Five bodies move to the rhythm of the metronome. Their mechanical movements resume, the machine heats up and demands impeccable rigour from them. As her artistic language matures, choreographer Catherine Gaudet sets out in search of a space beneath the bodies where desires can be reborn despite the weight of constraint.
Behind the innocuous appearance of this systematically traced collective score, there's a whiff of cheap varnish that will eventually crack. In tune with the contradictory pulsations of her time, Gaudet surrounds herself with her faithful accomplices to explore the pretense of the spectacular apparatus. After a while, repetition becomes the troublesome agent of performers turned instrumentalists. It makes the valve hiss, allowing the excess steam of salty bodies to escape. De-pression is the flip side of grandiosity. Here, the risk of a lapse in taste is very real, but necessary to maintain the balance.
Featured Artists
Catherine Gaudet ·
Catherine Gaudet holds a B.A. and M.A. in contemporary dance from UQAM, and has
established herself as a choreographer with a strong, singular signature. Reaching beneath the mask of social convention, she tracks down the jolts of the unconscious and the micromovements in the body that betray the emotions and sensations we try to hide. Obsessed by the quest for existential truth, she delves into the meanders of the psyche, seeking beauty in contradiction. Her state dance emerges from forces that oppose, constrain and control her flayed-looking characters. Her raw, precise physicality is mingled with a theatricality that subtly combines dramatic tension, a sense of the absurd and black humor.
She choreographed her first work in 2004, and made a name for herself the following two years with Grosse fatigue (2005), which won a prize at the Arthus International Choreography Competition (Denmark), and L’arnaque (2006). In 2009, she turned her attention to the effects of lack in her first full-length work, L’invasion du vide. Following creative residencies in Brussels (2010) and Berlin (2011), in 2012 she created Je suis un autre, in which she scratches away at the veneer of social facade to reveal the ambiguity of beings grappling with their contradictions. She pursued this intention in 2014 with Au sein des plus raides vertus, this time focusing on the notion of morality.
In 2016, in addition to a residency at the Centre chorégraphique national de Tours (France), she co-wrote La très excellente et lamentable tragédie de Roméo et Juliette with Jérémie Niel, a piece that transposes the Shakespearean legend into a huis-clos as sensual as it is melancholy. With Tout ce qui va revient (2018), she brings together on the same stage three solos from her repertoire, created in 2014 and 2015. It thus closes a cycle. In autonomous 2018, she presents her latest opus, L’affadissement du merveilleux, in Montreal. In 2021, she signs the solo Se dissoudre, which deals with the perception of time as an illusory phenomenon, and presents, at the FTA 2022, Les jolies choses, her latest creation for five dancers. In 2023, Catherine presents her new work Les mondes parallèles, featuring two remarkable performers: Louise Bédard and project initiator Sarah Williams. This is followed by the presentation of Mains Moites, a collaboration with director Brigitte Haentjens and performer Francis Ducharme. In 2024, with the Centre de Création O Vertigo and ODE, she creates her first large-scale work. Alongside her creative activities, she was a founding member of the Lorganisme company from 2010 to 2019; co-director of the Centre de Création O’ Vertigo alongside Ginete Laurin, Mélanie Demers and Caroline Laurin-Beaucage; guest professor at UQAM’s Département de danse in 2018-2019; and lecturer at the same institution from 2019 to 2021. Catherine is currently artistic director and general manager of Compagnie Catherine Gaudet, a member of Circuit-Est centre chorégraphique, associate creator at DLD - Daniel Léveillé Danse and associate artist at Agora de la danse.
"A cathartic journey from naivety and conformity to liberation and power."
Aurea Grau Loire
Núvol Digital Culture, Barcelona
Compagnie Catherine Gaudet creates and presents contemporary dance. It supports research and the production and presentation of works by its artistic director, as well as their promotion and presentation nationally and internationally. The company is a point of convergence for remarkable, free-thinking artists dedicated to an insatiable search for shifting perceptions of reality, exploring the resultant complex ramifications on the body and the psyche while reveling in the astonishing fact of living, of being in the world yet creating something new.
Credits:
- Created by: Catherine Gaudet
- Performers: Dany Desjardins, Caroline Gravel, Lauren Semeschuk, James Phillips, Scott McCabe
- Music: Antoine Berthiaume
- Lighting Design: Hugo Dalphond
- Costume Design: Marilène Bastien
- Assistant Dramaturge and Rehearsal Director: Sophie Michaud
- Production: Compagnie Catherine Gaudet
- Co-Production: Festival TransAmériques, Agora de la danse, Centre Chorégraphique National de Caen, Réseau CanDance (Toronto), DLD - Daniel Léveillé Danse
- Development: DLD - Daniel Léveillé Danse
