ออฟไลน์ด้วยแอป Player FM !
Ep. 49 - The One to One Affair (Marie Chouinard)
Manage episode 458223144 series 3562521
Gabrielle Martin chats with the legendary Marie Chouinard. Marie’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and Rite of Spring will be presented at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival on February 3 at the Chilliwack Cultural Centre.
Show Notes
Gabrielle and Marie discuss:
Can you describe the evolution of your artistic inquiry, especially since you started professional practice in 1978 and founded your own company in 1990?
Are you still called to the solo form?
How is your work connected to something more profound or spiritual?
How has the impact of your work changed as the sociopolitical context has shifted over time?
What are the challenges of arts leadership and how have they changed over the years?
What are you currently researching?
About Marie Chouinard
Marie Chouinard was born in Quebec. At the age of 16, her life was transformed after spending 4 months alone in Percé. As a choreographer, she traveled the world over as soloist for 12 years before founding the COMPAGNIE MARIE CHOUINARD in 1990. Her works, radical and profound, with a unique signature are nonetheless enduring and appear in the repertoires of major international ballet companies.
Marie Chouinard is a director (films, applications, virtual reality works), an author (Zéro Douze, Chantiers des extases), a visual artist (photographs, drawings, installations), and she also creates choreographies for site-specific installations, for the screen, and in real-time for the web. Named Officière des Arts et des Lettre in France, recipient of a Bessie Award in New York, she has received some thirty of the most prestigious awards and honors. She founded the Prix de la Danse de Montréal in 2011 and was director of dance at the Venice Biennale from 2017 to 2020. Marie Chouinard is preparing a solo exhibition.
Land Acknowledgement
This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.
Marie joined the conversation from what is now known as Montreal, on the traditional territory of the Kanien’kehà:ka, a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst many First Nations including the Kanien’kehá:ka of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Huron/Wendat, Abenaki, and Anishinaabeg.
It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.
Show Transcript
00:02
Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Director of Programming, and today's episode highlights play as a well source of energy.
00:16
I'm speaking with Mary Schwinard, choreographer of Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and The Rite of Spring, which are being presented at the Push Festival February 3rd, 2025. Mary Schwinard presents two unorthodox performances inspired by Ballet Roos masterpieces and reimagined into viscerally provocative experiences.
00:38
Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun interprets the lustful flirtations of a half goat creature with raw primal physicality, and The Rite of Spring captures the explosive energy of creation in a vivid celebration of dance as it bursts into modernity.
00:54
Mary Schwinard, a Quebec choreographer with a unique career path founded company Mary Schwinard in 1990 after an internationally acclaimed solo career. Her multidisciplinary works integrating dance, visual arts, and technology have earned her many prestigious awards and a prominent place in the world of contemporary dance.
01:14
Here's my conversation with Marie. You have been an iconic figure that I've been aware of and admired for a very long time, so it's just a real treat to be able to actually talk to you and get to hear more about you, these works that will be presented at the Push Festival and the Chilliwack Cultural Centre and to hear more about your wider practice.
01:38
So just before we dive into the conversation, I would just like to acknowledge that this conversation is happening. I am here on the traditional ancestral and stolen territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.
01:55
And as a settler here, I continue to think about what it means to be on the these lands, and what it means to bring a land based approach into different fields of work. And so today I just wanted to share reflections upon reading work by Dr.
02:13
Lindsay Lachance, Lachance, who is a award winning dramaturge, and holds a Canada Research Chair position in land based and relational dramaturgies. And so I'll just share a little bit from her article, which is tiny sparks everywhere, birch bark biting as land based dramaturgies, which has been published by the Canadian Theatre Review, and translated to French and published in Le Curieu Manual de Dramaturgies pour la dans le tiâtre et autre mâtérieure de bonjour.
02:43
And she speaks to the Algonquin Anishinaabe practice of birch bark biting as a basis for her dramaturgical principles of intention, superposition, holding, profound listening, and resurfacing emergence.
02:59
and brings into question how our capacity to engage with intangible realities is possible without this attentive presence. So that attentive presence being a key practice of land-based dramaturgies that distinguishes it from other approaches.
03:15
And I think that it's so interesting to have the opportunity to hear these kind of concrete examples of what land-based approaches mean. And, you know, specifically it's relevant today as we talk about dramaturgy artistic process.
03:29
So I encourage you to check out Dr. Lindsay Lachance's work. Today we're going to jump right into getting a sense of your practice, your parkour. Marie, can you walk us through the evolution of your artistic inquiry since the founding of your company, which in 1990, you founded it in 1990, and you'd already been creating dance as a soloist for 12 years before that.
