Trevoga + Projet Alterdogs

Trevoga is an Amsterdam-based dance collective formed by several Eastern European dancers, alumni of the Amsterdam University of the Arts. Unified by their experiences of growing up in the nebulous socio-political context of the post-Soviet “transition” – between the moral imperatives of a ghostly dictatorship and the stupefying hedonism of a newborn consumerist dream – they have become fascinated with the overlaps between repression and seduction. For Trevoga, the white capitalist body is not a temple; it is an abandoned shopping mall filled with consumerist relics, chemicals, and suggestive imagery. Their works scavenge for the most unsettling undertones behind the city’s glossy augmented reality, returning them to the audience as twisted reflections of a perplexing present. Trevoga is an Aerowaves Twenty24 artist. Their debut performance, 11 3 8 7, co-produced by ICK Amsterdam and One Dance Bulgaria, was awarded Best of Amsterdam Fringe Festival and was mentioned in the Dutch newspaper NRC as one of the top 5 most memorable dance performances of the Dutch season 23/24.

Together, we look for ways to create outside of the established hierarchies of choreographers and dancers. Instead of submitting the performing bodies to disembodied ideas, our works mold the conceptual frameworks as approximations of our lived experiences, turning the choreographic process inside out.

This playful deconstruction of the power structures inherent to the choreographic process holds together the collective’s bold and undisciplined experimentations. Although rooted in contemporary dance, our works spill into the realms of fine arts and physical theatre, and pay tribute to various digital and urban subcultures. By combining both visual and somatic approaches to performance art, we create immersive experiences for audience members as they venture through our chaotic inner worlds.

By toying with genres, registers and symbols with unapologetic incoherency, Trevoga aims to challenge the notion of the self as a rigid set of conditions it is born into and instead celebrates its shapeshifting nature.

We view ourselves as neither in opposition nor unison but as always both, or rather neither – the symptom and the cause, the victim and the perpetrator, the puppet and the puppeteer.

Claire Pearl is a contemporary dance artist and performer from Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal. Since graduating from the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance (2022) and Université du Québec à Montréal (2021) in choreography, she has developed an approach focused on the creation of singular universes, exploring relationships with space, music, and imaginary realities. She refines this organic and chaotic style through numerous projects, including Sink Your Teeth into the Void (2022), flesh > and < dust (2023) and GROOVE ETHER (2023-2024). In 2022, she co-founds the collective Projet Alterdogs with Léonie Bélanger. Together, they develop an improvisational approach based on the concept of world-building derived from science fiction, leading them to create a singular universe called ALTERMUNDI. They perform a show of the same name at OFFTA in 2024. As a performer, Claire works with Sarah Dell’Ava, Morgane Guillou, Noël Vézina, Lila Geneix, and Rozenn Lecomte.

A dance artist based in Tiohtià :ke/Mooniyang/Montréal, Léonie Bélanger completed a bachelor’s degree in contemporary dance at Université du Québec à Montréal (2021) and has since pursued a career as a performer and creator. She has worked with Caroline Laurin-Beaucage, Catherine Lavoie-Marcus, Danièle Desnoyers/Le Carré des Lombes, Chélanie Beaudin-Quintin and Alejandro Sajgalik. Léonie gravitates around an expanded body practice that drives her to explore collaborative, interdisciplinary and digital forms of work. In creation, she seeks to understand how the body can bridge different lived and imagined realities. Since 2021, she explores the notion of the digital body as she pursues research at the intersection of dance, visual art and digital art with interdisciplinary artist Éloi Angers-Roy. She also presents L’Absolu est absurde (2022), Égo et cheval : acte 2 (2023), Corps. Route. Ride. (2023), and ALTERMUNDI (2024), creations hybridizing dance, improvisation and science fiction by the Projet Alterdogs collective, which she co-directs with Claire Pearl.

Arthur Champagne has been passionate about sound and music for 16 years already. After pursuing studies in multimedia arts, Arthur decides to further his passion for sound at the National Theatre School. There, he deepens his interest in design (sound and lighting) by working with mentors such as Ludovic Bonnier, Louis Dufort, Nicolas Basque and Guy Simard, as well as collaborating with directors of various genres, from Soleil Launière to Denis Marleau. Since then, he has been involved in a variety of sound designs, ranging from dance (Magnetikae) to theatre (Nous sommes les enfants du hangover 95, Ne faites pas honte à votre siècle: Immergez, Catastrophe et autres dramaticules) and performance (Sheuetam, Le magasin ferme). He is particularly interested in the deconstruction of sound and visual spaces. New technologies are always a source of discovery in his work.

