Photo: Paul Litherland

Marie Claire Forté in collaboration with Alanna Kraaijeveld, and with the assistance of Sophie Bélair Clément, Hugues Dugas, Claudia Fancello, Yves Forté, Nadège Grebmeier Forget, k.g. Guttman, Kelly Keenan and Michèle Thériault

Collections de danses de Christian Rizzo, Gene Kelly et Stanley Donen, Édouard Lock, William Forsythe, Merce Cunningham, Saburo Teshigawara, Trisha Brown; Jeffrey Daniel, Michael Jackson et Vincent Patterson, Mats Ek, Dana Michel; Dana Foglia, Chris Grant et JaQuel Knight, Crystal Pite, Pina Bausch, Lloyd Newson, Tedd Robinson, Hofesh Shechter, Bob Fosse, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Daniel Linehan, Amanda Acorn, Jiři Kilyán, Akram Khan, Stijn Celis, Deborah Hay, Liz Santoro et Pierre Godard, Meg Stuart et Philipp Gehmacher, Marie Claire Forté, Trajal Harrell, k.g. Guttman, Benoît Lachambre, Jerome Robbins, Louise Lecavalier, Solange et d’autres

Schedule of performances:

Tuesday, November 15 – 5 pm
Saturday, November 19 – 4 pm
Saturday, November 26 – 4 pm
Tuesday, November 29 – 5 pm
Saturday, December 3 – 5 pm
Saturday, December 10 – 4 pm
Tuesday, December 13 – 5 pm
Thursday, December 15 – 5 pm

My friend and long-time collaborator Alanna Kraaijeveld and I looked for recordings of dances we enjoy, learned them, and repurposed them for our dancing pleasure. The material – a series of choreographic excerpts unceremoniously strung together – requires that we use our extensive dance training, so rarely called upon in this way throughout our respective careers. We celebrate technique without focusing on virtuosity. We happily offer the energy of dance in the gallery – although as Alanna says, we can’t give it all away. A set of screens obstructs and deconstructs our bodies as mid-career dancers, as women no longer young. The collection reveals the labour of dancing and remembering, the random specificity of movement vocabulary, repetition, process and friendship. We will perform the work eight times over the course of the exhibition and our repertoire will continue to grow throughout as we learn and add new excerpts.

– I’d rather something ambiguous. Mais précis à la fois.

November 12 – December 16, 2016

An exhibition project by Sophie Bélair Clément and Marie Claire Forté with Chantal Akerman, Simon Guibord, Philippe Hamelin, K8 Hardy, Raphaël Huppé-Alvarez, Alanna Kraaijeveld, Catherine Lalonde, Isabelle Pauwels, Jason Simon, Robin Simpson, Elisabeth Subrin, Michèle Thériault, and an anonymous contribution

Realised as part of the Leonard & Bina Ellen Program in Support of Artistic Production