03:57
And what were you interested in doing on stage in 1990, compared to now? Actually, the history of my practice, like you said, starts in 1978. And it has always been a relationship with art as somehow a sacred practice that is putting us in contact with what is beyond, beyond our history, even beyond our society, beyond, really beyond.
04:37
And that's why it took me so many years before I could consider working with a group of people, because somehow in my way of approaching dance, it was a one-to-one affair, like with the woman divinity, if you want, whatever, but just a one-to-one one affair.
04:59
It's like me in front of life, me in front of cosmos, me in front of my ancestors that are even before human beings. I really feel that there is a link with even the material world which is imbued with the spirit even before life appeared on this planet.
05:21
So I was so much into this practice and then of course that work was going to be brought in front of people, bring in front of people. And of course I'm also creating for, of course, people. But the basis is this link with what is beyond and then bringing this as a celebration or something and offering to my brothers and sisters to share.
05:52
And then it took me years before I was in front of this. impossibility of creating a new work because I was seeing, because I was the only interpret of my work, I was a soloist performer, I needed to be two or three simultaneously in the space.
06:12
And then so I then I was like, wow, then pushing that idea besides and trying again to come back to create a solo. And it was really persistent for weeks that I could not start a creation because I needed to be more than one in the space.
06:29
So this is where I started to have a company in 1990. And I had to really fight against myself because I thought, oh, if I work with people that will be less sacred somehow, that was in my spirit at that time, you know.
06:46
And so I had to fight. So it took another few weeks to have this combat with my, this fight with my own perception of things. So then finally, I surrendered to the idea of actually then I discovered it has to be to share even in the process of creation, because for me, the process of creation was really so sacred and lonely.
07:12
And then I realized, well, it will be a shared process. So then in 1990, I started the creating with a group of seven people. And I chose the number seven, because it's really, you know, the brain of the human being is made so that when there is a group of seven, the brain says it's a group.
07:36
If you are six, the brain will say, oh, it's two, three euros, or three duets. The brain is made like that. But from seven, the brain says, okay, it's a bunch, it's a group, it's seven. So that's how I chose the number seven.
07:50
And then I started creating, and then it was really a work of transmission, transmission in the way of breathing, transmission in the way of standing, transmission of how can you feel the radiation from your cellular organism and all those things.
08:06
So it was really the first month was really I was not even somehow creating. I was more transmitting knowledge, information, intuition. And from there, interestingly, from this transmission, I could see how their body were reacting to my demands.
08:24
And then I could see the beginning of the new work there in their bodies at that moment. So it's a long story I made to answer you. That's great. And I wanted that was great because you're speaking a lot about solo form and the ensemble work and your relationship to that.
08:44
And the solo form, as you mentioned, it's been very central to your early work. You have a collection of solo repertoire created between 1978. in 1998 that still tours internationally, performed by dancers in your company.
08:58
And, you know, since then, a lot of your work has been ensemble, but do you still have ideas that call you to explore the solo form? Yes, yes, I've created a few solo forms since 1990 and also duets, yeah, but also many solo.
09:18
The last one I created for myself was a few years ago, I think it's five years ago. It's a solo, a three hour long solo. Last time I performed, it was in Japan. And this is a solo where I have interaction.
09:32
It's not on a stage, it was in a museum. It's a solo where I have interaction, intimate interaction with some member of the audience that will come to me and we will share a little very short talking, like 40 seconds, one minute, where they will transmit to me their innermost desire, appeal, or what they feel is next in their life and what they feel they will need some help for this next step to happen.
10:01
And then I create on the spot, I create a dance for them, but for all the audience that is around us and encircle around us. And the audience had no idea what that person told me, but it's very interesting how they get totally engaged, you know, into this dance.
10:19
It makes sense even for them somehow, but very much for the person or so who gave me a secret somehow. And so I went like that for three hours, going from one person to another one. So that's the last solo I created.
10:36
And what I like to do is also the time after I've created a solo for myself, I transmit it later to the dancers of my company. So for example, now I'm in the process of creating a new solo, and once it will be created.
10:53
but I'm not ready yet to perform it at all, what we see. And eventually it will be transmitted to the dancers in the company. Thanks for sharing that. It sounds like also this three hour durational solo that you created.
11:07
It's a solo and in a lot of ways a group work as well, because you're creating with so many members of the audience throughout these three hours. Yeah, I'm creating for them. I'm creating as a demand from them to help their process somehow.
