Daring to be different with blend of dance and theatre
Back in 2011, Etienne Lepage and Frederick Gravel, two of Quebec’s most daring and heralded young talents came together to create Thus Spoke, a wildly unconventional theatre and dance piece.
It will play at Theatre Junction Grand for a dual purpose: it will lead off its 2017-18 season (running Oct. 18-21) and will be part of Springboard Performance’s 2017 Fluid Festival.
Gravel, dancer and choreographer of the piece, puts the blame for the collaboration squarely on writer Lepage’s shoulders.
“It’s definitely Etienne’s fault. In 2010, he saw my dance work All Hell Breaks Loose and got hold of me. He said he was really interested in combining our works and styles,” Gravel said. “He felt there was a space for his words and stories in the way I was creating and choreographing my pieces.”
What intrigued Lepage was that in all of Gavel’s pieces, there was a master of ceremonies, usually Gravel himself. He always talks in his shows and uses live music.
“I would break the fourth wall when I talked to the audience and Etienne felt we could do a dance play in that style.”
Gravel and Lepage began doing workshops of Thus Spoke as early as 2011, first staged it in Montreal and then did an English version in Toronto. Audiences loved it and the duo kept returning to it and eventually took it to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in July where it rocked audiences and critics for its audacity.
In the piece, there is a microphone placed in the centre of the stage. Each actor/dancer comes forward and talks to the audience in character while the others dance in the background, motivated by the monologue.
“Our actors are thinking out loud while there is really sexy dancing behind them. We like to say it’s Nietzsche meets Hendrix,” said Gavel.
“It was my idea to use the music of Jimi Hendrix because I have been a great fan of his since I was 12 years old. The rock energy of his music is ideal for this show. It’s raw and sexy.”
Gravel says he and Lepage are fans of Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th-century German existential philosopher because “he broke ideas and conventions and then reconstructed them, which is what I do with my dance and Etienne does with his plays.
“Thus Spoke is a dance show with people ... just putting ideas out there in a very unconventional, funny way.”
Gravel will not be dancing in Thus Spoke, but his fans can see him and Briana Lombardo in The Duet That We’ve Already Done at the DJD Dance Centre Oct. 25- 28.