DHRITI GUPTA
“I Am Pride: Jossua Collin Dufour,”
Jossua Collin Dufour brings such energy to his work and that's evident just from talking to him. During our chat, he emphasized the importance of strengthening, flexing and exploring different aspects of one's identity because we all contain multitudes. I think that's essential for all creatives to remember.
Wrapped in a bulky yellow fur coat, Jossua Collin Dufour waited anxiously backstage at La Sala Rossa in Montreal. As per the rules of the 2017 Short & Sweet festival, he had just three minutes to wow the crowd before the lights and music were cut. It was one of the first times that Collin Dufour was performing something he created alone. But the minute he went onstage, snare drum from Princess Nokia’s Tomboy slicing through the air, he grounded himself: if he had fun, the audience would have fun. And they did. The crowd whooped as Collin Dufour pulled off the mask obscuring his eyes and flung it to the side. They hollered as he reached down and unclasped his heels. Each tantalizing reveal was met with more applause than the last until the coat finally fell to the floor, unveiling a rope belt of real bananas dangling from Collin Dufour’s waist. The audience went wild as he swung his hips, channelling the iconic Black entertainer Josephine Baker – a Queer burlesque homage to her “Banana Dance” of 1926.
Less than five minutes, the performance felt monumental in Collin Dufour’s career, a perfect example of how he aims to “mix and match layers of beauty, fun and diversity” in his work. Two years later, Collin Dufour collaborated with the Montreal-based production duo Flamant to feature the performance as a short film. While he’s still exploring, ever since Collin Dufour graduated from École de danse contemporaine de Montréal in 2014, his goal has been to bring each performance into his world, be that in his freelance work or as a permanent dancer for Compagnie Marie Chouinard. “Every style of dance has something that … I wonder how I can put in my body,” he says. “I just want to put myself in any story that I can imagine.”
Collin Dufour started his dance career in hip hop when he was 17 but didn’t see the complexity of QTBIPOC narratives reflected in Quebec or Canadian culture, screens or stages. All he ever saw was the stereotype of the “troubled gay kid” who had difficulty at school and with their peers. But he knew there was so much more to people’s stories; there was beauty and history to be showcased. Now that he’s older, he sees Queerness finally making its way into commercial dance culture but fears that it’s “the flavour of the month.”
“They’re using it right now, but there’s a difference between having a creative team of Queer people and just using or tokenizing Queer people,” he says. “I love the long process of creating. … I don’t want it to be over in a month.”
“I want Queer creatives to have space … and money to create things that are really meaningful.”
Collin Dufour says he sees the industry getting there slowly, thanks to Queer people who are vocal in making space for themselves, something he says he tries to practise where he’s comfortable. He tries to make it clear where he’d like more freedom in how he’s presented, especially because it’s part of his range as an artist to move along the scale of gender performance.
In the near future, Collin Dufour would like to work on another narrative short film with a dancer as the focal point. Ideally, the film would
I want Queer creatives to have space ... and money to create things that are really meaningful.
– JOSSUA COLLIN DUFOUR –
have five or six different scenes, choreographed by him but with an outside eye to help define the different angles of his character.
He appreciates being able to move across bigger and smaller spheres of dance from independent collaborations with the likes of Flamant and Nico Archambault (winner of the first season of So You Think You Can Dance Canada) to the studio at Compagnie Marie Chouinard – they all nourish his creativity in different ways. He feels awestruck working with dancers he learned about in school, like Carol Prieur. “I need inspiration in my life and I feel working with these amazing dancers, I get that food every day,” he says. “But also working on little projects, I get to meet new people. I get to see new little stars and get inspired by different ways of working, dancing and thinking.”
Regardless of the work he does, he wants to highlight a new kind of beauty and fearlessness, inspired by the cathartic yet graceful power of Black female icons like Whitney Houston, Tina Turner and Grace Jones. “They just have this super force. … But it’s all [rooted] in beauty and blooming,” he says. “I really want to bring this sense of love, of magic, of spirituality. … These contrasts of soft and beautiful but strong and grounded.”