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O Vertigo
Constituted in 1984, O Vertigo is a company devoted to creation in new dance, performing and making known the repertoire of works conceived by its founder, artistic director, and choreographer, Ginette Laurin.
Renowned on the national and international scene, O Vertigo has toured extensively and has contributed to making the city of Montreal a focal point in the dance world today.
From Montreal to Tokyo
The company has been invited to perform at several prestigious festivals, including New York's Next Wave Festival, the Festival Internacional Cervantino in Mexico, Dance Umbrella in London, the Biennale internationale de la danse de Lyon and the Festival de Châteauvallon in France, the Israel Festival in Jerusalem, the Dance Canada Festival in Ottawa, and the Festival international de nouvelle danse in Montreal.
Acclaimed by critics internationally, the O Vertigo productions Chagall, Don Quichotte, Train d'enfer, La Chambre blanche, Déluge and Luna were performed in more than one hundred cities, including New York, Tokyo, Mexico City, São Paulo, Vienna and London.
Ginette Laurin
O Vertigo is first and foremost Ginette Laurin. Since the beginning of her career as a choreographer over twenty years ago, she has established herself as one of the leading figures of the Montreal dance scene. Her work stands out by its ceaseless renewal of dance, in both the moverments and the images that she offers us. Her training as a gymnast, her insatiable appetite for movement, her pleasure in placing the body in limit-situations has led her to develop a unique inventive and energetic language, but also, from one creation to the next, a world full of poetry and emotion, "dance that has a soul." (La Marseillaise, July 1994).
The collaborators
O Vertigo is also made up of the collaborators and the group of performers that Ginette Laurin gathers around her. The dancers, generous and enthusiastic, are passionately involved in the process of creation, leaving the imprint of their personalities on each new work. "Fearless, tireless, and multiskilled, they embody an ideal of late 20th century prowess." (Los Angeles Times)
A vertiginous adventure
Creating a work is taking a plunge into the unknown. O Vertigo surrenders itself to this process body and soul, with ardour and ambition, defying the physical, aesthetic, and evocative possibilities of dance.
Our partners
O Vertigo is supported by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Montreal Arts Council, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (Canada), Canadian Heritage, the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications du Québec, Emploi-Québec and the Fonds de stabilisation et de consolidation des arts et de la culture du Québec.
O Vertigo has charitable donation status with Canada Revenue. |
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THE O VERTIGO CREATION CENTRE Dance in all its forms
Since its founding in 1984, O Vertigo has been dedicated to dance creation, research, and training, as well as the development of the discipline in all its aspects. With the opening of the O Vertigo Creation Centre (CCOV), the company has reaffirmed its mission and broadened its activities.
As the company's home base and a pole of attraction for the contemporary dance milieu, the O Vertigo Creation Centre is a flexible and multiform structure designed to meet the creation, research, and training needs of choreographers, dancers, interdisciplinary artists and diverse creators from here and elsewhere. The Centre offers a full and highly diversified program of training and teaching workshops; research labs with multidisciplinary collaborators; creation residencies on a local, national, and international level; and awareness activities for the public. Reconfirming the company's new interdisciplinary focus, choreographer Ginette Laurin's work now includes various kinds of artistic projects: large–and intimate–scale dance creations, choreographic installations, video, film, and photography.
In Quebec and more specifically in Montreal, in spite of the effervescence and vitality of the contemporary dance scene, there are very few appropriate sites for the creation of works and the exchange of ideas. The CCOV's purpose is to improve this situation by offering artists access to its resources in an environment provided with optimum conditions for practising the discipline. Inaugurated in January 2005, the Centre is located in the heart of downtown Montreal inside Quebec's largest cultural hub, Place des Arts; the greater part of its space is occupied by the 3,875-sq.-ft-studio, which is equipped with specialized facilities. O Vertigo is presently developing the Centre's activities through joint projects and exchanges with Canadian and international partners.
MISSION
• To promote creation, research, and innovation in contemporary dance and to contribute
to the development of the discipline;
ACTIVITIES
Creation Labs Devoted to research and creation, O Vertigo's dance labs can be qualified as exploration sessions in diversified forms, with choreographer Ginette Laurin, the company's dancers and collaborators.
Creation Residencies Every year, the O Vertigo Creation Centre offers residencies that allow choreographers to benefit from the ressources available at the CCOV.
Classes and Workshops The Centre offers master classes, and creation and training workshops given by renowned guest choreographers from Canada, the United States, and Europe. In addition, O Vertigo offers an annual three-week intensive workshop which attracts an international clientele. This workshop gives dancers an opportunity to experience Ginette Laurin's choreographical work and to become familiar with her repertoire.
