In connection with the Françoise Sullivan exhibition, the Musée d’art contemporain is holding a study day on dance and the visual arts. Participants in the dance and performance program accompanying the exhibition will have the opportunity to reflect on their contribution and talk about their relationship to Sullivan’s work. Various other figures active over the last decades in the fields of dance, exhibition curation and the visual arts will also take part in the discussion, focusing particularly on the evolving interaction between these disciplines and their current occupation of exhibition spaces.

Schedule

10:30 a.m.: Dena Davida (moderator), Lynda Gaudreau, Simon Grenier-Poirier, Catherine Lavoie-Marcus, Dorian Nuskind-Oder, The Two Gullivers (Flutura & Besnik Haxhillari)

1:30 p.m.: Paul-André Fortier, Angélique Willkie

3 p.m.: Ginette Boutin, Michèle Febvre

Participants

Active since 1978 as a performer, choreographer and teacher of dance, Ginette Boutin has worked with a number of troupes, including Les Ballets Modernes du Québec, le Groupe Nouvelle Aire, Danse Partout and Montréal Danse. Since 1986 she has also been collaborating with Françoise Sullivan, and in 1992 she received a Canada Council grant to mount a solo show composed of the artist’s choreographies; she has taken part in several films by Mario Côté that feature choreographies by Sullivan, including Dédale, Les Saisons Sullivan and Black and Tan Fantasy/Répétition. In addition, Ginette Boutin has created and performed original works for the openings of exhibitions by visual artists, among them Lisa Tognon and Nathalie Plouffe. Over the course of her career she has danced works by Françoise Sullivan, Paul-André Fortier, Jean-Pierre Perreault, Daniel Léveillé, James Kudelka, Ginette Laurin and numerous others, in Europe and North America.

Trained in the performing arts, Dena Davida has been working as a performer, choreographer, researcher, educator and curator in contemporary dance for the past fifty years. As well serving as co-founder and curator of Tangente (1980 to 2018) and the Festival international de nouvelle danse de Montréal (1985 to 2001), she taught in the dance department of the Université du Québec à Montréal from 1985 to 2010, and was awarded a Ph.D. in Études et pratiques des arts from the same university (2006). She publishes and lectures regularly on art dance and culture, and on live arts curation. Dena Davida is co-editor of the anthologies Fields in Motion: Ethnography in the Worlds of Dance (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012) and Curating Live Arts: Critical Perspectives, Essays and Conversations in Theory and Practice (Berghahn Books, 2018).

For over forty years Paul-André Fortier has been contributing to the field of Québec contemporary dance as a creator, performer and educator. He began his career in the 1970s, performing with the Groupe Nouvelle Aire and participating in the early works of such colleagues as Édouard Lock and Daniel Léveillé. He has since created around fifty choreographies, solos, group pieces and in situ projects. A performer of considerable presence, this “man who dances” exploits restrictions of space, time and technique in order to explore his own limits and those of his art. Inspired by crossovers between different art forms, he has collaborated with such creators as Françoise Sullivan, Betty Goodwin, Rober Racine, Alain Thibault, Robert Morin and Malcolm Goldstein.

Before retiring from teaching, Michèle Febvre was a professor in the dance department of the Université du Québec à Montréal. She has also worked as a performer with the Groupe Nouvelle Aire and Fortier Danse Création, for Françoise Sullivan and Louise Bédard, and, more recently, for Sylvain Émard and Nicolas Cantin. Author of Danse contemporaine et théâtralité (Chiron, 1995), she has served as editor for several anthologies, including La danse au défi (Parachute, 1987), Jean-Pierre Perreault : regard pluriel (Les Heures bleues, 2001) and Anatomie du vertige : Ginette Laurin : vingt de création (Les Heures bleues, 2005). Michèle Febvre continues to be active in the dance milieu as a consultant, author and artistic advisor.

Artist, choreographer and researcher Lynda Gaudreau is particularly interested in experimental practices. She creates works ― video installations or performance installations ― in which film, body and object intermingle. Her projects offer visitors an unsettling experience where unusual situations are subject to critical reflection. Lynda Gaudreau has collaborated with a number of international contemporary centres: aside from her close relationship with Flemish culture, she has collaborated with the Théâtre de la Ville de Paris (which coproduced her work for some seven years), the Venice Biennale and, more recently, the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA) in London, UK. The subject of her doctoral dissertation in Études et pratiques des arts is the concept of asynchrony in the arts.

Simon Grenier-Poirier is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Montréal. His artistic and conceptual research encompasses relational art, the concept of hospitality, curation, systems, the Cold War, and the role of culture in power organizations. Trained in sound recording and the visual arts, he pursues a largely collaborative practice. Aside from his work with the choreographer Dorian Nuskind-Oder, Simon Grenier-Poirier was a member of the musical duo Automelodi (2012-2016), participating in a European tour and collaborating on the recording of the Surlendemains Acides group’s second studio album.

Catherine Lavoie-Marcus is an interdisciplinary artist based in Montréal. She is interested in manifestations of collective intelligence in choreography and literature, including open scores, collaborative writing, knowledge sharing and situated gestures. Since 2008 she has been presenting her creations in theatres and artist-run centres in Québec (Tangente, Studio 303, Usine C, Centre d’art Skol, Fonderie Darling, Musée d’art contemporain) and sharing personal and collective research internationally (France, Spain, China, Mexico). As well as publishing theoretical and critical reflections in the form of articles and essays, she is a regular columnist for the journal esse arts + opinions.

Based in Montreal since 2009, Dorian Nuskind-Oder is an artist working in the mediums of choreography and performance. Often in collaboration with visual artist Simon Grenier-Poirier, she makes art about social dynamics, and systems of value and exchange. Recent works include Speed Glue (2017/2019), a choreographic score for two table tennis players, Biergarten für Alchimisten (2016), a lecture performance about alchemy and artificial intelligence, and Memory Palace (2016), a performance for three people with a background in social or folkloric dance forms. Dorian Nuskind-Oder is an artist-member of the production company Je suis Julio.

Performer, singer, educator and dramaturge Angélique Willkie pursued a career for over twenty-five years in Europe, where she worked with various collaborators, including Alain Platel, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Jan Lauwers/Needcompany and, as a singer, with the world music group Zap Mama. A dramaturge working in the fields of dance and circus, Angélique Willkie is assistant professor of contemporary dance at Concordia University and a doctoral candidate in Études et pratiques des arts at the Université du Québec à Montréal. Her research reflects her interest in the dramaturgy of the performing body.

The Two Gullivers is a duo composed of artists Flutura Preka & Besnik Haxhillari, who were born in Albania and have been living in Québec since 2000. They have presented performance works at the Venice Biennale, the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2000), the Beijing Biennale (2005), the National Gallery of Arts in Tirana (2016), the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery in Montréal (2013), the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (2016) and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2018). Besnik Haxhillari (Ph.D.) is a professor in the department of philosophy and art at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR). Flutura Preka (Ph.D.) is a member of the research group URAV at the UQTR. Parallel to their performance practice, the duo pursues theoretical research and writes on the subject of performance art.