Pénélope Dulude-de Broin is a costume designer based in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal). She perceives the body as a living sculpture and space as a character in itself. Colors, interplay of proportions and textures are at the heart of her creations. Her approach values instinct, listening, and individuality. In 2023, she completed her studies in scenography at The National Theatre School of Canada. Since graduating, she has been working in contemporary dance and theatre in diverse Montréal institutions. As a collaborator, she promotes and holds space for transdisciplinary artistic exchanges where the various practices are intertwined and are enriched in the process.

Laura Borello-Bellemare (she/her) is a body and movement artist. In the past few years, she has taken part in various collaborative dance and interdisciplinary projects presented at Festival Vue sur la Relève, Vous Êtes Ici, Festival des Arts Entrelacés, and the OFFTA. Interested in the strength of the arts as a tool for being together, she co-founded the très bonne idée event collective. After taking part in the BIG BANG program in 2020 and 2021, she graduated in 2025 from the dance program at Concordia University. She is interested in the relationship between bodies and objects, the physical and the intimate, the banal and performance.

Diego Gil is an artist and philosopher exploring the life of aesthetic processes through the lens of process philosophy. Born in Buenos Aires, Diego lived and studied in Amsterdam (School for New Dance Development – DAS Choreography). He obtained a PhD from the Interdisciplinary Humanities program at Concordia University, where he has worked as an independent choreographer, performer and dramaturge for the last ten years.

Since 2019, Philippe Dépelteau has developed a practice in dialogue with ecology, community, and the performing arts. Interested in artistic experimentation on a tangible human scale, Philippe creates playgrounds in which performers explore human-material relations through somatic experiences. He is currently accompanying the choreographic process of Marie Lévêque and Projet Alterdogs (Claire Pearl and Léonie Bélanger).

Originally from Montréal/Tiohtià:ke, Fanny Bélanger-Poulin first studies visual arts at Cégep du Vieux-Montréal, graduating in 2017. In 2021, she completes a bachelor’s degree in contemporary dance, artistic practice profile, in the dance department of Université du Québec à Montréal, during which she has the chance to work with several creators, such as Frédérick Gravel and Catherine Lavoie-Marcus. She then trains with Stéphanie Decourteille at the BIG BANG workshop. Interested in combining and deploying moving images, notably through scenography, she is currently investing herself in her dance practice and wishes to continue deepening her research in movement, as well as exploring the transdisciplinary possibilities that her work in the visual arts brings.

Originally from France, Lila Geneix graduated in 2020 from UQAM. During her dance training, she enriched her choreographic background with Danièle Desnoyers, David Albert-Toth & Emily Gualtieri, Julien Blais, and Catherine Gaudet. Catherine Gaudet has definitively marked her way of conceiving the body in choreographic work. In 2019, she joined the company Danse Carpe Diem/Emmanuel Jouthe as a performer (Écoute pour voir, Corps de Texte, Vega) and took part in several cultural mediation projects (Et si on dansait ?, Danza Familia). Since her arrival in Québec, she has had the opportunity to collaborate with Sarah Dell’Ava (O, O2), Pricilla Guy (Hiatus), Danièle Desnoyers (Compagnonnage 21, Compagnonnage 22). Alongside her career as a performer, she develops her practice as a choreographer. Fascinated by games of distortion of meaning, she draws from ancient works and chooses the body as a vector of images.

Fascinated by the potential of imagination as a tool for spatial and physical transformation, we intuitively developed a worldbuilding approach, i.e. the construction of fictional universes. Since 2022, our creative processes have gradually borrowed from the logics of live-action role-playing games and video games, leading us to invite other players (worldbuilders) to think and build the universe with us.

This is how ALTERMUNDI was born, a science-fiction world built through multidisciplinary collective improvisations, and becoming a fertile ground for artistic risk-taking. Through imaginary immersions, we draw upon our bodily and sensory repertoires – our somathèques – to create a hybrid vocabulary combining references from both our childhood and contemporary internet culture. L’ALTERMUNDI presents itself as an absurd collage where La Ribouldingue, Les Choristes and TikTok trends can coexist.