Preamble features original video interviews highlighting the practice of artists in MAI’s programming.
8. Imago Theatre
Foxfinder
Foxfinder, by U.K. playwright Dawn King, is a haunting eco-parable exploring climate change and its impact on the psychology of fear and the human need for certainty.
9. Thierry Huard
les liens
Having explored power dynamics in his latest creation, versatile artist Thierry Huard now turns his queer and kaleidoscopic gaze on interpersonal relationships, converting the MAI gallery into a dark and cavernous cocoon.
8. Sujit Vaidya
OFF CENTRE
Exploring the embodiment of gender and sexuality both in and out of dance, the work becomes a luscious celebration of all things sensual and erotic, a full throttled defiance of heteronormative clichés, and a loving embrace of self.
7. ĀNANDAṀ
Ephemeral Artifacts: Travis Knights
Ephemeral Artifacts examine le corps dansant en tant que contenant de connaissances incarnées et lieu de transmission dans le temps. Cette édition, qui met en vedette l’artiste de claquettes Travis Knights, explore les liens indélébiles entre le jazz et les claquettes à travers les corps noirs divins.
6. Châu Kim-Sanh (Equivoc’)
BLEU NÉON
In a distant, fictional Vietnam, the echoes of pop music on cassette tape reverberate against the sounds of modern Vietnamese rap. Châu Kim-Sanh inhabits this space, metamorphosing through bodily states generated by the presence of coloured neon lights.
5. Maria Kefirova
backs boxes towels
backs boxes towels began as a search for sensation. Kefirova’s performance departs from this desire to build space through physicality and to make sound visible.
4. Manolis Antoniou (Boulouki Theatre)
The Futur Is Another Country
Collectively conceived, the work is a kaleidoscopic dinner party of sorts, where scripted and improvised conversations about the origins and preparation of food lead to dialogues about citizenship, identity, immigration, borders, xenophobia, utopia.
3. Edon Descollines et Catherine Bouregois
Le magasin ferme
Joe Jack & John and Edon Descollines presents Le magasin ferme, a short piece merging performance art, installation, spoken word, dance, video and visual imagery.
2. Élian Mata (Productions EM)
Trajectoires
Trajectoires is a performance installation involving eight collaborators. Moving through this rich, moving tableau that deals with the nuance and complexity of being human, the audience encounters these living works of art embodied by the performers.
1. farah atoui and viviane saglier
making revolution : collective histories, desired futures
Making Revolution explores the forms of struggle and revolution in the Middle East and North Africa through video art and installation.
20.21
12. Daphne Boyer
otipemisiwak
Otipemisiwak* celebrates the lives and material cultures of three women: the artist’s great grandmother, Eléanore; her grandmother, Clémence; and her mother, Anita. Showcasing recent process-based works on paper, textile and 360º animation, works feature a digital-beading technique the artist invented called ‘Berries to Beads’.
11. Hoda Adra
Les formes qui nous traversent
Les formes qui nous traversent unearths thirty hand-written log books recording a long period of isolation. Imagined and created by the spoken-word poet Hoda Adra, this film-concert sees her take the stage after leaving the land of Brumania, a fictitious country where pink blobs choke the voices of its people .
10. Gabriel dharmoo / Bijuriya
Bijuriya’s drag cabaret
This Drag Cabaret presents numbers that range in style from calypso, Bollywood (vintage, glamorous and/or psychedelic), to baroque opera and… the odd vocalizations of imaginary creatures
9. johanna nutter & nadia myre
strike/thru + a casual reconstruction
𝐀 𝐂𝐚𝐬𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐑𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 + 𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐊𝐄 / 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐔 is a double-bill interdisciplinary encounter between two old friends from Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal.
8. ralp escamillan
fakeknot (ralph escamillan) / whip
“whip” is a 60-minute duet set in the round, performed with leather hoods that disguise performers faces and also inhibiting their sight for the entirety of the work.
7. sonia bustos & ariana pirela sánchez
support cam + may
In this episode, we explore the journey and projects of dancers Sonia Bustos and Ariana Pirela Sanchez.
6. Cyndi Charlemagne
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.
5. Heather Mah
Pomegranate is a solo by veteran Montreal dancer Heather Mah. The performance is an interpretation of her grandmother’s life, a fragmented journey told through stories of family and migration that begin in China in 1895.
This piece delicately sketches the imagined journey of this woman, who sought to escape her war-torn country but ultimately died there at the age of 60, despite all the efforts made to rescue her.
4. Soleil Launière
Created by Innu interdisciplinary artist Soleil Launière, Sheuetamᵘ is a performative and auditive installation that unfolds continuously over 5 days. The piece convenes the presence of a two-spirit being, caught in conversation with its surrounding territory and technology.
Interweaving the past, the present and the future, this powerful ritual-performance amplifies Indigenous presence and disrupts the narrative of capitalist and colonialist modernity.
3. Diana León
Sur ce chemin, tu es sûre de te perdre is a multidisciplinary solo, somewhere between dance, theatre and music, is the fruit of three collaborations between Diana León and emerging creators Parco Ziel, Jeremy Galdeano and Vera Kvarcakova. Their guiding theme is knowledge of the self and the work necessary – amidst social pressures, inner demons and aspirations – to find one’s own voice.
With compositions by Alejandro Loredo, Tom Jarvis and Diana León, Sur ce chemin, tu es sûre de te perdre is a powerful evocation of the pleasure in finding one’s own rhythm, in response to those who surround and inspire us.
2. Live in Palestine
Organised by AXENÉO7 (Gatineau) in collaboration with DAIMON (Gatineau) and A Space Gallery (Toronto), Live In Palestine brings together performance work that asks the viewer to consider how bodies, actions and images produce meaning in particular geopolitical spaces.
Showcasing prominent and emerging contemporary artists currently living and working in Palestine, Live in Palestine focuses on work that combines performative practices with political engagement, addressing some of the complexities of living in occupied Palestine.
1. Kama La Mackerel
Interdisciplinary artist and writer Kama La Mackerel interweaves poetry, storytelling, dance, femme tongues and broken colonial languages in a solo performance that is at once personal and political. ZOM-FAM (meaning “man-woman” or “transgender” in Mauritian Kreol) narrates the story of a gender-creative child growing up in the 80s and 90s on the plantation island of Mauritius.
ZOM-FAM interweaves narratives that bring together ancestral voices, femme tongues, broken colonial languages and a tender queer subjectivity, all of which are grappling with the legacy of plantation servitude.