Choreographer Virginie Brunelle
Dancers Isabelle Arcand, Nicholas Bellefleur, Sophie Breton, Alexandre Carlos, Julien Derradj, Chi Long, Milan Panet-Gigon, Ernesto Quesada Perez, Marine Rixhon, Peter Trosztmer, Lucie Vigneault, Evelynn Yan
Pianist Laurier Rajotte
Dramaturgy Nicolas Berzi
Rehearsal director Claudine Hébert
Piano composition et soundtrack composition Laurier Rajotte
Soundtrack composition and sound environment Philippe Brault
Sound engineer Joël Lavoie
Costume designer Elen Ewing
Scenography designer Marilène Bastien
Light designer Martin Labrecque
Production director Charlotte Ménard
Technical director François Marceau
Administrative director Sylvie Lavoie
Coproducers LAC – Lugano Arte e Cultura, Danse Danse, Centre National des Arts d’Ottawa, Harbourfront Centre, Festival des Arts de Saint-Sauveur
Presented in its world premiere in Switzerland at the Lugano Dance Project Festival in 2022, Fables uses a rigorous movement vocabulary reminiscent of dance-theater to present a sometimes harsh, sometimes poetic vision of women’s ongoing struggle. The starting point of Fables was the theme of that festival, centring on Monte Verità, the famous mountain that was the cradle of an idealistic micro-society in the early 1900s. This liberated community, precursor of the hippie counterculture of the 1960s, sparked the choreographer’s desire to examine feminism. Against the backdrop of the chaos of an era turned upside down, Fables projects us into fantastical spaces from which larger-than-life characters emerge — contemporary female archetypes who paved the way to freedom from invisible yet real barriers. A universe of great evocative power, echoing a crying need for utopia, hope and humanity.
Fables is a work produced with the precious support of the National Arts Centre’s National Creation Fund, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts de Montréal and the Festival des Arts de Saint-Sauveur.
” Brunelle shows, with a dance figure characterized by the raw emotion of the performers and the humanity of the subjects tackled, the disillusionment, the ecstasy, the cracks, the fragility. […] The bodies glide on the ground, hover, contract, sublimely fluid, energetic, in an increasingly fast and compact crescendo. An almost tribal dance that becomes liberating. “