11:26
Yeah, I'm creating right there in front of all those people. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. Yeah, it really is clear how much that both the performance element and creative process is really linked towards connecting to something a little bit.
11:47
more profound and spiritual, is that's what I'm hearing when I hear you speak. Well, it's connected to someone specific in their demand. I must say that when they are talking to me, I'm also, we are very close, but somehow I'm scanning their energy and their bodies.
12:04
So I will answer not only their verbal demand, but also what I feel from the demand of their bodies and their way of holding themselves in the space and things like that. So it's multi-layered. And I want to talk about Prelude to the Afternoon of Afon and Right of Spring, which are the works I've presented here at Push 2025.
12:31
And these are works that you premiered in 1994 and 1993, respectively, and that still tour the world today, which is a remarkable longevity and relevance. And how has the impact of the work changed as the socio-aesthetic or political context have over the years?
12:51
Or if so, how? And if not, also, I'm curious about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It makes me smile at question because actually the first version of the music on Debussy. And it's only many years later after an orchestra in Taiwan asked me to go and play with their orchestra on Right of Spring.
13:22
And they said, don't you have another piece? Because only one piece is not much for an orchestra. And I said, yes, but you know, I have an afternoon of a phone, but I never did it on the music of Debussy.
13:36
And they said, well, let's do it. I said, OK, great. So it's true that the version with the music of Debussy was premier. And I guess it's 1994 in Taiwan. But the original choreography without that music was in, I'm not sure of the date, 1988, I think.
13:55
So yes, so now it makes me smile today because in those days, you know, we're not so much speaking about French and everything, you know, but for me it was very important that it needed a woman for me to be dancing the afternoon of a fawn and the fawn, you have to remember that the fawn is this very, very erotic and very strongly physical young animal god male being alone in the nature and just feeling the appeal of the nymphias,
14:34
the woman. And for me it was obvious that I should dance that. And it was just like something that... I don't know, that is beyond you, beyond your own decision, you know. And actually, I realized that since then, when when each time I have transmitted that solo, I have to say that I was wearing horns, you know, like the phone, he has horns, and I was at one point breaking one horn from my head and putting it on my pubic bone as a phallus.
15:06
So this is still what we are doing. But I noticed that since then, each time I have transmitted that solo to a woman of the company, it is transforming them. There is something, it's like an initiation somehow, you know.
15:23
So yeah, and once, but you know, in 1988, we were not so much talking about gender, and well, a bit, you know, but not like today, you know, today is like the subject and with many other subject ecology, everything.
15:39
Native people, everything. So, but yeah, so this, but this piece is still of today. And I must say that I'm somehow, I must say that there is something of which I am, how could I say, happy with about my work is that it seems that it does not, it does not fall into out of, you know, it's relevant.
16:08
It's always actual somehow, even a piece I created in, you know, so many years ago, 50 years ago or something, is still of today somehow. So that, that's really a joy for me to realize that yes, I tell myself, yes, my dear, you are really creating outside of society and everything you are really creating from your relationship with what is beyond, because it's, it's traveling through time.
16:34
So I guess this is a sign. Well, now I'm just, you know, maybe because I'm 69, I can dare say things like that, you know. Yeah, I think you can. And you're one of the very few Canadian contemporary dance companies, choreographers.
16:51
Well, your company has been established for, you know, as you mentioned, since 1990, with, you know, currently full-time company members and your own studios. So beyond a choreographer, you've been a long time major arts leader in the country.
17:07
And I'm curious how the challenges of arts leadership have changed for you over the past 35 years. You know, have they changed? If so, how? If not, what stays the same? I don't really, you know, for me, it's a continuum somehow.
17:26
I feel I feel my life and my creation really as a continuum. I feel somehow that I'm, you know, the voice of myself in my mind when I think is the voice of myself when I was seven years old, you know, six years old, I don't know.
17:40
So I really feel it's... It's more, this life is more about the continuum. This is primarily the continuum. And I feel the same in creation. One creation is just being born somehow from the previous one and from the actual moment of the now where I feel, okay, now what is my next steps?
18:05
So it's always related to the now, but in a continuity without me wanting it, it's continuity of course of what was before me in myself or whatever. So I feel more, so for me, the challenge has always been the same.
18:24
The challenge has always been how to create something that is totally linked with a very deeply anchored urge to put something into the world. It's always that, and that story has not changed. And it is always finding the best, the most accurate or the most precise or the most organic at the same time, way to incarnate this intuition.
