 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
 |
|||||||||
 |
|||||||||
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
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 movements 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, Canadian Heritage, the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications du Québec, and Emploi-Québec.
O Vertigo has charitable donation status with Canada Revenue Agency. |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
THE 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 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 CCOV 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.
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 architects: Frédérique Harnois et Étienne Côté and visual art artist: PK Langshaw Larsen Lupin Stéphanie Jasmin • Lab no8: Body & Light, September 2006 Pipon • Lab no9 : Collective Body, March 2007 Jeremy Mimnagh • Lab no10 : Christian Rizzo, September 2007
Choreographers in Residence • Chanti Wadge, 2005-2006 • Karine Denault, 2007-2008
Residencies 2004-2005 Danièle Desnoyers, Le Carré des Lombes (March 2005)
2005-2006 Hélène Langevin, Bouge de là (August 2005) Marie-Claude Poulin et Martin Kusch, kondition pluriel (January 2006) Lynda Gaudreau, Compagnie de Brune (March 2006) Estelle Clareton (June 2006)
2006-2007 Frédéric Gravel, La 2e Porte à Gauche (July 2006) Dana Gingras, Holy Body Tattoo (August 2006) Emmanuel Jouthe, Danse Carpe Diem (December 2006) Daniel Léveillé Danse (January 2007) Martin Bélanger, Productions LAPS (June 2007)
2007-2008 Erin Flynn (July 2007) Katie Ward (July 2007) Marie-Julie Asselin, Compagnie de la tourmente (March 2008)
2008-2009 Andrew Tay (July 2008) Dean Makarenko (July 2008) Andrew Forester (October 2008) Anne-Marie Boisvert (March 2009) Emma Waltraud Howe (March 2009)
2009-2010 Susie Burpee (October 2009) Gerald Trentham (October 2009) Frédéric Marier (December 2009)
International Residencies • Antje Pfundtner, Germany, Dec. 2007
Classes and Workshops 2004-2005 • Butô workshop with choreographer Jocelyne Montpetit, Sept. 2004 • Choreography worshop with Ginette Laurin, Nov. 2004 • Workshop with Andrew de L. Harwood, Jan. 2005 • O Vertigo technique classes, March 2005 • 7th O Vertigo Intensive Workshop, April 2005
2005-2006 • Master classes with Ted Stoffer, dancer and choreographer, Sept. 2005 • Workshop with Andrew de L. Harwood, Feb. 2006 • Regroupement québécois de la danse technique classes, August, September, October, November, December 2005 and March 2006
2006-2007 • Regroupement québécois de la danse technique classes, October, November, December 2006 and January 2007 • O Vertigo technique classes, February to May 2007 • Workshop with Andrew de L. Harwood, April 2007
2007-2008 • 8th O Vertigo Intensive Workshop, August 2007 • O Vertigo technique classes, December 2007 to March 2008 • Regroupement québécois de la danse technique classes, October 2007
2008-2009 • 9th O Vertigo Intensive Workshop, August 2008 • Regroupement québécois de la danse technique classes, February 2009 • technique classes with Isabelle Poirier, April 2009
2009-2010 • 10th O Vertigo Intensive Workshop, August 2009 • Regroupement québécois de la danse technique classes, October, November, and December 2009 • Chi Kung classes with Marie-Ève Nadeau, November 2009
Public Rehearsals
• Passare, Journées de la culture, Sept. 2004 • ANGELs, Journées de la culture, Sept. 2005 • étude #3 pour cordes et poulies, International Dance Day, April 2006 • La Chambre Blanche (re-creation 2008), rehearsals for schools, January, February and September 2008 • Presentation by the O Vertigo Intensive Workshop's dancers, August 2007 and August 2008 • La Vie qui bat, rehearsal for a school, September 2009 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
"If the mystery of the human body meets the crystalline clarity
Biographical Notes
With more than 50 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.
In 2008, Ginette Laurin proposed the re-creation of one of her most important works, La Chambre Blanche (1992), which is also the subject of a film that she directed. The re-creation was given a unanimous thumbs-up by audiences and critics on its five European tours and in its three-week run at the Cinquième Salle of Place des Arts in Montreal. In autumn, 2009, O Vertigo presented the revival of La Vie qui bat (1999) at Dance Triennale Tokyo in Japan, before leaving for Mexico, where the company participated in the Festival Internacional Cervantino with La Chambre Blanche (re-creation 2008).
Honours
• Award for Best Canadian Work at the International Festival of Films on Art in Montreal • Émergence Prize awarded to Ginette Laurin by the Regroupement des diplômés-es de • Dora Mavor Moore Award for La Chambre blanche, Toronto, 1994
Discover Ginette Laurin's complete works here
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
The Dancers
Rémi Laurin-Ouellette. Bio.
Brianna Lombardo. Bio.
Chi Long. Bio.
Robert Meilleur. Bio.
Marie-Ève Nadeau. Bio.
James Phillips. Bio.
Gillian Seaward-Boone. Bio.
Audrey Thibodeau. Bio.
Wen-Shuan Yang. Bio. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Artistic Director: Ginette Laurin Director: Diane Boucher Administrative Director: Gilles Doré Technical Director: André Houle Communications and Touring Assistant: Marion Bec Rehearsal Mistress: Annie Gagnon Reception and Activities Coordinator: Isabelle Roy
To join us, visit the Get in touch section
International Touring Agent
Production Team
Technical Director: André Houle Lighting Director: David Desrochers or Alexandre Péloquin Sound Engineer: Jean-François Gagnon Stage Manager: Jason Pomrenski Wardrobe Mistress and Dresser: Nicole Langlois
Board of Directors
President: Ginette Laurin, Artistic Director and Choreographer, O Vertigo Vice-President: Julie Halde, Senior Manager, Accenture 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, Executive Vice-President, Chief Strategy Officer, Nurun |