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Created in 1992 and opening Montreal’s 5th Festival international de nouvelle danse, La Chambre Blanche is one of choreographer Ginette Laurin’s most important works. The piece – an exploration of theatricality and emotion – has toured extensively in Europe, North America, Israel and Asia. It won the 1992 Grand Prix of the Conseil des arts de la Communauté urbaine de Montréal and the Dora Mavor Moore Award in Toronto. In continuity with her latest work étude #3 pour cordes et poulies where the choreographer explores the theme of constraint, she is now proposing a new take on La Chambre Blanche. Nine dancers – six women and three men including one from the original cast – occupy the 1992 set. Costumes and lights remain the same. The dance on pointe and the play on unsteadiness that characterised the piece are still very present. However, some choreographic sections have been updated and a new musical composition revives the work.
« La Chambre Blanche is a place whose narrowness and milky walls justify a loss of equilibrium, of consciousness; vertigo. It is a place which bonds the beings confined within its walls in proximity, in promiscuity (…)
This restraining place, this wan-white room, is as intimate as a bedroom, as mysterious as a hotel room, as cold as a psychiatric hospital, as isolated as a fortress. One by one these sites materialize to set the stage of the emotions they evoke. The dance blends into a series of images depicting the itinerary of several destinies which intertwine in this too-constricted space (…)
La Chambre Blanche is like a prayer in search of the ultimate through expressed tensions. »
Ginette Laurin, March 1992
Choreography: Ginette Laurin
Dancers: Rémi Laurin-Ouellette, Brianna Lombardo, Marie-Ève Nadeau, Robert Meilleur, Michelle Rhode, Gillian Seaward, Neil Sochasky, Audrey Thibodeau, Wen-Shuan Yang
Rehearsal Master: John Ottmann
Lighting Design: Martin Labrecque
Set Design: Stéphane Roy
Original Music: Nicolas Bernier and Jacques Poulin-Denis
Costumes: Jean-Yves Cadieux
Hair and make-up: Angelo Barsetti
Production Manager: Chi Long
Wardrobe Assistant: Nicole Langlois
Coproduction: Place des Arts (Montreal, Canada), National Arts Centre (Ottawa, Canada), Festival International De Nouvelle Danse (Montreal, Canada), Canada Dance Festival (Ottawa, Canada), The McLean Foundation (Toronto, Canada), Danse à Lille (France)
Read more about La Chambre Blanche (re-creation 2008)
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In étude #3 pour cordes et poulies, Ginette Laurin shows the body subjected to arbitrariness. Bound, thrown about, torn and swept along, dancers grapple with external forces that are beyond their control. This new creation explores the body's vulnerability to the tensions that cross through it.
World premiere: Danse Danse, Théâtre Maisonneuve, Place des Arts, Montreal, Canada
Choreography: Ginette Laurin
Dancers: Rémi Laurin-Ouellette, Brianna Lombardo, Robert Meilleur, Marie-Ève Nadeau, Michelle Rhode, Gillian Seaward, Neil Sochasky, Audrey Thibodeau
Rehearsal Master: John Ottmann
Dramatist: Stéphanie Jasmin
Original Music: Nicolas Bernier and Jacques Poulin-Denis
Costumes: Vandal
Lighting Designer: Lucie Bazzo
Technical director: André Houle
Rig Designer: Alexandre Lemay
Coproduction: Ville de Lorient-Grand Théâtre (France), Brian Webb Dance Company (Edmonton, Canada), LOMA / Danse Danse (Montréal, Canada), Place des Arts (Montréal, Canada)
Read more about étude #3 pour cordes et poulies (PDF)
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The scope of Ginette Laurin's most recent works has been to come as close as possible to human beings to probe their essence and singularity. In ANGELs, the choreographer takes us into the performers' intimate worlds. They themselves collaborated in the recreation of their performance fantasies, the basis of this new work. Extravagant, surprising, light, serious, and touching in turn, their individual dance dreams are transposed onto the stage and linked to each other in a series of solos and duos interspersed with the group figures that are the choreographer's signature.