19:02
So it's always that. So, and I don't feel so much that there has been big moments or changes. Someone could say, oh, going from solo world to group work. Yes, maybe, but not so much. It's a total continuity somehow.
19:24
I think you were asking also the challenge as our director or as general manager of my company. It's always the same, the challenge you have to deal with your budget that are never enough somehow. And you have to be extremely creative, not only in your work.
19:43
but in your way of using the money that you have, very creative, very, very creative. So it's creation, it's happening not only in the art, but also in the managing of everything. You have to find solutions, find solutions all the time.
20:05
Like a problem is an occasion for a new solution, for a new exploration, you know? So sometimes when people in my company, sometimes they have a problem and they call me or they come to see me and say, yeah, give me, give me, give me your problem.
20:21
I love it. Because I like to be in this situation where I have to create instantaneously a solution. But I must say that some of the times, wow, it's a, wow. Yeah, I have to think for myself, I have to think two or three days to find a solution, you know?
20:42
But it's always a challenge to create. And it's always mostly a joy. For me, it's a game. Directing a company and creating works is a game. It's like playing, playing with the forces of life, playing with the forces of beauty, of truth, of revelation.
21:02
It's a game. It's a game where you are playing with elements, you know? So there is a joy for me in playing. Like a kid, I play. I play creation. I play organizing. I play, yeah. Yeah, and I still like it.
21:24
I must tell you, I still like it so much. It's like great joy for me to create and to embark dancers into this process. It's really an exciting joy. And I must say that sometimes, you know, I arrive just a few minutes before 1 o'clock because my creation time is from 1 o'clock to 5.30 in the morning.
21:47
The dancers, they warm up, they do their technique, everything. But you know, when it's one minute to one, I'm like, I'm like excited. And we're like, I'm like a kid, you know? It's going to start, you know?
21:58
And it's funny, you know? I'm always excited. And just because I'm very, you know, at the same time, I'm very precise, you know? So I wait for it to be very one o'clock before I start. I don't start two minutes before, you know?
22:11
So this excitement, I can tell you, I assure you, you can ask my dancers. I have it almost every time, you know, this excitement to start at one o'clock, you know? It's really clear listening to you how you have managed to continue to create work and be an arts creation to the playfulness.
22:38
It really is clear that, you know, at what point it's a book. And so I would love to just hear about what you are currently researching in your creative process. Uh-huh. Yeah. Well, now, you know, I'm not only creating things for the stage, or not only creating for events that are not happening on the stage, let's say outside, like I did this summer.
23:03
Summer I created a new piece that is only to be performed outside, going from village to village, like in a caravan. But I'm also creating works for video installation and VR and photography and sculpture.
23:20
So I'm also in those processes these days. This process is happening. And I'm also, I will have a work premiere next July in Stuttgart. And yeah, in this piece, I've already created the lights for it last week.
23:38
and I'm really excited. I really think, because I also create the lights and the costume and the stenography and everything, so I'm so happy because I really created wonderful lights. Like really myself, because I was having this idea before going in the theater, yeah, I mean do this like that and we'll see, you know, but it was beyond my expectation.
24:01
So beautiful. So I'm really excited with this new, new creation that will be coming up soon. Yeah, yeah. Great. Do we get to know the name of it? Does it have a name? Not yet, right? Yeah, okay. Just keep, you know, keep, maybe, maybe it's a name in progress, you know, and I'm, the name is, I will see, you know, just before I have to establish everything officially for the premiere in Institute Garden that the name will be there for now.
24:31
Not yet. Thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure and just hearing you speak about your practice like energizes me hearing your passion about it. So thank you so much for sharing, you know, this with me and for our listeners.
24:46
Gabrielle, thank you so much. It was a pleasure and having your smile in front of me during this time was great. Thank you so much. You just heard Gabrielle Martin in conversation with Marie Schwenard, whose works prelude to the afternoon of Fawn and Rite of Spring will be performed on February 3rd at the Chilliwack Cultural Center as part of the 20th Push International Performing Arts Festival, supported by the Government of Quebec.
25:14
I'm Ben Charland and I produce this podcast alongside the wonderful Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. New episodes of Push Play are released every Tuesday and Friday wherever you get your podcasts.
25:28
For more information on the 2025 festival and to discover the full lineup of more than 20 works of theater, dance, music and multimedia performances, visit pushfestival.ca and on the next Push Play. Sometimes it unlocks something that is more impressive than if you kind of bring some sort of like high budget thing into it or you kind of have this big image like the simplicity of just like this moment that you're sharing with in a space with some people,
26:00
that's the thing that gets us going.
