Thus Spoke...

Frédérick Gravel and Étienne Lepage (Montreal)

CRÉDITS

Artistic Team

Duration: 70 minutes
Text: Étienne Lepage
Movement: Frédérick Gravel
Artistic Direction: Étienne Lepage and Frédérick Gravel
Performers at Creation: Daniel Parent, Marilyn Perreault, Éric Robidoux, Anne Thériault
Set design: Frédérick Gravel and Étienne Lepage
Lighting design: Frédérick Gravel
Costumes: Ellen Ewing
Sound: Stéphane Boucher
Technical Direction: Caroline Nadeau
Translation (Text): Chantal Bilodeau

A production of Étienne Lepage AND Frédérick Gravel
Executive producer Daniel Léveillé Danse
Coproduction Automne en Normandie ; Festival TransAmériques
Creative Resiednces Maison de la culture Frontenac ; Agora de la Danse
Development Marie Andrée Gougeon; George Skalkogiannis
With the support of Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec AND Canada Council for the Arts  This production receives administrative/development support from Daniel Léveillé Danse company (Montreal, Canada) as part of its sponsorship project. 

Artist Bio:
Étienne Lepage | Author, Co-Director

Graduated in Dramatic Writing from the National Theatre School of Montréal in 2007, Étienne Lepage is a playwright, screenwriter, translator and transdisciplinary creator. Based in Montreal, his work is shown all over North America and Europe. Rouge Gueule, L'Enclos de l'éléphant, Ainsi parlait... and Histoires pour faire des cauchemars are just a few of his many noteworthy creations. Their astonishing richness and diversity have revealed his huge talent.

Frédérick Gravel | Choreographer, Co-Director

The choreographer, dancer, musician and lighting designer Frédérick Gravel has been active on the Montreal scene for the past dozen years. He turns the structures of choreography upside down, merging into his work various elements from rock and performance art. His productions Tout se pète la gueule chérie, Gravel Works, Usually Beauty Fails, This Duet That We’ve Already Done (so many times) and the work Ainsi parlait... co-created with the author Étienne Lepage, have received great national and international reviews.

Telemetry

Radical System Art
Shay Kuebler (Vancouver)

Show credits:

Duration: 60 minutes
Choreographer: Shay Kuebler
Performers: Maxine Chadburn, Hayden Fong, Tyler Layton Olson, Shay Kuebler, Lexi Vajda and Danny Nielsen
Lighting designer: Craig Alfredson and Shay Kuebler
Composer/sound design: Shay Kuebler
Video and projection design: Eric Chad
Technical Director: Ian Low

Artist Bio:
Shay has been an independent dance artist in the city of Vancouver and Montreal for the past 8 years. Along with his successes as a collaborator and co-director, he has had the honor of performing and creating his own work for international dance festivals and dance companies across Canada. As a performer, he’s performed with Kidd Pivot, Holy Body Tattoo, Animals of Distinction, and The 605 Collective. As a choreographer he’s worked with Les Grands Ballet Canadiens, Citieballet, Decidedly Jazz Danceworks, L’Ecole de Danse du Quebec, Simon Fraser University and London Contemporary Dance School and as a co-founder of The 605 Collective, he co-directed and co-choreographed 3 projects with the company. With a foundation in the martial arts, he is constantly searching for how physical performance can be finely tuned yet retain an instinctual and raw quality. As a dance artist, whose professional performing and choreographic career has spanned the disciplines of Tap, Hip Hop, neo-classical Ballet and Contemporary, Shay also looks at how all techniques can reinforce and strengthen each other. That technique, when used in an instinctive manner, can be integrated into any other form – creating cross-disciplinary works that have a greater capacity to affect and reach audiences.

This Duet That We've Already Done
(so many times) 

Frédérick Gravel
 

Duration: 75 minutes
Concept and artistic direction: Frédérick Gravel
Created by: Frédérick Gravel, Brianna Lombardo
Performer: Brianna Lombardo
Lighting: Alexandre Pilon-Guay
Sound environment: Stéphane Boucher, Frédérick Gravel
Original musics: Stéphane Boucher
Artistic assistant: Ivana Milicevic, Jamie Wright
Costumes assistant: Elen Ewing
Artistic advisors: Stéphane Boucher, Clara Furey, Étienne Lepage, Katya Montaignac
Technical direction: Olivier Chopinet
Production assistant: Jamie Wright
A production of Frédérick Gravel
Executive producer: Daniel Léveillé danse
Co-production: Agora de la danse
Development: Marie-Andrée Gougeon; George Skalkogiannis

With the support of: Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Canada Council for the Arts

This production receives administrative/development support from Daniel Léveillé Danse company (Montréal, Canada) as part of its sponsorship project. Frédérick Gravel is a member of Circuit-Est centre chorégraphique. / Run from me, a song by Timber Timbre, performed by Frédérick Gravel, is a courtesy of Arts & Crafts Musique Publishing. / Hotel Kiss and Hotel Blues Returns, musical works by Last Ex, composed by Olivier Fairfield and Simon Trottier and performed by Frédérick Gravel and Stéphane Boucher, are a courtesy of Constellation Records.

