Archives des music — MAI | Montréal, arts interculturels

plasticity/desires

Designed for seven dancing bodies, Plasticity/Desires deals with notions of individual and mutual desires. Set against an enveloping soundscape, an imposing mass of raw clay and a dark pool of water forms the landscape that these people shape and excavate, like the elements of human nature: instinct, resilience, adaptability, contemplation, creativity, imagination. The discharge of energy, sustained investment and relentlessness reveals a sensuality and abandonment in the performers. The archaeology of their desires manifests itself in an accumulation of gestures that articulate the memories, traces and sensations they carry within them. In this space, the presence of water serves as a portal to the fantasies and delusions of the individuals on stage, allowing them to slip into a space where our collective perceptions are altered.

Content warning: high volume, heavy smoke, strobe effects

Duration: 1h20

Co-presented with La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines

credits

An Other Animals production

Choreography and Artistic Direction: Alexandre Morin
Music and Sound Design: Jonathan Goulet
Performers: Myriam Arseneault, Philippe Dépelteau, Sara Hanley, Chéline Lacroix, Mathieu Leroux, Justin De Luna and Charlie Prince
Lighting Design: Karine Gauthier
Dramaturg: Mathieu Leroux
Costume Design: Angela Rassenti + Jonathan Saucier
Set Design: Jonathan Saucier + Alexandre Morin
Clay Consultant: Pascale Girardin
Production Manager: Florence Cardinal-Tang + Elodie Lê (supported by Parbleux)
Technical Director: Sophie Robert
Production Assistance: Philippe Dépelteau and Wolfe Girardin
Rehearsal Director: Emmanuelle Bourassa Beaudoin
Scenic Painter: Véronique Pagnoux
Assistant Painter: Vivienne Angelique
Additional Assistance: Justine Bellefeuille, Camil Bellefleur

Residency partners: Fonderie Darling, Circuit-Est, Théâtre Gilles-Vigneault, La Danse sur les routes du Québec, Maison de la culture Rosemont and Maison de la culture Maisonneuve.

Project supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Conseil des arts de Montréal.

acknowledgements

I express the deepest gratitude towards the dancers for their generosity, audacity, devotion and patience throughout this 4 year process. It has been an honor to see your individual imaginations, body archives and desires materialize in the work. I’ve learnt so much about myself and art making through you. We’ve formed a special bond that extends beyond the project. It’s been a true gift.

Thanks to the design team for contributing your craft to realize the vision. Angela, your costumes are a labor of love, constructed in such an alienated time for creation, in the heart of the pandemic. The costumes are a testament of your intuition, whimsy and sensibilities, having a lasting impact on the project despite having to leave halfway through the process. Thank you Jonthan S. for bravely stepping in and putting your twist on the looks and the scenographic environment. You did some serious heavy lifting to get us where we are now. Karine, thanks for your divine, trippy, mood-inducing lighting that has brought the piece into deeper dimensions. I cherish our spicey Cancer meets ascending Scorpio creation dynamic. Sincerest gratitude towards Pascale Girardin for your guiding presence and generous sharing of clay knowledge throughout the creation. Your eyes, hands and heart have left their imprint on every molecule of the project.

Thanks Math for the extensive dramaturgical research done during the conception of the project, as well as those oh-so-important milestone meetings we’ve had throughout the highs and lows of carrying a project over years. Your wisdom, encouragement and tough love has offered me a framework to thrive in. If only people knew the extent of your contributions to my work and my evolution as a choreographer. You truly are the secret third member of Other Animals.

Emmanuelle, you are a gem of a human being. You arrived in the last stretch of the project with such care, warmth and insight. Through your consistent work and devotion towards the show and the team’s well-being, you created an environment for each artist to flourish. You have this precious capacity to inspire others to strive towards clarity without stifling spontaneity, wildness and individuality. Every seam of the piece is laced with your vibrant artistry. Deepest thanks to you.

