Charles Brecard & Roxanne Dupuis + Tanveer Alam & Atri Nundy

Born in New Caledonia with a Vietnamese background, Charles Brecard arrived in Québec in 2013 and graduated from École de danse contemporaine de Montréal (EDCM) in 2017. He has collaborated with several artists, such as Andrea Peña, Dana Gingras, Aurélie Pedron, Parts+Labour_Danse, Andrew Skeels, Chantal Cadieux, Martin Messier, Mateo Barrera, Tim Brady, and Helder Seabra. His limitless curiosity motivates him to refine his dance through workshops and personal practices. Influenced by urban, folk, and contemporary dances, and by his profession as a massage therapist, he develops FLUIDIFY, a methodology that allows him to create, teach (at EDCM in 2020, among others), and facilitate practices for professionals and amateurs. His work has been presented in Canada, France, and Germany. Lately, he has been working on several choreographic and community projects, including the co-founding of a free and nomadic practice space for movement artists called Le Bercail.

Originally from New Brunswick, Roxanne Dupuis has been living in Montréal since 2014 and divides her career between Québec and Acadie. She has danced on several stages regionally, nationally, and internationally (Taiwan, Denmark, Australia, UK, and France). She works with various international companies and choreographers, such as Tim Casson in a Canada/England co-production, and French choreographer Solène Bossu with the Alliance française du Nouveau-Brunswick. In New Brunswick, Roxanne is part of Respire par le nez and Resistance as a performer in the company DansEncorps. In Montréal, she performs as an independent artist in Stacey Désilier’s Pythagore mon corps and Andrea Peña’s Elles. Roxanne is proud of her work as a cultural mediator within the Montréal community. Among other things, with the support of Festival Quartiers Danses, she teaches young delinquents and prisoners, women in difficulty, children, the elderly, and people with reduced mobility.

PROTO-TYPE is our first piece as a duo of creators. The process started in January 2019 and was initially inspired by the series of paintings Les Amants by René Magritte. This creation is constantly changing and evolving as we are growing in our respective practices, nevertheless our choreographic impulses and desires remain constant. Traditional dances guide and inspire us as we always keep our cultural and ethnic roots in mind. We want to share a physical and authentic moment on stage with the audience to develop a common kinesthetic empathy. We work as much on the isolation of the body and on controlled movement as on a fluid, visceral, and abandoned movement that can oscillate between the organic and the mechanical. We aim to combine physical, rhythmic, somatic, and emotional engagement to make our work accessible to a wider audience.

Born and raised in Montréal, Tanveer Alam started his Kathak training with Sudeshna Maulik and continues to study with guru Sandhya Desai. He also trains in Taal Vidya, the knowledge of Hindustani classical music, with guru Pandit Divyang Vakil. He is a 2019 graduate of The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. He has performed in the works of Pandit Birju Maharaj, Janak Khendry, Rina Singha, Lata Pada, Brandy Leary, Noémie Lafrance, and Sanjukta Sinha. An emerging choreographer, he has been presented at Summerworks Festival, Battery Dance Festival +, MAI (Montréal, arts, interculturels), and Tangente, to name a few. He has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Toronto Arts Council, and the Ontario Arts Council. Across the 20/21 season, he is a curated artist of the Sadhana Project Residency by Anandam Dancetheatre and a commissioned artist for CanAsian Dance Festival’s GRIT Short Dances Series. Currently, he is working with choreographer Padmini Chettur as part of her new work Chalking, commissioned by Anandam Dancetheatre.

Atri Nundy started learning Bharatanatyam at Sampradaya Dance Academy under Lata Pada. After completing her arangetram (graduation) in 2005, she continues to work as a teacher at Sampradaya Dance Academy and as a company dancer and choreographer for Sampradaya Dance Creations. She has toured extensively in India, Indonesia, and the UK. She has attended a variety of workshops, including ones conducted by highly acclaimed artists such as Harikrishna Kalyanasundaram, Priyadarshini Govind, Leela Samson, and Mavin Khoo. While training in Bharatanatyam, Atri was fortunate enough to be able to train in various dance forms during her childhood. Her training has given her the interest to explore beyond the traditional realms of Bharatanatyam. She is a frequent collaborator with NovaDance, Kashe Dance, and Anandam Dancetheatre. These opportunities have shaped the way Atri is now looking at dance, the way she is choreographing her own works and practicing repertoire.

Hasheel is a queer South Asian Hindustani classical musician. He is trained in vocals as well as in the Bansuri and is a student of Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia. Hasheel pushes gender fashion norms and his music extends across many genres. He has performed with Kailash Kher, Hariharan, Karthik, Shafqat Amanat Ali Khan, and Karsh Kale. His most recent work, RaagRani, is a documentary-style music video celebrating the union of his cultural identities.

Harikishan S. Nair is an active dancer, choreographer, pedagogue, dramaturg, and rehearsal director. He is a passionate and critical advocate for equity within the dance sector for South Asian dance and a community leader in articulating issues of how these performance aesthetics interface with established institutions of dominant dance presentation/curation in Canada. Born and raised in Kerala (India), he has been dancing since the age of five and is fluently trained in Bharatanatyam, Mohiniyattam, and Kuchipudi. He tours new choreographic works and conducts teaching workshops and master classes across North America. He has gone on to collaborate, perform, and present his work at numerous dance festivals in India, the UK, Canada, and the USA. He is the artistic director of Regatta Kala Kendra.

Samuel Boucher is a lighting and video designer from Paris, established in Montréal. A 2019 NTS Production Design and Technical Arts graduate, Samuel explores the art of painting and sculpting the stage through time and space with pixels and light.

The Tagore Project acknowledges the nostalgia that we both associate with Tagore’s work and brings it into the present. The Rabindrasangeet (Tagore’s poetry set to his own music) from which we are working holds distinctive narratives, histories, structures, and melodies. Our choreographic process has been to understand how they coexist and create a narrative as an ensemble — tracking our relationship to the poetry, the music, and each other. As the work is closely linked to music and poetry, we have been exploring how one informs the other, remaining rooted within the essence of each song and allowing ourselves the space to investigate the specificity and whimsy of the worlds that we have created through each Rabindrasangeet. We hope that the journey we are on through The Tagore Project brings us closer to KabiGuru, Bangla, our communities and our parents, and allows us to share how we celebrate our appreciation for Rabindranath Tagore.