Ariane Boulet

Les jeux du crépuscule destines us to celebrate the dignity of a person’s entire existence and the embodied and metaphysical sites of its emergence: relationships, force fields, and levels of consciousness. The work invites us to take root in life, to surrender to its mystery, and to trust underground sources of nourishment.

The event stems from six years of visiting and dancing in long-term care facilities with the project Movement de passage. I offer a work that bears witness to this experience but that transcends the physical, sensory, and emotional memories of all the artists who have contributed to the project. I am asking the essential questions that emerged from this substantial and transformative experience. Movement de passage taught me that listening, being present and open to be touched by others could dissolve traditional socially assigned roles. The people living in long-term care facilities unexpectedly provoked this incredible breakthrough, leading us to access something else.

With Les jeux du crépuscule, we move beyond sharing personal accounts that metabolize the experience of the dancers and musicians who participated in the project. My art reflects the deep and singular experience that occurs when strangers are fully present for each other. Recalling the surprising collection of people in one long-term care home in particular, I highlight both the humour and the depth of the relationships that were created in this location. I also hope to soften boundaries between generations and shift perceptions on the role and contribution of seniors in the social realm. Disrupting conventional beliefs, the event is conceived as a manifesto for illness as an integral part of health, as a process, as transformation. We age at the same rate. To encounter other generations is to encounter different parts of ourselves. It is up to our inner frailty to enchant the world anew.

Ariane Boulet is a dance artist equally active as a performer and a creator. She is also co-director of Je suis Julio, an organization that questions artistic practices through a horizontal management model with listening and community as values. As a dancer, she has committed herself with enthusiasm both in the studio and on stage for about twenty choreographers since 2009. As a maker and through Je suis Julio, she weaves intimacy and politics through a variety of sites with a dozen film and stage works, as well as site-specific productions and performative installations. She completed an MA in 2014, exploring the creative process in care facilities on a quest for art that fosters encounters and sharing. Since 2015, she has led her flagship project of dancing in long-term care facilities that integrates dance into the living spaces of people experiencing a loss of autonomy and those in palliative care, inviting residents to a sensitive experience with their bodies and their creativity. She has facilitated over a hundred danced encounters in twenty long-term care facilities in Montréal and surrounding areas. She has gained expertise in management and facilitation through her unusual creative projects and her work codirecting an atypical organization. She also works in cultural mediation and teaches professional workshops to further support the importance of creating contexts to experience dance and transform our sensitive relation to the world.

As a singer and musician, Marie Vallée possesses a keen passion for improvisation and an enduring desire to connect the expressive potential of sound and movement. For more than fifteen years, she has been notable for collaborating with choreographers and dancers—Margie Gillis, Carol Prieur, Tedi Tafel, Ariane Boulet—and is currently working on directing her first film, Space Within, unifying music, images, and dance. Her strong background as a composer and songwriter has led to the recording of many albums and her participation in such acclaimed musical events as Francos de Montréal, Festival international de Jazz de Montréal, and Festival International Nuits d’Afrique. The richness of her artistic journey brings a genuine authenticity to her music. The result is both embodied and atmospheric, rooted in an intuitive and constantly evolving creative approach.

A graduate of École de danse contemporaine de Montréal (EDCM) (2005), Audrey Bergeron has performed in several productions with companies Destins Croisés, Bouge de là, Les Imprudanses, Omnibus, O Vertigo, Human Playground, and with choreographer Line Nault. In 2017, she toured the Netherlands with Tierra, a production by Jens van Daele’s Burning Bridges and Ginette Laurin. As a choreographer, she has participated in Danses Buissonnières at Tangente, the festivals Bouge d’ici, Zone Homa and Vue sur la Relève, and has made work for the EDCM students. Her choreography Pixels (2015), was presented in Montréal, Toronto, Avignon, and Düsseldorf. Her most recent creations, Par le chas de l’aiguille (2016) and VERSO (2020), were presented by Danse-Cité. Audrey also teaches dance and works as a rehearsal director. Alongside her artistic career, she is a hypnotherapist.

Lucy M. May is a New-Brunswick-born contemporary dance artist based in Tiohtiá:ke (Montréal). Her choreography, including Anima / Darkroom, Vivarium, and Esemplastic Landing, often asks how environments thread their way through human movement. Formerly a member of Compagnie Marie Chouinard, Lucy continues to perform independently with artists such as Margie Gillis and Susanna Hood. A graduate of EDCM and CODARTS, Lucy has practiced Krump since 2016. Her work has been programmed in Québec, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Sweden, and the UK.

Isabelle Poirier danced for Compagnie Marie Chouinard for eight years before becoming a rehearsal director and touring artistic director for the company. In 2015 and 2016, she performed the revival of the solos Cartes postales de Chimère by Louise Bédard and Les choses dernières by Lucie Grégoire, also participating in the making of choreographic boxes of these works for the Fondation Jean-Pierre Perreault. A graduate of LADMMI with a major in art history from Université de Montréal, she now teaches at Concordia University and is an artistic advisor for the graduates of EDCM and for Rhodnie Désir, Ismaël Mouaraki, Anne Plamondon, Bettina Szabo, and James Viveiros. She is currently dancing with Ariane Boulet, Lucie Grégoire, and Aurélie Pedron.

