Sarah Dell’Ava

Sarah Dell’Ava explores body memory, emergence of movement and performer presence. From 2013 on, she has been working on the Oriri-Orir-Ori-Or-O polyptych, which delves into the origins of movement. Devoted to the creation of meaningful life-spaces that stimulate human relations, Sarah leads creative processes in different communities, involving teenagers, seniors, immigrants, mental health groups, and intergenerational groups. In 2016, she creates along with Ilya Krouglikov and Wolfram Sander Bercer le temps, a participative installation based on lullabies (Dare-Dare, EIM, CAM en tournée, 375MTL). As an dancer, she worked with Manon Oligny, Les Sœurs Schmutt, Emmanuel Jouthe and Catherine Gaudet. Interested in the links between arts, body, psyche and spirituality, she trained in contemporary dance (Master’s at UQAM), Hatha Yoga (Naada Yoga), Play of Painting (Arno Stern), and Authentic Movement (Catherine Lessard). Most recently, Sarah cofounded ESPACE ORIRI, a place for creativity where art is at the service of self-knowledge.

Hugo Dalphond questions the synergy between body, space and light by elaborating and building scenographic devices made to initiate meetings. It is principally by making spectators and performers coexist within the same space and by modulating their perception of that very space that he creates alternative sensorial experiences. This becomes a reason to engage in different qualities of co-presence, and thus to be made conscious of our interactions and our rapport with others. Since 2015, he tackles these questions in a PhD that takes light installation and the spatial opportunity it offers to rethink our collective states as its subjects. As well, he collaborates as a lighting designer and director of scenography on various projects in theatre and dance (projets hybris, Daina Ashbee, Collectif La tresse, Andre Pena, Anne-Flore de Rochambeau, Claudia Chan Tak, Sarah Dell’Ava).

Draw a line between two concomitant ideas. Taste the texture of a transforming sound. Intimacy with sound. Connect with the world by listening. Dreamer of movement, landscape and discoveries, Olivier Girouard collects fixed moments from the world and their poetry. By mistake, at Le Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal’s open doors, he discovers magnetic tape. The evocative power of sound, its length, in meters. Tangible. He borrows the reel-to-reel in the attic of his school and makes his first soundscape for dance. Musique concrète. Sound recording. Mix. He then studies classical guitar, music theory and classical singing at Université de Montréal before doing his concours in electroacoustic composition at Le Conservatoire de musique de Montréal. Since then he collaborates with artists from different backgrounds for stage performances and public art. Involved in the production and the promotion of sound art, Girouard is also the artistic director of Ekumen. Olivier has received several awards, namely Le Quartier des spectacles Partnership’s Luminothérapie (2016-17), the SOCAN Foundation’s Hugues-LeCaine Prize, 1st place (2008), and the 1st place for the JTTP Prize (2009). His work has been presented in North and South Americas and in Europe.

As a dramaturge, Ilya Krouglikov accompanies various creative processes, from contortion to theater, from dance to performance. He develops an interdisciplinary approach to performing arts since 2009 with a first project presented as part of his master’s degree in theater at UQAM. His artistic vision evolves around notions of composition and rhythm. Former mathematician, he believes in meaningful and inventive structures open to the vagaries of the present. Experienced fencer, Ilya carries the body language over to dance. As a performer, he works with choreographers and visual artists Sarah Dell’Ava, Bettina Hoffman and Pé Vermeersch (Belgium). Together with the choreographer Eduardo Ruiz Vergara he creates the duet Yeux de Cérès presented at the MAI (Montreal, arts interculturels, 2014) and at Mains d’Œuvres in Paris. Ilya is now working with Sarah Dell’Ava on Lulling Time, a participatory installation around lullabies of the world touring since September 2016.

Can we trust a knowledge that comes “from within”? Can gestures (painting, dancing) emerge spontaneously, without directions, beyond conditioning and external expectations? What knowledge emerges then? Individually and collectively, which openings are we invited to? This shared adventure arises to restore a space for intuition, receptivity and inner being.