Artist Bio:
The choreographer, dancer, musician and lighting designer Frédérick Gravel turns the structures of choreography upside down, merging into his work various elements from rock and performance art. Advocating the intermingling of cultures and disciplines, t he works of Frédérick Gravel are created in close collaboration with all members of Grouped’ArtGravelArtGroup (GAG), a shifting collective of dancers and musicians . His productions Gravel Works (2009), Tout se pète la gueule, chérie (2010), Usually Beauty Fails (2012) have received great national and international reviews. He co-created with the author Étienne Lepage Ainsi parlait... (2013) and Logique du pire ( 2016). In February 2015, he revisited the cabaret style at Usine C, presenting Cabaret Gravel with 20 guest artists, including Dear Criminals and the Molinari Quartet. Always present where least expected, he collaborated with Pierre Lapointe on Mutantès (2008). More and more active as a teacher, Frédérick Gravel regularly gives creative workshops as well as teaching at CÉGEP Saint-Hyacinthe’s theater department, at Université du Québec à Montréal and at l’École de danse contemporaine de Montréal

Yes

Artist / Company: Linnea Swan

Duration: 30 minutes
Choreographer: Linnea Swan
Performers: Linnea Swan
Lighting designer: Steve Isom
Outside eye: Helen Husak

Artist Bio: Born and raised in Saskatchewan, for over twenty years Linnea Swan has had the pleasure of working with many of Canada’s esteemed dance / theatre companies and artists. As a creator, she has collaborated with a number of artists, including with David Danzon of Corpus to create and perform the one-woman show Swan Lake Syndrome, toured to Japan this summer. Also a filmmaker, her work includes dance film, documentary shorts, web series, as well as numerous commissions for video to accompany live performance and
promotional videos for productions. Linnea has received a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Performance in Dance, and the K.M. Hunter Artist Award in Dance. Linnea is a member of Dancers’ Studio West’s Dance Action Group.

Sara does a solo

Artist / Company: Sara Porter

Duration: 27 minutes
Choreographer: Sara Porter
Performer: Sara Porter
Text, video, costume: Sara Porter
Original LX designer: Simon Rossitor, James Kendal
Composer: Mary Margaret O’Hara, Bette Midler
Creative consultants: Katherine Duncanson, Gerry Trentham

Artist Bio: Sara Porter is a performer, writer and teacher with a distinctive voice and broad palette, celebrated for her “daring imagination” (Toronto Star) and being "wickedly funny" (Dance International). Since 1990, she has created over 20 works including Blossom – about erotic poetry that compares women to flowers, Those Penetrating Dreams - a spoof on Harlequin Romances, and Neap Tide - a caricature of ocean detritus. She performed her iconic clown solo Opus Ornithologicus: the great bird work at Scotland’s Holyrood Palace for Prince Charles in 2000. Her Sara does a Solo has toured across Canada and US to acclaim. She is author of the biography Peter in Process: Peter Boneham’s sixty years in dance. Originally from Nova Scotia, Porter was based in Montreal, then Edinburgh, before settling in Toronto in 1998.

How long can we do this for?

Artist / Company: Good Women Dance Collective (Edmonton)

Good Women Dance Collective (GWDC) is a creation-based company committed to supporting a vibrant and sustainable contemporary dance community in Edmonton since 2009. The collective’s artistic focus is on creating and producing innovative new works that simultaneously challenge and expand their audience. GWDC has commissioned works from Peggy Baker, Justine A. Chambers and Mélanie Demers, as well as developing its own repertoire. The collective has performed in numerous festivals and events across Canada, including the Expanse Festival, dance: made in Canada / fait au Canada, Fluid Festival, the Prairie Dance Circuit, The Mayors Celebration of the Arts Gala, and the Canada Dance Festival. GWDC dedicates a large part of its season toward partnering with local organizations to offer performance, education, and professional development opportunities to artists working in Edmonton. Current artistic members Ainsley Hillyard, Alison Kause, Alida Kendell and Kate Stashko have trained across Canada, the U.S. and Europe, and are passionate about making contemporary dance more accessible to the general public.

