July 4 – August 12, 2011
Curated by Meredith Carruthers
Sound design: Douglas Moffat
Percussion: Susannah Wesley
Vitrine Installation
Parade, by Meredith Carruthers of Leisure Projects, unfolds over the summer months in the Gallery’s vitrines. This project in three parts, inspired by Jean Cocteau’s ballet Parade, draws from the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery’s collection to create a choreography of artworks.
Choreography of artworks
(PDF format)
July 4-7 – July 8-10 – July 11 – July 12 – July 13 – July 14 – July 15-17 –July 18-19 – July 20 – July 21 – July 22-25 – July 26-31 – August 1 – August 2-4 – August 5-7 – August 8-9 – August 10-11 – August 12
The set represents Parisian mansions on a Sunday. Theater fairground. Three music hall numbers make up the show:
The Chinese conjurer.
The acrobats.
The young American girl.
Three managers do the hustling. They urge the crowd in fantastic terms to follow the parade into the theater, and crudely try to make them understand. Nobody enters.
After the last number in the parade, the exhausted managers collapse in each other’s arms. The Chinese conjurer, the two acrobats, and the young American girl emerge from the empty theater. Seeing their managers’ supreme effort and its failure, the three try to explain to the crowd that the performances take place inside the building. 1
Jean Cocteau
Choral
Prelude of the red curtain
July 4 to 7
Prelude
I. Chinese Conjurer
July 8 to 24
II. Young American Girl
July 26 to August 1
Ragtime of the passenger steamer
III. Acrobats
August 2 to 11
Final
Continuation of the Prelude of the red curtain
August 12
End
1Satie, Erik, Jean Cocteau, and Victor Rangel-Ribeiro. Parade in Full Score. Mineola: Dover Publications, 2000. viii.
The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery’s contemporary exhibition program is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.