Thanks to the production team. Florence & Elodie: your support in production management lifted a huge weight off my shoulders and allowed me to breathe again in a crucial moment where tides were turning. All this is thanks to Clara and Claire at Parbleux for extending their generous support. The services you offer to the community are honorable and essential! Sophie R., thanks for coming onboard and tackling all the technical challenges of the project (and boy, there were some!) in an era where it’s the hunger games to find a technical director. Thanks Philippe, Wolfe, Justine and Camil for meticulously caring for the clay and logistics in the theater.

I extend the biggest thanks to Camille Larivée and Olivier Bertrand for programming the show and believing in our ambitious project! This wouldn’t have been possible without your support and the generous platform you’ve offered us. Thanks to the teams at the MAI + La Chapelle in all departments for putting everything in place for the project to find its audience in uncertain times for art making.
Thanks to artists who have generously contributed during research phases over the past four years: Gabriel, Morena, Sophie M. All three of you are eloquent, insightful and precious practitioners in the live arts. Your contributions in movement, stage writing and conversations have kept resonating until this very moment.

Thanks to our residency partners: Fonderie Darling, Circuit-Est, Théâtre Gilles-Vigneault, La Danse sur les routes du Québec, Maison de la culture Rosemont and Maison de la culture Maisonneuve. Thanks to Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and Conseil des arts de Montréal for the financial support.

And lastly, thanks to my artistic wingman Jonathan. This rollercoaster process has really tested us and revealed our complementary strengths, allowing us to fulfill this monumental challenge of a production. We have come out on the other end transformed, satiated and ready for the next chapter. Plasticity/Desires beautifully embodies the past 7 years of art making together with Other Animals.

— Alexandre Morin (Other Animals), Choreographer and Artistic Director for Plasticity/Desires

public+ events

➞ January 19th, 5:30pm
In the Shadow of Forward Motion: An Interdisciplinary Conversation on Performance, Matter, and Movement
Didier Morelli : Stephen Schofield, Kuh Del Rosario, Florencia Sosa Rey, Alexandre Morin

➞ January 20th + 27th at 5:00pm
Liminal Drift Projection
Other Animals

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.

wampum / ᎠᏕᎳ ᏗᎦᎫᏗ

An act of Indigenous Futurism, Wampum / ᎠᏕᎳ ᏗᎦᎫᏗ is the electronic music project of Elisa Harkins. Singing in Cherokee, Mvskoke, and English languages, Harkins becomes a language guardian, fighting extinction whilst crafting a head-bouncing beat. Combining disco and phonological preservation, Harkins strives to decolonize expectations of how pop music should look and sound, while bringing Indigenous representation to the field. In Harkins’ cosmos, pressed vinyl and radio play become radical tools of language conservation and transmission.

This performance of Wampum / ᎠᏕᎳ ᏗᎦᎫᏗ refers to wampum belts and Indigenous peacekeeping, as well as the Cherokee use of wampum beads as currency. ᎠᏕᎳ ᏗᎦᎫᏗ, pronounced a-de-la di-ga-gu-di, can be translated to “money on a string.” The intention of this Wampum / ᎠᏕᎳ ᏗᎦᎫᏗ performance is to create a metaphorical peacekeeping agreement between the spectators of the piece, regardless of tribe or race.

soul whisper

Soul Whisper, put forth by the Haitian-Quebecoise singer, author, and composer Cyndi Charlemagne, is a soul-jazz musical performance where poetry and song share notes. For Charlemagne, this soul whisper evokes our innermost thoughts, the intuition that allows us to stay connected to ourselves through both joyful and trying times. The spoken poems help set the stage for songs that dig deep into the expressive richness of jazz and soul. Swinging between complexity and stripped-down sounds, unleashing musical riffs, vocal agility and improvisation, Cyndi Charlemagne’s music features playful vocals charged with sincerity, backed by skilled musicians.