53 ตอน
Manage episode 458223144 series 3562521
Gabrielle Martin chats with the legendary Marie Chouinard. Marie’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and Rite of Spring will be presented at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival on February 3 at the Chilliwack Cultural Centre.
Show Notes
Gabrielle and Marie discuss:
Can you describe the evolution of your artistic inquiry, especially since you started professional practice in 1978 and founded your own company in 1990?
Are you still called to the solo form?
How is your work connected to something more profound or spiritual?
How has the impact of your work changed as the sociopolitical context has shifted over time?
What are the challenges of arts leadership and how have they changed over the years?
What are you currently researching?
About Marie Chouinard
Marie Chouinard was born in Quebec. At the age of 16, her life was transformed after spending 4 months alone in Percé. As a choreographer, she traveled the world over as soloist for 12 years before founding the COMPAGNIE MARIE CHOUINARD in 1990. Her works, radical and profound, with a unique signature are nonetheless enduring and appear in the repertoires of major international ballet companies.
Marie Chouinard is a director (films, applications, virtual reality works), an author (Zéro Douze, Chantiers des extases), a visual artist (photographs, drawings, installations), and she also creates choreographies for site-specific installations, for the screen, and in real-time for the web. Named Officière des Arts et des Lettre in France, recipient of a Bessie Award in New York, she has received some thirty of the most prestigious awards and honors. She founded the Prix de la Danse de Montréal in 2011 and was director of dance at the Venice Biennale from 2017 to 2020. Marie Chouinard is preparing a solo exhibition.
Land Acknowledgement
This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.
Marie joined the conversation from what is now known as Montreal, on the traditional territory of the Kanien’kehà:ka, a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst many First Nations including the Kanien’kehá:ka of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Huron/Wendat, Abenaki, and Anishinaabeg.
It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.
Show Transcript
00:02
Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Director of Programming, and today's episode highlights play as a well source of energy.
00:16
I'm speaking with Mary Schwinard, choreographer of Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and The Rite of Spring, which are being presented at the Push Festival February 3rd, 2025. Mary Schwinard presents two unorthodox performances inspired by Ballet Roos masterpieces and reimagined into viscerally provocative experiences.
00:38
Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun interprets the lustful flirtations of a half goat creature with raw primal physicality, and The Rite of Spring captures the explosive energy of creation in a vivid celebration of dance as it bursts into modernity.
00:54
Mary Schwinard, a Quebec choreographer with a unique career path founded company Mary Schwinard in 1990 after an internationally acclaimed solo career. Her multidisciplinary works integrating dance, visual arts, and technology have earned her many prestigious awards and a prominent place in the world of contemporary dance.
01:14
Here's my conversation with Marie. You have been an iconic figure that I've been aware of and admired for a very long time, so it's just a real treat to be able to actually talk to you and get to hear more about you, these works that will be presented at the Push Festival and the Chilliwack Cultural Centre and to hear more about your wider practice.
01:38
So just before we dive into the conversation, I would just like to acknowledge that this conversation is happening. I am here on the traditional ancestral and stolen territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.
01:55
And as a settler here, I continue to think about what it means to be on the these lands, and what it means to bring a land based approach into different fields of work. And so today I just wanted to share reflections upon reading work by Dr.
02:13
Lindsay Lachance, Lachance, who is a award winning dramaturge, and holds a Canada Research Chair position in land based and relational dramaturgies. And so I'll just share a little bit from her article, which is tiny sparks everywhere, birch bark biting as land based dramaturgies, which has been published by the Canadian Theatre Review, and translated to French and published in Le Curieu Manual de Dramaturgies pour la dans le tiâtre et autre mâtérieure de bonjour.
02:43
And she speaks to the Algonquin Anishinaabe practice of birch bark biting as a basis for her dramaturgical principles of intention, superposition, holding, profound listening, and resurfacing emergence.
02:59
and brings into question how our capacity to engage with intangible realities is possible without this attentive presence. So that attentive presence being a key practice of land-based dramaturgies that distinguishes it from other approaches.
03:15
And I think that it's so interesting to have the opportunity to hear these kind of concrete examples of what land-based approaches mean. And, you know, specifically it's relevant today as we talk about dramaturgy artistic process.
03:29
So I encourage you to check out Dr. Lindsay Lachance's work. Today we're going to jump right into getting a sense of your practice, your parkour. Marie, can you walk us through the evolution of your artistic inquiry since the founding of your company, which in 1990, you founded it in 1990, and you'd already been creating dance as a soloist for 12 years before that.