World premiere: Cinquième Salle, Place des Arts, Montreal, Canada European premiere: Teatro Libero, Palermo, Italy
Choreography: Ginette Laurin
Dancers: Mélanie Demers, Patrick Lamothe, Brianna Lombardo, Robert Meilleur, Marie-Ève Nadeau, Michelle Rhode, Audrey Thibodeau
Rehearsal Master: John Ottmann
Assistant to the Choreographer: Chanti Wadge
Sound Designers: Larsen Lupin
Additionnal Music : Gerard Leckey, « Suspension » © Gerard Leckey
Original Music: Nicolas Bernier and Jacques Poulin-Denis
Costumes Consultant: Carmen Alie
Lighting Designers: François Marceau
Technical Director: André Houle
Coproduction: O Vertigo and Place des Arts
Duration: 75 minutes without intermission
Read more about ANGELs (PDF)
ECHOES FROM THE PRESS
"What's great about the artistry in ANGELs is that Laurin has repositioned herself, imbuing the work with an unobtrusive tone, yet one that is undeniably personal, human and true."
"Alternating solos and duos of energetic expressiveness with more rarefied and dreamlike moments, the show moved spectators with the quality of movement and interpretation shown by the dancers. Mosaic-like passages, intimate confessions, unexpressed desires transfigured into stylised gestures-the result is undeniably charming and suffused with sensuality." Roberto Giambrone, La Repubblica, Italy, March 2006
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Created on the occasion of O Vertigo's 20th anniversary, Passare explores the theme of the traces left by human beings in time and space. In a veritable cartography of the intimate, Ginette Laurin is intent on revealing the very essence of being. "The only real thing is the mark of passage," the choreographer states. "Like the luminous trail that comes to us from an already-dead star, memory reverberates on the trajectories of our lives."
World premiere : Opéra de Lille, France North American premiere: Byham Theatre, Pittsburgh, USA Canadian premiere: Dance Canada Festival, Ottawa, Canada Quebec premiere: Montreal High Lights Festival, Montreal, Canada
Choreography: Ginette Laurin Dancers: Simon Alarie, Mélanie Demers, Maurice Fraga, Kenneth Gould (on leave), Patrick Lamothe, Brianna Lombardo, Robert Meilleur, Marie-Ève Nadeau, Michelle Rhode, Anna Riede (on leave) Rehearsal Master: Raymond Brisson Original Music: Peter Scherer Additional Music: Kaddish (traditional), Prayer for the Dead, sung by Landy Andriamboavonjy, Larsen Lupin Sound Design: Larsen Lupin Lighting: Alain Lortie Costumes: Carmen Alie Video: Oana Suteu Research Collaborator: Claude Théoret Production Director: Mario Brien Co-production : O Vertigo, the Montreal High Lights Festival, the National Arts Centre (Ottawa), Canada Dance Festival, Grand Théâtre de Québec, Théâtre Hector-Charland (L'Assomption), the Pittsburgh Dance Council, Opéra de Lille, Danse à Lille, Lille 2004/Cultural Capital of Europe, Grand Théâtre/Ville de Lorient, La Ferme du Buisson, Scène nationale de Marne-la-Vallée.
O Vertigo was granted choreography residencies by the Teatro Ángela Peralta in Mazatlán, Mexico, and the Ferme du Buisson, Scène nationale de Marne-la-Vallée, France.
