Rather a ditch

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A sensory, visceral, and existential solo echoing the silence of a deep solitude. This moving performance brings together Céline Bonnier, Caroline Monnet, and Clara Furey.

“To die… to go into the darkness… if it is darkness… to go to the river… if it is a river… but alone and without the illusion of love… naked and disastrously free…” – Howard Barker

Echoing Steve Reich’s hypnotic Different Trains, which questions the duality and fragility of our destinies, Clara Furey responded to Olivier Bertrand’s invitation for the first Montreal edition of the ALBUM Project and created Rather a Ditch, a piece in which several “existential dance experiments” explore the porosity between life and death.

The choreographer offers here a hypnotic work that plunges the spectator into the heart of absence. Céline Bonnier slides from one state to another, exploring interior landscapes and finding radiance in enveloping darkness. Seemingly absent from herself, sinking into her inner soul, and playing with radical disembodiment, the actress, a long-time accomplice of Clara Furey, lands herself once more in the performance game. An entity in its own right, the wall of imposing fragility imagined by Caroline Monnet vibrates with us throughout the piece, dialoguing with Karine Gauthier’s precise and enigmatic lighting and revealing questions about what is past and what remains, still, terribly present.

This show is presented in conjunction with Dog Rising !

Photos

Singeries

Two women try to remain true to themselves. Stuck in the centre of a video fresco, where their reflections multiply, morph, and shatter, they compulsively sing and replay themselves in order not to disintegrate. However, their hopes remain poorly anchored to their destiny: they are constantly behind or ahead of themselves, never in true sync with their innermost souls. From one moment to the next, female presences come to their rescue (Marguerite Duras, Chantal Akerman, Martha Rosler, Amy Greenfield, Maya Deren, Lygia Clark), but their rumour ends far and wide. Let’s call it an imposter — a sham.

Written correspondence, video and sound sampling, quotation, improvisation, rest, and repeated singing were at the heart of this creative process.

SINGERIES is the continuation of the friendship between Catherine Levoie-Marcus and Priscilla Guy, a meeting that has neither succeeded nor failed, but which is constantly renewed. The two are riveted to each other, sometimes without really knowing why, in an incessant — and yet reluctant — dialogue.

This show is presented in conjunction with Les employés !