american cuck, from plantations to pornhub to breitbart.com (canceled)

American Cuck is a multimedia video and environmental installation and musical performance exploring the maintenance of white supremacy in the pornographic imagination and psyche of the U.S. nation-state, and its effects on every aspect of American Life. M. Lamar specifically explores the construction of the white male cuckold, the black male object of his obsession, and the relation of both to a plantation culture of race, desire, and violence. Indeed, it is Lamar’s argument that the construction of the hyper-sexual black person in the white imagination continues to lead to black death in a white supremacist society. The hyper-sexual, hyper-physical black person in the white supremacist mind offers virtuosic pleasure and threat. This is core to nation identity.

dreamweaver

ANACHNID is a Montreal-based multidisciplinary artist of Oji-Cree and Mi’kmaq First Nations. She explores very different musical styles from soul to electro-pop to indie trap and is the first winner of the Indigenous Songwriter Award from SOCAN. We can hear her animal totem, the spider, as she interweaves bitingly accurate political response with straight up sass in her dance floor hits before sliding into soft aching romantic tracks. ANACHNID presents an intimate concert in tandem with a DJ and VJ. Circle up and get caught in this spider’s gorgeous web.

shaneera (canceled)

Berlin-based Kuwaiti composer and artist Fatima Al Qadiri performs her new EP Shaneera with live audio visuals. A love letter to Arab queer icons in five energetic club tracks, the album deals with gender identity and performance in the Gulf. The titular “Shaneera” is the English mispronunciation of the Arabic word “shanee’a” (شنيعة) which literally means “outrageous, nefarious, hideous, major and foul.” But as queer slang now used in Kuwait and some Arab countries, Shaneera refers to the positive figure or act of a gender-defying persona, of being an evil queen. You know a Shaneera when you behold one.

elle's black space mission: an afrodiasporic odyssey

Ellise Barbara means to create a “black space” free from physical or mental racialization. While Barbara’s earlier work ranged across synth, pop, R&B and funk, her new band project, fittingly called Elle’s Black Space Mission: An Afrodiasporic Odyssey, features solely musicians of Sub-Saharan African descent. *Elle’s Black Space Mission: An Afrodiasporic Odyssey*_ hearkens back to Afrofuturism, a movement pioneered by Sun Ra in the 1950s that wove together Black culture with futuristic or sci-fi themes.

Barbara’s music is rooted in her experience as a queer, transgender person of colour. She has toured, recorded and made music for the past eight years, with several releases notably Sexe Machin / Sex Machine (Fixture Records).

dynasty

Dynasty, created by Hua Li (a.k.a. Peggy Hogan), is a live multimedia experience accompanying her debut studio album of the same name. Supported by video projections by Tyler Reekie, Dynasty tells of Hua Li’s journey as a first-generation Chinese-Canadian and deals with topics like deceitful love, family power dynamics, and serious booty-shaking.

Hogan took on the nom de guerre Hua Li in response to pressures to conform to traditional gender roles as a woman in jazz, allowing her to express her femininity, sexuality and politics. Well-known for her feminist hip-hop, Hua Li, has released The Bound Feat, a 2013 mixtape, and the 2015 EP Za Zhong.

rainbow twilight

Elysia Crampton’s unrestrained electronic music is the flashpoint of a myriad influences opening upon the complexity and multifacetedness of Aymara becoming. Underscored by radical and queer politics, Crampton’s experimental work gives sonorous form to contemporary expressions of Aymara resistance and survival: a project of “becoming-with,” in the shades given this term by Donna Haraway via prison abolitionist Che Gossett.

Her album Demon City, composed in honour of the revolutionary Bartolina Sisa, was deemed a “masterwork” by Rolling Stone and was one of Pitchfork’s 20 best experimental albums of 2016. Her latest release, Spots y Escupitajo, leads the listener into “a dizzying, hyper-conceptual collection of miniatures.”