03:57
And what were you interested in doing on stage in 1990, compared to now? Actually, the history of my practice, like you said, starts in 1978. And it has always been a relationship with art as somehow a sacred practice that is putting us in contact with what is beyond, beyond our history, even beyond our society, beyond, really beyond.
04:37
And that's why it took me so many years before I could consider working with a group of people, because somehow in my way of approaching dance, it was a one-to-one affair, like with the woman divinity, if you want, whatever, but just a one-to-one one affair.
04:59
It's like me in front of life, me in front of cosmos, me in front of my ancestors that are even before human beings. I really feel that there is a link with even the material world which is imbued with the spirit even before life appeared on this planet.
05:21
So I was so much into this practice and then of course that work was going to be brought in front of people, bring in front of people. And of course I'm also creating for, of course, people. But the basis is this link with what is beyond and then bringing this as a celebration or something and offering to my brothers and sisters to share.
05:52
And then it took me years before I was in front of this. impossibility of creating a new work because I was seeing, because I was the only interpret of my work, I was a soloist performer, I needed to be two or three simultaneously in the space.
06:12
And then so I then I was like, wow, then pushing that idea besides and trying again to come back to create a solo. And it was really persistent for weeks that I could not start a creation because I needed to be more than one in the space.
06:29
So this is where I started to have a company in 1990. And I had to really fight against myself because I thought, oh, if I work with people that will be less sacred somehow, that was in my spirit at that time, you know.
06:46
And so I had to fight. So it took another few weeks to have this combat with my, this fight with my own perception of things. So then finally, I surrendered to the idea of actually then I discovered it has to be to share even in the process of creation, because for me, the process of creation was really so sacred and lonely.
07:12
And then I realized, well, it will be a shared process. So then in 1990, I started the creating with a group of seven people. And I chose the number seven, because it's really, you know, the brain of the human being is made so that when there is a group of seven, the brain says it's a group.
07:36
If you are six, the brain will say, oh, it's two, three euros, or three duets. The brain is made like that. But from seven, the brain says, okay, it's a bunch, it's a group, it's seven. So that's how I chose the number seven.
07:50
And then I started creating, and then it was really a work of transmission, transmission in the way of breathing, transmission in the way of standing, transmission of how can you feel the radiation from your cellular organism and all those things.
08:06
So it was really the first month was really I was not even somehow creating. I was more transmitting knowledge, information, intuition. And from there, interestingly, from this transmission, I could see how their body were reacting to my demands.
08:24
And then I could see the beginning of the new work there in their bodies at that moment. So it's a long story I made to answer you. That's great. And I wanted that was great because you're speaking a lot about solo form and the ensemble work and your relationship to that.
08:44
And the solo form, as you mentioned, it's been very central to your early work. You have a collection of solo repertoire created between 1978. in 1998 that still tours internationally, performed by dancers in your company.
08:58
And, you know, since then, a lot of your work has been ensemble, but do you still have ideas that call you to explore the solo form? Yes, yes, I've created a few solo forms since 1990 and also duets, yeah, but also many solo.
09:18
The last one I created for myself was a few years ago, I think it's five years ago. It's a solo, a three hour long solo. Last time I performed, it was in Japan. And this is a solo where I have interaction.
09:32
It's not on a stage, it was in a museum. It's a solo where I have interaction, intimate interaction with some member of the audience that will come to me and we will share a little very short talking, like 40 seconds, one minute, where they will transmit to me their innermost desire, appeal, or what they feel is next in their life and what they feel they will need some help for this next step to happen.
10:01
And then I create on the spot, I create a dance for them, but for all the audience that is around us and encircle around us. And the audience had no idea what that person told me, but it's very interesting how they get totally engaged, you know, into this dance.
10:19
It makes sense even for them somehow, but very much for the person or so who gave me a secret somehow. And so I went like that for three hours, going from one person to another one. So that's the last solo I created.
10:36
And what I like to do is also the time after I've created a solo for myself, I transmit it later to the dancers of my company. So for example, now I'm in the process of creating a new solo, and once it will be created.
10:53
but I'm not ready yet to perform it at all, what we see. And eventually it will be transmitted to the dancers in the company. Thanks for sharing that. It sounds like also this three hour durational solo that you created.
11:07
It's a solo and in a lot of ways a group work as well, because you're creating with so many members of the audience throughout these three hours. Yeah, I'm creating for them. I'm creating as a demand from them to help their process somehow.
11:26
Yeah, I'm creating right there in front of all those people. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. Yeah, it really is clear how much that both the performance element and creative process is really linked towards connecting to something a little bit.
