Five standout shows by Chouinard
Afternoon of a Faun (1987): Armed with a horn on her head and a phallus on her crotch, Chouinard fearlessly explored the unbridled male libido with this take on Nijinsky’s famous solo. It dispensed with Debussy’s original score, substituting it with electronic sounds generated by her movements. She reinstated Debussy in her 1994 version, Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, which was the first time she assigned one of her solo roles to another dancer, Dominique Porte.
The Rite of Spring (1993): Chouinard finally took on the riot-inducing (in 1913) ballet that many credit with the birth of modern dance. But she mostly dispensed with its narrative of a sacrificial Chosen One dancing herself to death. Instead, the seven-strong team, sporting horns, antlers, body paint and little else, responded directly to Stravinsky’s score, with some soundscape additions from composer Rober Racine. She created an open-air version at the Lanaudière Festival in 2003, accompanied by the OSM.
24 Preludes by Chopin (1999): One of Chouinard’s most acclaimed works, it’s also one of her least obviously “controversial.” An eight-strong team of dancers goes through the jubilance, solemnity and gentleness that make up Chopin’s Opus 28. Chouinard described her piece as being akin to a collection of short stories that she teasingly described as perhaps autobiographical. It moves effortlessly from the yearningly sensual to the absurdly playful, including, at one point, a game of soccer. It was later picked up by the National Ballet of Canada.
Body Remix/Goldberg Variations (2005): After the relatively restrained approach to Chopin, Chouinard seemed to let rip with this two-act ballet set to Bach as played by Glenn Gould. (The soundtrack included Gould’s commentaries, electronically distorted.) Ten dancers were transformed, with sometimes disturbing, sometimes playful results, into almost Cronenbergian new life forms with the aid of body harnesses, crutches and metal tubes emerging from mouths. It won the Conseil des arts de Montréal Grand Prix in 2006.
Orpheus and Eurydice (2008): The first work created in the beautiful Plateau studio that Compagnie Marie Chouinard moved into in 2007, this, unlike traditional versions of the myth, put the focus on Eurydice. On a glaring white stage, near-naked dancers wearing nipple caps, phalluses and high heels created images of rapacious satyrs, sexually celebratory nymphs and shepherds and a three-headed hell-hound. Performed at the Festival TransAmériques, it was one of the most fearlessly provocative of Chouinard’s shows, which is saying something.