Length: 77 minutes, no intermission
Read more about Passare (PDF) Technical Rider of Passare (PDF)
Echoes from the press
A sensitive and infinite revelation "Invention in every step, poetry in every intention, and tenderness in every gesture: Ginette Laurin's choreography is a sensitive and infinite revelation. " La Voix du Nord, Lille, France, April 10 2004
Dancing by traces "A trajectory drawn on the table and reproduced, the image reworked, the memories distorted: the processes are diverse, well chosen and extremely well done. Sets and costumes are devilishly inventive and sophisticated to a fault. Nevertheless, it's when the choreography abandons this whole conceptual apparatus that its point is most clearly pertinent—when this shattering, soaring dance abruptly breaksoff—that we feel the magic of this research on the dancer's traces." Philippe Verrièle, Le Journal des spectacles, Paris, May 2004
"Movement, light, color, shadow, darkness-everything in Passare comes together to create images that takes the viewer on a journey into the realm of things unimaginable because unproven. " Was ist los?, Linz, Austria, April 19 2004
"Laurin's inventiveness is O Vertigo's primary attraction. She played upon trace elements of memory in Passare, and how they intertwined and altered form in a sometimes clever, sometimes poignant, nearly always surprising fashion." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh, May 17 2004
"moments of shivering beauty that brush the sublime."
"Ginette Laurin's company performs with energetic appeal a complexity of movement sequences. What's most impressive, apart from the dancing itself, is Laurin's use of space. Here, she is veritably an architect of space, working with an immense depth of field, carving the space with her dancing bodies." |
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This work by Ginette Laurin comprises a series of six installations (The Resonance of the Double, Coppia, Traces, Ombres, Le Fantôme, and Variations) which incorporate dance and live action, video projection, and photography. For several years now, the choreographer has sought to come closer to the singularity of each dancer, physically, psychologically, and even affectively. In The Resonance of the Double, she pushes this exploration still further by opting to work with pairs of identical twins. The work evokes the fleeting traces of the passage of time, of the ephemeral, of absence, of the psychic or spiritual double, material or immaterial, as well as the way these traces resonate among spectators.
World premiere : Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Canada
Choreographic Installation by Ginette Laurin
Read more about The Resonance of the Double
Echoes from the press
"Laurin uses clearly articulated ambiguities to create an atmosphere of poetic emptiness, in which she tells a story about the body, its identity and its past experiences. In the process, she arrives at a convincing form of expression that blurs the borders between art exhibition and performance: pictures, action and sound overlap and can be experienced both individually and as a single large entity, constantly merging together in flowing transitions." |
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Photos 1,3 : Benoît Aquin |
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In Luna, Ginette Laurin turns the human body into a poetic and sensual landscape which we enter to examine its most intricate details. From the infinitely large to the infinitesimally small, seen through magnifying glasses which bring details into relief, the dancing is at times velvety soft, almost in suspension, then becomes quite carnal, with bodies coming to grips, embracing, and rubbing together. Under Ginette Laurin's magnifying glass, onirism and science meet to recreate the sumptuous mystery of night. An unforgettable view of the hidden face of dance.
Premiere: January 31, 2001, Luzernertheater, Lucerne, Switzerland Choreography: Ginette Laurin Dancers: Anne Barry, Darren Bonin, Mélanie Demers, Kenneth Gould, Patrick Lamothe, Marie-Ève Nadeau, Julie Marcil, Anna Riede, Marie-Claude Rodrigue, David Rose, Donald Weikert Rehearsal master: Raymond Brisson Visual Concept and Lighting Design: Axel Morgenthaler Sound Design: Larsen Lupin, Ginette Laurin Music: Peter Scherer, Karl Friedrich Abel, Johannes Schenck, Marin Marais, Tobias Hume, Vladislav Delay, Terre Thaemlitz, Lithops, Snd, T. Brinkmann, Noto, David Cunningham, Neina, Anonymous 4, Gramm Costumes: Carmen Alie, Denis Lavoie (Atelier TRAC Costume, Montréal) Technical director: Jocelyn Proulx Co-production: O Vertigo, Luzerntanz am Luzernertheater (Switzerland), Fido
Echoes from the press
"Luna is a fascinating, perfectly orchestrated mixture of flights of lyricism, explosive dancing, glimpses of intimacy, and moments of intense communion. A delight from beginning to end." La Presse, Montreal, 2001 |
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Photos 2,4 : Guy Borremans |
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La Vie qui bat is Ginette Laurin's encounter with the music of Steve Reich, the outcome of a challenge to the choreographer, made by Walter Boudreau, artistic director of SMCQ (Société de musique contemporaine du Québec), to create a work based on the American composer's celebrated piece, Drumming. The resulting piece, a celebration of brute energy, is made up of sequences whose intensity resides in the concentration on detail rather than in broad gestures. The rhythm is resoutely anchored in the body. Following the musical score and what it suggests, the dance unfolds in a play of opposites--between gravity and weightlessness, order and chaos, urban and tribal.