11:47
more profound and spiritual, is that's what I'm hearing when I hear you speak. Well, it's connected to someone specific in their demand. I must say that when they are talking to me, I'm also, we are very close, but somehow I'm scanning their energy and their bodies.
12:04
So I will answer not only their verbal demand, but also what I feel from the demand of their bodies and their way of holding themselves in the space and things like that. So it's multi-layered. And I want to talk about Prelude to the Afternoon of Afon and Right of Spring, which are the works I've presented here at Push 2025.
12:31
And these are works that you premiered in 1994 and 1993, respectively, and that still tour the world today, which is a remarkable longevity and relevance. And how has the impact of the work changed as the socio-aesthetic or political context have over the years?
12:51
Or if so, how? And if not, also, I'm curious about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It makes me smile at question because actually the first version of the music on Debussy. And it's only many years later after an orchestra in Taiwan asked me to go and play with their orchestra on Right of Spring.
13:22
And they said, don't you have another piece? Because only one piece is not much for an orchestra. And I said, yes, but you know, I have an afternoon of a phone, but I never did it on the music of Debussy.
13:36
And they said, well, let's do it. I said, OK, great. So it's true that the version with the music of Debussy was premier. And I guess it's 1994 in Taiwan. But the original choreography without that music was in, I'm not sure of the date, 1988, I think.
13:55
So yes, so now it makes me smile today because in those days, you know, we're not so much speaking about French and everything, you know, but for me it was very important that it needed a woman for me to be dancing the afternoon of a fawn and the fawn, you have to remember that the fawn is this very, very erotic and very strongly physical young animal god male being alone in the nature and just feeling the appeal of the nymphias,
14:34
the woman. And for me it was obvious that I should dance that. And it was just like something that... I don't know, that is beyond you, beyond your own decision, you know. And actually, I realized that since then, when when each time I have transmitted that solo, I have to say that I was wearing horns, you know, like the phone, he has horns, and I was at one point breaking one horn from my head and putting it on my pubic bone as a phallus.
15:06
So this is still what we are doing. But I noticed that since then, each time I have transmitted that solo to a woman of the company, it is transforming them. There is something, it's like an initiation somehow, you know.
15:23
So yeah, and once, but you know, in 1988, we were not so much talking about gender, and well, a bit, you know, but not like today, you know, today is like the subject and with many other subject ecology, everything.
15:39
Native people, everything. So, but yeah, so this, but this piece is still of today. And I must say that I'm somehow, I must say that there is something of which I am, how could I say, happy with about my work is that it seems that it does not, it does not fall into out of, you know, it's relevant.
16:08
It's always actual somehow, even a piece I created in, you know, so many years ago, 50 years ago or something, is still of today somehow. So that, that's really a joy for me to realize that yes, I tell myself, yes, my dear, you are really creating outside of society and everything you are really creating from your relationship with what is beyond, because it's, it's traveling through time.
16:34
So I guess this is a sign. Well, now I'm just, you know, maybe because I'm 69, I can dare say things like that, you know. Yeah, I think you can. And you're one of the very few Canadian contemporary dance companies, choreographers.
16:51
Well, your company has been established for, you know, as you mentioned, since 1990, with, you know, currently full-time company members and your own studios. So beyond a choreographer, you've been a long time major arts leader in the country.
17:07
And I'm curious how the challenges of arts leadership have changed for you over the past 35 years. You know, have they changed? If so, how? If not, what stays the same? I don't really, you know, for me, it's a continuum somehow.
17:26
I feel I feel my life and my creation really as a continuum. I feel somehow that I'm, you know, the voice of myself in my mind when I think is the voice of myself when I was seven years old, you know, six years old, I don't know.
17:40
So I really feel it's... It's more, this life is more about the continuum. This is primarily the continuum. And I feel the same in creation. One creation is just being born somehow from the previous one and from the actual moment of the now where I feel, okay, now what is my next steps?
18:05
So it's always related to the now, but in a continuity without me wanting it, it's continuity of course of what was before me in myself or whatever. So I feel more, so for me, the challenge has always been the same.
18:24
The challenge has always been how to create something that is totally linked with a very deeply anchored urge to put something into the world. It's always that, and that story has not changed. And it is always finding the best, the most accurate or the most precise or the most organic at the same time, way to incarnate this intuition.
19:02
So it's always that. So, and I don't feel so much that there has been big moments or changes. Someone could say, oh, going from solo world to group work. Yes, maybe, but not so much. It's a total continuity somehow.
