate Power”, tours of Graveyards & Gardens (co-created immersive theatrical work with Vanessa Goodman), and tours with So Percussion featuring songs from “Let The Soil Play Its Simple Part” (Nonesuch), amid occasional chamber music appearances as violist (Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, La Jolla Music Society). Caroline has written over 100 works in the last decade, for Anne Sofie von Otter, Davóne Tines, Yo Yo Ma, Renée Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, LA Phil, Philharmonia Baroque, Seattle Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Aizuri Quartet, The Crossing, Dover Quartet, Calidore Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, Miro Quartet, I Giardini, Ars Nova Copenhagen, Ariadne Greif, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Britt Festival, and the Vail Dance Festival. She has contributed production to albums by Rosalía, Woodkid, and Nas. Her work as vocalist or composer has appeared in several films, tv series, and podcasts including The Humans, Bombshell, Yellowjackets, Maid, Dark, Beyonce’s Homecoming, Tár, Dolly Parton’s America, and More Perfect. Her favorite color is yellow, and her favorite smell is rosemary.

dead (annulée)

The duo Beauty and the Beast (Amanda Apetrea and Halla Ólafsdóttir) who, for more than two decades, have remained a mythical force in dance are now DEAD. Or their show is. DEAD is a pornographic dystopian dance merged with poetry, music, the beauty of darkness and the in-between, seeing inner and outer realities. Exploring expressions of sexuality, body, and gender with their witchy metal aesthetic cuts gravely demon voices and surprisingly tender moments. They weaponize the power of horniness and lust. A power that they believe can move mountains. The show will practice conscious consent with the audience.

Forget Madonna, Prince, Elvis, Beyoncé, Whitney and Britney. Halla and Amanda never needed their last names and now they take on the greatest mononymes in history and blow you away.

hotter than a pan (cancelled)

With a soundtrack composed by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, this assemblage of dance, text, and action attempts to further an aesthetics of melancholia and alienation, not as a political inhibitor, but as a nexus where radical poetics can be justified and proliferated. The show moves beyond the politics of identification and essentialism by leaning into the undercurrent, the emotional, the motorising, the affective, the non-narrative, and the non-linear. Striving to facilitate and maximise the power of the marginal body, this solo experiments with the articulation of Black and Queer ontologies.

Malik Nashad Sharpe is a choreographer, performer and movement director based in London, UK.

real talk # 2.0: vectors of adverse desires (annulée)

Different parts club dance party, introverted protest, shy popsicle concert, extreme nap time, faux fur lecture installation, and healing circle, Real Talk # 2.0 deals with erotic ecologies and opaque dramaturgies of sex. Mobilizing queer club aesthetics, pulse, traum-ah, and collaboration with the unseen as a primary mover in the space, the work asks: “In the aftermath of a rupture, how do we tend to the wound ?” Electronic House music will throb throughout the space transforming itself into a live temporal sound bath revealing subliminal messages of what is at stake for us all, again and again, alone and together.

estrella/x is a queer, Afro Guatemalan choreographer, performance artist, and healer born in New Jersey (Lenape territory) and is currently based in San Francisco (Ramaytush Ohlone territory).

babylift

Anh Vo’s fragmented and collaged multi-media works combine the terror and pleasure of erotic hauntings. Named after a 1975 mass evacuation of children from South Vietnam to the U.S., resulting in a plane crash that killed 78 of those children, BABYLIFT confronts the afterlives of the Vietnam War (a.k.a. the Resistance War Against Imperialist America). Striving to queer a linear masculinist history, Vo weaves this together with cultural memories of the Civil Rights Movement, USAmerican freedom fantasies of the 1960s, and current leftist activism.

Anh Vo is a Vietnamese choreographer, dancer, theorist, and activist currently based in Brooklyn, NYC.

gender diasporist

Gender Diasporist is an anti-colonial enactment of active refusal. This interdisciplinary live performance examines Tobaron Waxman’s application for Polish Citizenship as an out, transsexual person of Jewish heritage. While refusing the colonialism of the ‘law of return’ to Israel, and the inherent colonialism of Canadian citizenship, this work is simultaneously an act of solidarity with LGBTQ+ and feminist activists in Poland, who face increasing violence. Using video, photography, vocal performance and artifacts this auto-ethnographic project engages what Waxman calls ‘transsexual knowledge’, to interrogate how borders and concepts of citizenship make moral and ethical claims on bodies.