MARIE CHOUINARD AT HELM IN VENICE
Montreal dancers do city proud with performances at Venice Biennale
Montrealers attending the 10day dance program at the Venice Biennale this month should feel right at home. Six of the 13 featured dance makers are Montreal based. Moreover, the recipient of the Biennale’s 2017 Silver Lion Award for “dance innovation” is Montrealer Dana Michel. This Montreal presence comes thanks to the Biennale’s new artistic director of dance programming, who happens to be one of the mainstays of Montreal contemporary dance, Marie Chouinard.
Chouinard could also be considered a mainstay at the Biennale, which began more than a century ago as a visual arts festival and later added curated presentations of music, architecture, theatre and film (the Venice Film Festival is actually a part of the Biennale). When dance was added in 1999, Chouinard was in the first group of choreographers to be invited. Over the years, three more invitations followed, most recently in 2010 when Compagnie Marie Chouinard presented Le Nombre d’Or (LIVE).
Compagnie Marie Chouinard will be in the lineup again this year in a new work: Soft virtuosity, still humid, on the edge. Some might consider it rather cheeky for a festival artistic director to program her own company, but Chouinard has never been shy about self-promotion. Long ago she learned that public recognition can help make a long, successful career, whereas without good promotion, even very talented people are left to struggle. Perhaps this is the reason why Chouinard in 2011 founded Montreal’s annual Prix de la danse awards, which shine light and some welcome cash on both established and emerging dance makers.
Undoubtedly an appearance at the Biennale can raise a choreographer’s profile on the international scene. Promoters, producers, theatre managers and other dance makers all come to the Biennale and all have the potential to carry word back to their colleagues about a performer or show that they liked.
“I’ve been telling people for 30 years that Montreal is a world dance capital, and I never felt that people were listening except in the last decade or so,” said Chouinard in an interview not long before the 2017 Biennale opened in May. “Now I have a chance to show them.”
Her attitude explains her Montreal choices, which include wellknown figures of Chouinard’s generation like Louise Lecavalier and Benoît Lachambre, along with members of the younger generation, Dana Michel, Clara Furey and Daina Ashbee. Chouinard invited choreographers from other countries, too, notably American Lucinda Childs, Italy’s Alessandro Sciarroni, South Africa’s Robyn Orlin, France’s Xavier Le Roy and two Belgians, Lisbeth Gruwez, who has appeared regularly in Montreal, and Ann Van den Broek, whose scheduled work at the Biennale, The Black Piece, was seen in Montreal last year at Festival Transamériques.
It’s no accident that female choreographers dominate the programming.
“I confess that these proportions are somewhat out of the ordinary,” Chouinard said. “I think that I’m only the fourth woman to be an artistic director at the Biennale in a hundred years. Women in art are not always honoured. For example, whenever I take part in awards ceremonies, I look to see how many women and men were nominated, and there’s an overwhelming majority of men. So I didn’t want to act in the same way that our Western Caucasian society usually acts.
“And I didn’t choose the artists just as an affirmation of women,” Chouinard quickly added. “My choices were based absolutely on my enthusiasm for their artistry.”
Few would begrudge Chouinard programming Lecavalier in her marvellous 2013 piece, So Blue, a kind of solo-plus one with Frédéric Tavernini. Another female dance icon, Childs, will be there on June 23 to receive the Golden Lion Award for lifetime achievement and to present her seminal 1979 work, Dance, as well as two brief pieces at the Campo Sant’Agnese, an outdoor site where Chouinard has invited all the choreographers to put on short works. Taking dance out of the theatre is one Chouinard’s innovations at the Biennale.
“I invited them to put on either something entirely new or to adapt one of their stage pieces for outside viewing. I really like to see works presented in everyday locations. It could be on a promenade where pedestrians come across three dancers moving on a dance mat.”
Chouinard hopes these outdoor performances have as few theatrical trappings as possible.
“I’m encouraging them to perform without music, so it will be about dance and body image in an urban setting. Venice lends itself so well to this kind of performance — no cars, openair squares, and the weather is nice.”
Chouinard’s other innovation this year is the Biennale’s choreography “college,” which gives three selected young choreographers the chance to spend several weeks in Venice creating originals works to show during the festival.
Montrealers have already had ample chance to see many of the Biennale’s Montreal offerings. Lecavalier’s So Blue has appeared here more than once. Furey’s piece, Untied Tales, with Slovak dancer Peter Jasko had its premiere last February. Festival Transamériques recently presented Lachambre’s Lifeguard, in which he interacts with the audience. Ashbee’s solo — When the Ice Melts, Will We Drink the Water? — was staged twice in Montreal in the past year. Venice will also see Ashbee’s 2014 duet about aboriginal women’s vulnerability, Unrelated.
Michel’s Yellow Towel, seen at the 2013 Festival Transamériques, presents her in a solo dealing with questions of identity in a dramatic style that many would associate more with theatre than dance. Michel’s personal approach has nonetheless attracted favourable critical attention even in New York, a dance town teeming with original types.
Chouinard will serve in her Biennale post for four years, which makes her a potent force in Europe’s dance community. Her appointment to the prestigious Venice post might alter some people’s impression of her as just a moon child with a wild, fanciful imagination. But under her familiar long, blond tresses lies one of the most astute, practical minds in Canadian dance. Poetic thoughts alone, after all, did not fuel the negotiations that found the funds to create her beautifully appointed studios on the Plateau, to launch the Prix de la danse awards, and to sustain her company for the past quarter century. Chouinard is an irrepressible force. Her buoyant spirits alone could well keep Venice from sinking.
For details of the Venice Biennale dance program, June 23-July 1, see labiennale.org/en/ dance.