Danses kaléidoscopiques.
Performance by Manon De Pauw
and Pierre-Marc Ouellette
This installation-performance project proposes a hybrid art form blending contemporary dance, performance, and both visual and media arts. It is inspired by historical research into the Triadisches Ballett (1922) by the prominent Bauhaus artist Oskar Schlemmer, on which multidisciplinary artist Manon De Pauw and choreographer and dancer Pierre-Marc Ouellette draw to investigate the connections between body, image and technology.
The performance at VOX constitutes one stage of a large-scale experimental laboratory, which De Pauw and Ouellette will use to explore the interfacing of the performers with a visual apparatus consisting of mirrored plexiglass surfaces and projections of abstract images. The latter will be created live on the surface of a light table, echoing the music and in collaboration with the performers, who will continually reconfigure the gallery space by playing with reflections and manipulating light as a “material”.
Danses kaléidoscopiques revisits–not without a dose of humour–the historical link uniting the visual and the performing arts. It reactivates issues around body-image and body-machine relationships, probing into the dynamics of control, authority, subjectivity and agency. Here, the gesture emerges as much from choreographic writing as from random performance actions and playful encounters between the performers and the material, made up of both light and more tangible elements. The latter are no longer “moved” exclusively by a mathematical choreography, but rather live in a constant tension between the subject and the object of the work.
Manon De Pauw lives in Montreal. Her work has been shown at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Centro Nacional de las Artes in Mexico City and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. In 2009, Galerie de l’UQAM and curator Louise Déry presented the exhibition Manon De Pauw – Intrigues, which traveled to the Musée régional de Rimouski (2011) and the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris (2012). She has collaborated on multiple occasions with choreographer Danièle Desnoyers as well as musicians and composers André Pappathomas, Joane Hétu, and Philippe B. De Pauw recently created two major interdisciplinary performance works in collaboration with Pierre-Marc Ouellette: La matière ordinaire (2014) at Usine C and Cocons somatiques (2017) at Agora de la danse. She is professor at the School of Visual and Media Arts at Université du Québec à Montréal and is a member of the research group Labo lumière [créations + recherches interdisciplinaires].
Pierre-Marc Ouellettelives in Montreal. He completed his training at the École de danse contemporaine de Montréal (formerly LADMMI) in 2005. From 2007 to 2017 he worked as a dancer, mainly for Danièle Desnoyers’ company Le Carré des Lombes. In parallel, he participated in the creation of several shows and performances–La matière ordinaire, Cocons somatiques, Danses kaléidoscopiques–in collaboration with visual artist Manon De Pauw. He teaches movement and interpretation at the École de danse contemporaine de Montréal and as part of various professional dance workshops. His creations have benefited from the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts de Montréal. He holds a bachelor’s degree in art history (UQAM, 2018) and an individualized master’s degree from Concordia University in interdisciplinary approaches to choreographic creation.