19:24
I think you were asking also the challenge as our director or as general manager of my company. It's always the same, the challenge you have to deal with your budget that are never enough somehow. And you have to be extremely creative, not only in your work.
19:43
but in your way of using the money that you have, very creative, very, very creative. So it's creation, it's happening not only in the art, but also in the managing of everything. You have to find solutions, find solutions all the time.
20:05
Like a problem is an occasion for a new solution, for a new exploration, you know? So sometimes when people in my company, sometimes they have a problem and they call me or they come to see me and say, yeah, give me, give me, give me your problem.
20:21
I love it. Because I like to be in this situation where I have to create instantaneously a solution. But I must say that some of the times, wow, it's a, wow. Yeah, I have to think for myself, I have to think two or three days to find a solution, you know?
20:42
But it's always a challenge to create. And it's always mostly a joy. For me, it's a game. Directing a company and creating works is a game. It's like playing, playing with the forces of life, playing with the forces of beauty, of truth, of revelation.
21:02
It's a game. It's a game where you are playing with elements, you know? So there is a joy for me in playing. Like a kid, I play. I play creation. I play organizing. I play, yeah. Yeah, and I still like it.
21:24
I must tell you, I still like it so much. It's like great joy for me to create and to embark dancers into this process. It's really an exciting joy. And I must say that sometimes, you know, I arrive just a few minutes before 1 o'clock because my creation time is from 1 o'clock to 5.30 in the morning.
21:47
The dancers, they warm up, they do their technique, everything. But you know, when it's one minute to one, I'm like, I'm like excited. And we're like, I'm like a kid, you know? It's going to start, you know?
21:58
And it's funny, you know? I'm always excited. And just because I'm very, you know, at the same time, I'm very precise, you know? So I wait for it to be very one o'clock before I start. I don't start two minutes before, you know?
22:11
So this excitement, I can tell you, I assure you, you can ask my dancers. I have it almost every time, you know, this excitement to start at one o'clock, you know? It's really clear listening to you how you have managed to continue to create work and be an arts creation to the playfulness.
22:38
It really is clear that, you know, at what point it's a book. And so I would love to just hear about what you are currently researching in your creative process. Uh-huh. Yeah. Well, now, you know, I'm not only creating things for the stage, or not only creating for events that are not happening on the stage, let's say outside, like I did this summer.
23:03
Summer I created a new piece that is only to be performed outside, going from village to village, like in a caravan. But I'm also creating works for video installation and VR and photography and sculpture.
23:20
So I'm also in those processes these days. This process is happening. And I'm also, I will have a work premiere next July in Stuttgart. And yeah, in this piece, I've already created the lights for it last week.
23:38
and I'm really excited. I really think, because I also create the lights and the costume and the stenography and everything, so I'm so happy because I really created wonderful lights. Like really myself, because I was having this idea before going in the theater, yeah, I mean do this like that and we'll see, you know, but it was beyond my expectation.
24:01
So beautiful. So I'm really excited with this new, new creation that will be coming up soon. Yeah, yeah. Great. Do we get to know the name of it? Does it have a name? Not yet, right? Yeah, okay. Just keep, you know, keep, maybe, maybe it's a name in progress, you know, and I'm, the name is, I will see, you know, just before I have to establish everything officially for the premiere in Institute Garden that the name will be there for now.
24:31
Not yet. Thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure and just hearing you speak about your practice like energizes me hearing your passion about it. So thank you so much for sharing, you know, this with me and for our listeners.
24:46
Gabrielle, thank you so much. It was a pleasure and having your smile in front of me during this time was great. Thank you so much. You just heard Gabrielle Martin in conversation with Marie Schwenard, whose works prelude to the afternoon of Fawn and Rite of Spring will be performed on February 3rd at the Chilliwack Cultural Center as part of the 20th Push International Performing Arts Festival, supported by the Government of Quebec.
25:14
I'm Ben Charland and I produce this podcast alongside the wonderful Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. New episodes of Push Play are released every Tuesday and Friday wherever you get your podcasts.
25:28
For more information on the 2025 festival and to discover the full lineup of more than 20 works of theater, dance, music and multimedia performances, visit pushfestival.ca and on the next Push Play. Sometimes it unlocks something that is more impressive than if you kind of bring some sort of like high budget thing into it or you kind of have this big image like the simplicity of just like this moment that you're sharing with in a space with some people,
26:00
that's the thing that gets us going.
53 ตอน
ทุกตอน
×ขอต้อนรับสู่ Player FM!
Player FM กำลังหาเว็บ