Submission to Entropy

Artist / Company: Karissa Barry

Duration: 18-20 minutes
Created by: Karissa Barry (in collaboration with the performers)
Performed by: Karissa Barry & Elissa Hanson
Previous Performers & Collaborators: Elya Grant, Lexi Vajda, Jess Wilkie
Sound Composed and Performed by: Stefana Fratila
Original Lighting Design by Rob Sondergaard
Development & Financial support: BC Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Small Stage, The Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, private donors, Richmond Academy of Dance

Artist Bio: Karissa has worked as a freelance contemporary dance artist for 15 years, as a collaborator, creator, performer, and instructor. She has worked with companies and choreographers such as Serge Bennathan/Les Productions Figlio, Vanessa Goodman/Action at a Distance, Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, Anne Plamondon, Out Innerspace Dance Theatre, Raven Spirit Dance, Sylvain Émard Danse, and Wen Wei Dance, to name a few. She has performed throughout Canada, China, Europe, and the U.K., as well as Singapore, and NYC. As a creator, her work has been presented at Brief Encounters, Dancing on the Edge, Expanse Festival, Fluid Festival, Small Stage, la Petite Scène, Modus Operandi Training Program, and the self-produced project, “STRATEGY THREE”. She has produced two dance on film projects that have been screened in both local and international festivals. As an instructor, Karissa frequently teaches for the professional community, as well as emerging professionals in various institutions.

It began with watching

Artist / Company: Melanie Kloetzel / kloetzel&co.

Duration: 35 minutes
Choreographer and Director: Melanie Kloetzel
Script: Melanie Kloetzel
Performers: Jocelyn Hoover with Brenna Heer, Margarita Kozhevnikova, Meghann Michalsky, Sylvie Moquin, Sarah Murray, and Taylor Ritchie
Composers: Gyorgy Ligeti, Kevin Houben, Carl Davis, Patsy Cline, and Len Barry
Saxophone: Simon MacLeod
Special thank you to: Kevin Leiver, Jen DeWolf, Megan Fraser, Terra Plum, Janelle Schiffner, Marie France Forcier, Tania Alvarado, Laura Hynes, Brooks Peterson, CrossCurrents, and The Works Art & Design Festival for their generous input on this project.
It began with watching has received support from the Province of Alberta through Alberta FOundation for the Arts, its arts funding agency.

Artist Bio: Melanie Kloetzel is the artistic director of kloetzel&co., a dance theatre company founded in New York and now based in Calgary. Since 1997, kloetzel&co. Has presented over forty theatre works, site-specific performances, and dance films across three continents. Kloetzel’s research focuses on performance, place, text, and characterization and her creations have appeared in spaces as varied as a defunct rail station, a corporate skyway system, and an abandoned egg farm. Her works have also been presented in more conventional sites such as New York’s Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church and Movement Research at Judson Church, as well as at On the Boards in Seattle, Dusk Dances in Toronto, and The House Theatre in Plymouth, UK. Kloetzel is an associate professor of dance at the University of Calgary.
 

Portrait

Artist / Company: Brian Webb / Brian Webb Dance Company

Duration: 20 minutes
Choreography: Brian Webb
Dancer and collaborator: Tony Olivares
Music: The Gypsy Kings, The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face sung by George Michael & Johnny Cash

Artist bio: Brian Webb has developed a national reputation as a contemporary dancer, choreographer and artistic leader. He has brought an international array of contemporary dance companies to Edmonton through the BWDC which he founded 32 years ago. Amongst many other honours, Brian won Edmonton’s prestigious Artistic Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.
 

Nicole Mion (Calgary, Vancouver)

Still. Moving. Land. Acknowledgement.

A performance conversation created and performed in partnership with Nicole Mion and Troy Emery Twigg.  A physical dialogue. Two perspectives acknowledging the land and the sources that feed us.

Based on a proposal by Nicole Mion, and realized in creative collaboration.

SALT

Preserve. Persevere. Or be eaten.

A excerpted from I Eat You, a choreographic installation focused on transformation in food and performance. Featuring the indefatigable Linnea Swann, and devised choreography of Nicole Mion.

Nicole Mion

Artist and curator, Nicole Mion creates for the stage and screen. She is a sought after director and contemporary choreographer specializing in contemporary performance, new media, dance, and installation. She is Artistic Director for Springboard Performance where she curates the Fluid Movement Arts Festival in Calgary; Interrarium interdisciplinary creation residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts; and ContainR, an Art Park made of retrofit shipping containers which connects communities through art.

Recently Nicole was awarded the Colin Jackson and Arlene Strom Creative Placemaking Award at the Mayor’s Lunch for Arts Champions. She has been invited to speak about her work at the IETM Conference (Bergamo, Italy) as a part of the Canadian delegation representing new arts practices, CINARS (Montreal), Calgary Arts Congress (Calgary), and York University’s Arts, Placemaking, and Policy Conference (Toronto).