Premiere: March 31, 1999, Centre Pierre-Péladeau, Montreal Choreography: Ginette Laurin Dancers: Simon Alarie, Anne Barry, Mélanie Demers, Kenneth Gould, Chi Long, Anna Riede, Marie-Claude Rodrigue, David Rose, Donald Weikert Rehearsal master: Raymond Brisson Music: Steve Reich - Drumming Ensemble Director: Walter Boudreau Musicians: the SMCQ Ensemble Stage Design and Lighting: Axel Morgenthaler Make-up: Angelo Barsetti Production director: Hélène Langevin Technical director: Jocelyn Proulx Co-production: O Vertigo, SMCQ (Société de musique contemporaine du Québec), Joint Adventures (Munich), with the participation of Le Palace de Granby
Echoes from the press
"This fusion between live music and dance is a veritable gift from heaven." Voir, Montreal, 1999
"The purified beauty of little everyday gestures: gathering, tasting, eating… the primary, eternal necessities. (...) To such joy in dancing, the audience responded by applause which, after the ecstatic Drumming, seemed to bring back the thunder. " Le Soleil, Quebec City, 1999 |
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Photos 1,2,4 : Rolline Laporte |
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"To me, dance is a crazy expending of emotions, but it is also a voyage to the heart of immobility", reveals Ginette Laurin. Between energy and emotion, vitality and interiority, En Dedans vibrates with an ardent tenderness. On a bare stage, light shines through the fabric of the dancers' diaphanous costumes, warmly penetrates their bodies and dilates time, creating a dreamlike atmosphere. The dancers' senses are on the alert. They touch, feel, and look at each other. Silence; their eyes are closed, they count out loud, they guide each other and whisper secrets to each other. At times meditative, at times percussive, the music echoes "the noise of living things" inside us, en dedans.
Pemiere: August 7, 1997, Tanzwerkstatt Europa, Munich Choreography: Ginette Laurin Dancers: Simon Alarie, Anne Barry, Mélanie Demers, Kenneth Gould, Chi Long, Anna Riede, Marie-Claude Rodrigue, David Rose, Donald Weikert Rehearsal master: Raymond Brisson Lighting: Hans Peter Boden Music: Peter Garland, Arvo Pärt, Peter Appleton, Ensemble Bash, Howard Skempton, Timothy North, Gavin Bryars, Pawel Szymanski, Barry Prophet, Janice Pomer, David Jaeger Costumes: Carmen Alie, Denis Lavoie, Atelier TRAC Costume, Montréal Technical director: Jocelyn Proulx Commissioned by the Munich State Capital Cultural Department, a production of Joint Adventures (Munich), presented by O Vertigo.
Echos from the press
"Like Calder's mobiles animated by the wind, the elegant figures in En Dedans drift, oscillate et bend harmoniously together, in an impressive whole of group variations." Le Devoir, Montreal, 1998 |
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In La Chambre blanche, eleven performers are enclosed in a strange white room that evokes, in turn, the intimacy of a bedroom, the starkness of a mental hospital, and the isolation of a fortress. In this enclosed space, the narrowness of the milk-white walls brings on disequilibrium, fainting spells, and vertigo. Several destinies interlace; unruly beings connected by promiscuity try to break their isolation, floundering and struggling, feeding on their dreams. The dance becomes the penetrating expression of of their tensions, a crazy expending of emotion.