Originally from Rouyn-Noranda, David Rancourt is a dance artist established in Montréal since 1999. He has distinguished himself in about fifty productions, including thirty creations, among which we find key works in the career of certain creators (Alan Lake, Annie Gagnon, Marie Chouinard, Paula de Vasconcelos). He has been collaborating with PPS Danse for ten years and has assumed the artistic direction of the company since June 2020. He has been practicing Qi Gong with Marie-Claude Rodrigue and the Fragments Libres team, and Continuum with Linda Rabin for many years.

Self-taught in dance, trained in visual arts and theatre, Georges-Nicolas Tremblay first asserted his artistic voice as a creator. He has made over a dozen works, in addition to working as a choreographer for theatre, operettas, musicals, and music videos. He has more than twenty years of experience as a performer. Alongside his stage career, he is a dance mediator (FTA, DLD, Ville de Montréal), teaches dance dramaturgy, and is an artistic advisor and dramaturge for various choreographers. He works closely with the companies Corpuscule Danse and Je suis Julio.

A graduate of École de danse contemporaine de Montréal, Julie Tymchuk continues her involvement with and her desire to create and present contemporary dance with a variety of projects. As a performer, she worked for the company Bouge de là in the production Ô lit! and is part of their new creation À travers mes yeux. She also collaborates with choreographers Geneviève Gagné and Emily Jean Honegger (Densité d’un Moment), Katia-Marie Germain (Aube), Johanne Madore (Damnation of Faust), and Simon Ampleman (Klima).

Joannie Douville graduated in dance performance from Université du Québec à Montréal in 2009, also completing a certificate in psychology in 2011. She danced with Dave St-Pierre’s company for seven years. In her quest to find how dance is meaningful to different people, she has worked for over six years with the integrated dance company Corpuscule Danse (France Geoffroy) and in dance for young audiences with Bouge de là (Hélène Langevin). She is also a close collaborator of Je suis Julio since its foundation and of La Fratrie. She is currently pursuing an MA in arts education at UQAM.

After studying literature and photography, Nicolas Filion turns to dance in 1998. For fourteen years, he collaborates with numerous dance artists and companies — Harold Rhéaume, Louise Bédard, and Catherine Gaudet, among others. Alongside his professional career, Nicolas pursues graduate studies at Université du Québec à Montréal, acts as an artistic mediator, teaches and contributes to academic research projects until 2012. After a five-year entrepreneurial venture at the head of his own café, he comes back to the performing arts in 2017, working as a rehearsal director and artistic advisor, and opening his own booking agency, Filigrane Arts Vivants. Two years later, he assumes the general direction of FÔVE Diffusion. Boasting a wide, eclectic professional and artistic experience, passionate about culture and the performing arts, Nicolas favours an empathic, committed approach to the development and administration of the arts.

After exploring movement as a dancer, Sophie Michaud has been specializing in accompanying choreographic projects. Having completed a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in dance as well as doctoral studies in arts studies and practices (UQAM), she has worked as a rehearsal director and dramaturgical advisor for the past thirty years. As a researcher and practitioner, she has developed methodologies in communication and ethics, and since the early 2000s she has been working to establish and recognize the profession of rehearsal director. She also acts as a mentor, consultant, writer, teacher, and artistic mediator.

Audrée Lewka’s childhood was lulled by the red light district of the boulevard des Laurentides. Formerly an archeologist, she trained as a scenographer and is interested in how the banal and the extraordinary intersect. Through the body, space, and light, she evokes the absurd and familiar palpitations that run through us. As a set designer, she has contributed to many projects, including Sous l’eau douce (Wina Forget, Théâtre du Bic, 2020), Le Temps des fruits (Marilyn Daoust & Gabriel Léger-Savard, Tangente, 2021), IT’S FINE (Emmalie Ruest & Stéphanie Fromentin, dance video, 2021), and Morgane (Tuque et Capuche, dance video, 2021). She also collaborates as a lighting designer on More Than Things (Emile Pineault, Festival Fabrik Potsdam 2020 + La Chapelle 2020), Question de brûler fières, and Le Fil des jours (Catherine-Lavoie Marcus, 2020).

Robin Pineda Gould is a Montréal-based artist. He works primarily with video and sound. His work explores the social and political dimensions of presence. He thinks of image collections as pathways that can reconfigure and deconstruct our structures of desire and individuality. He also works extensively with contemporary dance. Repetition is a form of change.

Florence Vinit is a professor in the Department of Psychology at UQAM. She is also a psychologist in private practice and a practitioner in haptonomy. Founder of the organization Dr Clown, she has often worked in collaboration with the artistic community. On the research front, she is particularly interested in the phenomenology of the body and touch, and their implications for clinical practice. She is the author of The Healing Touch as well as several articles on these topics.

Born in 1984, Ouanessa Younsi is a poet, author, and psychiatrist. She has published three collections of poetry with Éditions Mémoire d’encrier: Prendre langue, Emprunter aux oiseaux, and Métissée. She co-edited the collective book Femmes rapaillées. She has also published a book that retraces her journey as a caregiver: Soigner, aimer. Between two patients, she contributes to various magazines and collective works. She lives in Montréal.