Contemporary choreography includes Constellations for the City of Calgary New Years Celebrations, Quiver which toured to Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, and Winnipeg and featured Vancouver performers Justine Chambers and James Gnam. Her stage work has been seen at OYR's High Performance Rodeo, Seattle’s On The Boards Festival, Vancouver’s Dancing on the Edge Festival, Alberta Scene at the National Arts Centre (Ottawa), the Banff Centre Summer Arts Festival, New Dance Horizons (Regina), Dancers Studio West (Calgary), Mile Zero Dance (Edmonton), Brief Encounters (Vancouver), Art Gallery of Calgary, fFIDA Festival (Toronto), choreography representing Canada at the DaCI conferences in Brazil and The Hague, and direction and choreography for the opening ceremonies of the IAAF World Games (Edmonton).

Nicole enjoys creating solos inspired by specifically wonderful and unique individuals. These biographical choreographies include solo work and commissions for Momo Mixed-Ability Dance Theatre, Luciane Pinto, Carol Greyeyes, Andrea Gunnlaugson, and Stephen Thompson.

Troy Emery Twigg

Troy is Blackfoot from the Kainai Nation in Southern Alberta. An instigator of progressing First Nations arts in the country he has worked for various arts organizations in various roles and responsibilities. He has worked as an actor and dancer but is primarily an artist in movement and choreography mostly creating his own works that have toured nationally and internationally including: Iitahpoyii; They Shoot Buffalo, Don’t They?; Dancing The Universe in Flux; Pulse; Static. He has recently performed in Okotoks by Justin Many Fingers and the touring version of Omari Newton’s Sal Capone: The Lamentable Tragedy of... produced by Vancouver’s Urban Ink Productions. Troy has also taught courses on Indigenous performing arts at the University of Lethbridge, University of British Columbia Okanagan, Centre for Indigenous Theatre and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. He was just commissioned as a guest artist to create a work performed as part of Decidedly Jazz Danceworks' Modern Vaudevillians and creating a duet for Swallow A Bicycle Theatre as part of Labelled. He is guest and co-curator for Dance Collection Dance' exhibit By Invitation Only: Dance, Confederation and Reconciliation, which opens June 24, 2017 in Toronto. He along with Amy Bowring co-curator did presentation on this exhibit with traveling panels to the Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa at the National Arts Centre.  His writing was featured in Correspondence: real time + real distance, which will be published in the near future. He has also co-authored with Kris Demeanor an article on Making Treaty 7, where he served as an Artistic Associate since its inception, that will be published in Canadian Theatre Review this year.

Photo Credit - Blaire Russell Photography

Linnea Swan

Born and raised in Saskatoon, Linnea Swan has had a long and colourful career that has seen her call Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto and now Calgary home. She began her professional career in Winnipeg dancing with Ruth Cansfield Dance and TRIP dance company, and moved to Toronto in 2003 to join Dancemakers. As an independent artist, she has had the pleasure of working with many of Canada’s

leading dance/theatre artists including Serge Bennethan, Rachel Browne, Susie Burpee, Lesandra Dodson, Claudia Moore, Tedd Robinson, Jordan Tannahill and Volcano Theatre among others most recently collaborating with David Danzon to create the one woman show Swan Lake Syndrome. Linnea was honoured to be the 2015 recipient of the K.M. Hunter Artist Award in Dance.

What Is Left Of Us

Artist / Company: Justin Manyfingers (Calgary) & Brian Solomon (Toronto)

We are a disability theatre company in sunny Calgary Alberta and believe theatre is for every body; onstage, in the community, and in our audiences. We produce and present plays created by artists with disabilities and their allies that insist on and celebrate their place in the public sphere. We offer community-based drama programs to Calgarians with disabilities that foster a love of theatre, the joy of community, and the rewards of self-expression. And we work to improve theatre’s accessibility for audience members and to ensure their equity and dignity in attending performing arts in Calgary.

See and Be Seen & Verbatim

All Bodies Dance Project (Vancouver)

See & Be Seen
Choreographed by Naomi Brand and Adam Grant Warren
Performed by Carolina Bergonzoni and Adam Grant Warren

Verbatim
Choreographed by Naomi Brand and Adam Grant Warren
Performed by Carolina Bergonzoni and Adam Grant Warren
Text by Naomi Brand and Adam Grant Warren

All Bodies Dance Project is an inclusive dance company located on unceded Coast Salish Territory (Vancouver, BC). Our work brings together artists with and without disabilities to explore movement as a means of creative expression. In our inclusive dance practice, differences are regarded as a creative strength as we explore the choreographic possibilities of wheelchairs, crutches and canes diverse ways of moving and perceiving. We want to widen the spectrum of who dances and what dance can be.

Physical Therapy Cabaret