For this work, Ginette Laurin and O Vertigo were awarded the 1992 Grand Prix by the Montreal Urban Community Arts Council (CACUM) and the Dora Mavor Moore Prize (Toronto). La Chambre blanche toured North America, Europe, and Asia.
Premiere: September 29, 1992, Festival international de nouvelle danse, Montreal Choreography: Ginette Laurin Dancers: Anne Barry, Estelle Clareton, Pierre-André Côté, Carole Courtois, Kenneth Gould, Randy Joint, Chi Long, Robert Meilleur, Maryse Poulin, Marie-Claude Rodrigue Rehearsal mistress: France Roy Set Design: Stéphane Roy Original music: Michel Drapeau Costumes: Jean-Yves Cadieux Lighting: Axel Morgenthaler Make-up and hairstyling: Julie Bégin Acting coach: Alice Ronfard Voice training: Gysèle Poulin Co-production: O Vertigo, Festival international de nouvelle danse, (Montreal), National Arts Centre (Ottawa), Dance Canada Festival (Ottawa), McLean Foundation (Toronto), with the participation of Danse à Lille
Echoes from the press
"…a disturbingly violent work tempered, and in some instances highlighted, by moments of real tenderness and sublime elegance." The Scotsman, Glasgow, 1993
"The miracle of La Chambre blanche is the jostling of emotions and sensations that are awakened in us by Ginette Laurin's vision and choreography." Le Devoir, Montreal, 1994 |
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wire frame(2005) 47 min
Director : Oana Suteu / Choreography : Ginette Laurin Production : Amérimage-Spectra Performers : Simon Alarie, Mélanie Demers, Maurice Fraga, Patrick Lamothe, Brianna Lombardo, Robert Meilleur, Marie-Ève Nadeau, Michelle Rhode, Audrey Thibodeau
An adaptation for television of the dance work Passare ( 2004), Wire frame O Vertigo’s dancers take us into the heart of the creative process of an architect as he attempts to design a building.
A triptych of short films directed by Oana Suteu, based on ideas by Ginette Laurin:
Passare (2002) 4 min. Director: Oana Suteu / Choreography: Ginette Laurin / Performers: José Vénégas, Herman Goulet-Ouellet / Production: Neptune Distribution : Cinéma Libre
An old man and a young boy perform the same choreography inspired by the human dimension of everyday gestures, but their different ways of inhabiting the movement give us two readings of it.
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Traccia (2004) 3 min. 40 sec. Director: Oana Suteu / Choreography and original idea: Ginette Laurin / Production : O Vertigo
The dancer's movements compose a drawing, suspended in space. Each gesture traces a line and the representation takes shape as the dance evolves.
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Coppia (2004) 5 min. Director: Oana Suteu / Choreography and original idea: Ginette Laurin / Production : O Vertigo
An exploration of the theme of the double. Twin dancers perform the same simple movements. The soundtrack emphasizes the instances when the two are not synchronized.
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O Vertigo on Film
Night of the Flood (1996) Director : Bernar Hébert Freely inspired by Déluge, this film of poetic fiction includes footage shot in Mexico, featuring the dancers of O Vertigo.
La Chambre blanche (1993) Director : Isabelle Hayeur 10 minutes of excerpts from Ginette Laurin's work.
September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill (1996) Director: Larry Weinstein Three choreographical works by Ginette Laurin are performed in this film devoted to the famous composer. |
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O Video
Dans Tanz Dance Danse Les Beaux Dimanches, Société Radio-Canada, March 1996 Program devoted to five choreographers at the
Corps à corps Télé-Québec, March 1998 Program devoted to dance in Quebec, with the |
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