Public Rehearsals Occasionally, the company opens the studio doors to give a wider public an opportunity to discover the company's current activities.
REALISATIONS
Creation Labs
• Lab no1: Men/Women, Dec. 2004 • Lab no8: Body & Light, September 2006 • Lab no9 : Collective Body, March 2007 • Lab no10 : Christian Rizzo, September 2007
Choreographers in Residence • Chanti Wadge, 2005-2006 • Karine Denault, 2007-2008
Residencies • Martin Bélanger (Productions Laps) • Dana Gingras (independant choreographer) • Emmanuel Jouthe (Danse Carpe Diem) • Daniel Léveillé (Daniel Léveillé Danse)
Classes and Workshops
• Workshop with choreographer Jocelyne Montpetit, Sept. 2004
Public Rehearsals
• Luna, Journées de la culture, sept. 2003 • étude #3 pour cordes et poulies, International Dance Day, April 2006
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"If the mystery of the human body meets the crystalline clarity
Biographical Notes
With more than 40 choreographical works to her credit and acclaimed worldwide, Ginette Laurin is one of the foremost figures in contemporary dance in Canada. Trained as a gymnast and in modern dance and classical ballet in Montreal and New York City, Ginette quickly became a sought-after performer when she began her dancing career in Montreal at the beginning of the 1970s. After creating several works as an independent choreographer, in 1984, she founded O Vertigo, a company now known for its expressive power and the unerring realization of its artistic vision. By 1986, consecutive critical and popular successes brought Ginette Laurin national recognition when she was awarded the Jean A. Chalmers Prize. Since then, she has established an enviable international reputation by creating, year after year, striking works in which she shows an extraordinary ability to renew her gestural language and images to better evoke the underlying themes. Her works have been performed in Canada, the United States, Europe, Central America, and Asia. Besides her activities at O Vertigo, Ginette Laurin choreographs dance pieces for other companies and transmits her knowledge as a professor and lecturer at home and abroad.
In recent years, Ginette Laurin has reoriented her approach to embrace creation in multiple forms. The Resonance of the Double, created at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal in 2004, constituted a series of six installations incorporating dance, performance, video projections, and photographs, and was representative of the choreographer’s new multidisciplinary avenue, which was reaffirmed with the inauguration of the O Vertigo Creation Centre (ccov) at Place des Arts in 2005. She has also branched into filmmaking, in particular with director Oana Suteu, with whom she created the feature Wire Frame (2005), a prize-winning adaptation of the dance piece Passare. Ginette’s latest choreographical productions, ANGELs (2006) and étude #3 pour cordes et poulies (2007), reflect her commitment to experimentation, collaboration with the dancers, and research relating to – among other things – identity and the double.
Honours
• Grand Prix of the Montreal Urban Community Arts Council, 1992
Discover Ginette Laurin's complete oeuvre here
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The Dancers
Rémi Laurin-Ouellette. Bio.
Brianna Lombardo. Bio.
Robert Meilleur. Bio.
Marie-Ève Nadeau. Bio.
Michelle Rhode. Bio.
Gillian Seaward. Bio.
Neil Sochasky. Bio.
Audrey Thibodeau. Bio.
Wen-Shuan Yang. Bio.
John Ottmann , Rehearsal Master. Bio. |
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Artistic Director: Ginette Laurin Director: Diane Boucher Chief Administrator : Julie Gauthier Technical Director: André Houle Communication Assistant: Marie-Anne O'Reilly Development and Touring Assistant: Ingrid Vallus Rehearsal Master: John Ottmann Reception and Activities Coordinator: Isabelle Roy
To join us, visit the Get in touch section
Touring Agent - Quebec & Canada
Ingrid Vallus
Touring Agent - France
Didier Le Besque - DLB Spectacles
International Touring Agent
Menno Plukker
Production Team
Technical Director: André Houle Sound Engineer: Jean-François Gagnon Stage Manager and Rigger: Marc Savard Wardrobe Mistress and Dresser : Nicole Langlois Lighting Director: Vincent Santes Gonzales
Board of Directors
President: Ginette Laurin, Artistic Director and Choreographer, O Vertigo Vice-President: Michelle Mercier, Advisory and management services Secretary: Claude Brunet, Lawyer, Ogilvy Renault Treasurer: Sam Abramovitch
Administrators
Claude Gosselin, Executive and Artistic Director, CIAC-Centre international d'art contemporain de Montréal André Monette, Producer, Les Productions André Monette inc. Suzanne Sauvage |