In a unique dance video program, Danse en trois temps, Louise Lecavalier performs “Blue”, a solo adapted from selected sections of her work, So Blue. Filmed at Montreal’s Olympic Park, this triptych also includes Naraka, a pas de deux by Guillaume Côté and Maude Sabourin of Les Grands Ballets canadiens and Ever So Slightly, Victor Quijada’s reworked version of the piece he created for his company, RUBBERBAND.The director of Danse en trois temps is François Blouin.
Broadcast times: Friday, March 19, at 10 p.m. and Sunday, March 21, at 8:30 p.m.
Besides these broadcasts, the program can be viewed free at telequebec.tv or on the Télé-Québec app.
Last winter, shooting wrapped up for a documentary on Louise Lecavalier directed by Raymond St-Jean and produced by Michel Ouellette (producer of two other films spotlighting the dancer). Illustrated by dance scenes recreated especially for the camera, the film is a mosaic-like, close-up portrait of the artist, who mines her own life to nourish her art, through joys, encounters, friendships, and challenges. Entitled Louise Lecavalier – In Motion, the film premiered in September at the Quebec City Film Festival and in October at the Vancouver International Film Festival. Theatrical release on March 30, 2018 in Montreal, Quebec city and Sherbrooke. The film was named the ex-æquo winner of the prize for Best Dance Film of the Year by the French professional association of theatre, music, and dance critics on June 18, in Paris. Filmoption
Montreal, December 15, 2017 — L’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) honoured Louise Lecavalier this evening, awarding her an honorary doctorate in recognition of her prodigious creativity and the international resonance of her talent. The ceremony took place at the presentation of Quelque chose de sauvage by the graduating students of the Dance Department of UQAM. On this occasion, a tribute praising Louise Lecavalier was read by UQAM’s rector, Robert Proulx.
Artist emerita of dance Louise Lecavalier is this year’s winner of the Prix Denise-Pelletier, the most prestigious distinction given by the Government of Quebec in the area of the performing arts. Louise Lecavalier will receive the prize from Marie Montpetit, Ministre de la Culture et des Communications and Ministre responsable de la Protection et de la Promotion de la langue française, at an official ceremony that will be held at the Hôtel du Parlement in Quebec City.
Louise joins Ludmilla Chiriaeff (1980), Fernand Nault (1984), Jeanne Renaud (1988), Vincent Warren (1992), Martine Époque (1994), Édouard Lock (2002), Anik Bissonnette (2008) and Marie Chouinard (2010), her illustrious predecessors in the field of dance, all winners of the Prix Denise-Pelletier, inaugurated in 1977.
Battleground is a mad, unclassifiable dance work freely inspired by Italo Calvino’s novella, The Nonexistent Knight. The stage is a ring where two antiheroes wage a thousand extreme battles. Their feverish quest unfolds against an electronic vibe coloured by Antoine Berthiaume’s trance, minimalist techno, and glitch music, striking in the singular interplay of the guitars, the richness of the synthesizers, and the abundance of randomly-organized microsamples. The guitar tones morph from bright and crystalline to harsh and grating or to subtle and haunting. The score is a percussive, metallic voyage of obsessive rhythms that drives us forward like a bolting horse, sweeping us along from beginning to end.
Scheduled to tour for the next two seasons, Battleground, the dance work choreographed and performed by Louise Lecavalier, is now also an album, composed, performed, directed and mixed by Antoine Berthiaume with the complicity of his acolytes, Maxime Morin (DJ Champion), Marc Leclair (Akufen), and Rob Heaney.
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Louise Lecavalier stands out in Corps rebelles, an exhibition, presented at Quebec City’s Musée de la Civilisation in 2015-2016 and at Musée des Confluences in Lyons in 2016-2017. In it, she embodies virtuosic dance, her body magnified in all its glory, pushing its limits even as it reveals its fragility and poetry.
¨Meeting David Bowie was to succumb to the charm of a supernatural being…and yet, he was real and normal. We laughed and danced. He had a strong affect on me and I’ve missed him ever since. Today, I’m mourning a dear friend and an extraordinary artistic partner.”
