Residencies and creation

For the second year of this exchange, Agora de la danse hosts the Italian choreographer Luna Cenere, From April 24 to May 10, 2023, where she pursues the research and creation of Vanishing Place in Espace blanc.

LUNA CENERE Luna Cenere is a dancer and choreographer born in Naples (IT), associated artist of the Körper National Center of Production.

In this new project, Vanishing Place, that will be presented at the Venice Biennale next July, Luna’s intention is to dig deeper in the practice of hiding and reveal, experimenting the use of objects such panels and start a chromatic research. Manipulating this setting, the performers will also move/manipulate the space. Working mainly with nudity and experimenting new postures/architectures of the body putting them in dialogue with the surrounding space, objects and movement. While in Montreal, Luna will pursue her research with two performers, Ilaria Quaglia, Davide Travaglini.

April 10 to April 30, 2022, Agora de la danse hosts the Italian choreographer Francesca Pennini, accompanied by the artists Alberto Favretto and Angelo Pedroni, as they  initiate the creation of their new project Abracadabra in Espace blanc.

FRANCESCA PENNINI (Ferrara, 1984) starts off as a gymnast and then devoted herself to contemporary dance. She studied at Balletto di Toscana, Laban Centre in London and she explored a broad range of disciplines: from butoh to free diving, from martial arts to disco-dance competitions. She worked as a freelance dancer for Sasha Waltz & Guests. In 2007 she founds the company CollettivO CineticO as a flexible net of artists: more than 50 members from different disciplines focusing on movement and keeping the structure of the company itself in constant dynamic. Her work crosses genders and codes reformatting the rules of the performative event, challenging the relationship with the spectator, meeting different kinds of bodies and spaces with a rigorous yet ironic approach. She gives lectures and seminars in museums and arts centers. and she is a guest professor of “Theatre and performing arts” at IUAV University in Venice.

CollettivO CineticO is an experimental performing arts group founded in 2007 by the choreographer Francesca Pennini. Their work crosses genders and codes reformatting the rules of the performative event, challenging the relationship with the spectator with a rigorous yet ironic approach and shifting in the interstices between dance, theatre and visual arts. They developed devices and didactics for a broad range of bodies and spaces, from the theater stage to urban complexity, from mimetic missions in daily life to virtual spaces. Until now the group created 60 productions, winning many awards.

From October 20 to November 6, 2024, choreographer Dorian Nuskind-Oder is in creative residency in Reggio Emilia at Teatro Ariosto’s Sala Verdi, thanks to the invaluable collaboration of Reggio Emilia’s Fondazione I Teatri. The choreographer and performer, accompanied by Simon Grenier-Poirier and Alison Clancy, is embarking on an initial period of research for her new creation, BULLS.

This residency is made possible thanks to the support of Agora de la danse in collaboration with CALQ, NID (New Italian Dance Platform) and CINARS.

Born in North Carolina and based in Montreal, Dorian is a choreographer and cultural worker. She often works in collaboration with dramaturg and sound designer Simon Grenier-Poirier.
Dorian’s projects reflect her interest in social dynamics, humor and unusual forms. Past works include: Looper (2024) a deconstruction of Elena Lev’s iconic circus act; Nos Ruelles (2021), an interactive nature walk for children in the neighborhood of Parc-Extension, Speed Glue (2019), a choreographic score for two ping-pong players; and Memory Palace (2016), a performance for three dancers with a background in social or folk dance.
These works have been presented in a variety of contexts including the Festival TransAmériques, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Festival Montréal Complètement Cirque, the Chinese National Table Tennis Museum in Shanghai, l’Atelier de Paris / CDCN, the Centre Récréatif de Marsoui (Festival FURIES) and the ruelle Querbes-Durocher.
Since 2017, Dorian is also a co-artistic and general director of Le Radeau, a creation and production company in residence at La Cité-des-Hosptalières.

August 9 to 30, 2023, Compagnie Virginie Brunelle will be in Sardinia for a creative residency. The choreographer, accompanied by two dancers, Sophie Breton and Alexandre Carlos, is undertaking new choreographic research at the Teatro Verdi in Sassari, thanks to support of the RTO (temporary grouping of organizations) and AGIS (Associazione Generale Italiana dello Spettacolo), organizer of the (NID 2023 Platform).

Compagnie Virginie Brunelle is a choreographic creation company that has worked under the artistic direction and general management of choreographer Virginie Brunelle since it was founded in 2009. Its repertoire includes some 10 contemporary dance works, which have been presented in more than 50 Quebec cities and on international stages.

The choreographer draws her creative inspiration from music to generate distinctive stage imagery. These images are then transposed onto the work like musical scores. Virginie Brunelle first composes the primary physical elements before turning her attention to the dynamic gestural language. It’s here that her focus shifts to highly detailed work, combining rhythms, suspensions, ferocity, delicacy, gazes, breathing, and brutality to bring out the evocative power of gesture. Behind this formal research process lies a poetry of vulnerability that gives rise to poignant and visually stunning stage experiences.

September 20 to October 8, 2022, the dance company Andrea Peña & Artists is in a creative residency in Italy. The first Quebec artist to benefit from this cultural exchange, the choreographer Andrea Peña, accompanied by the dancers Frédérique Rodier and Jean-Benoît Labrecque, embarks on new choreographic research at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples, thanks to support of Teatro Pubblico Campano and TAN Teatri Associati di Napoli.

Andrea Peña & Artists is a company renowned for creating critical, alternative and spatial worlds that break with our notions and understanding of a sentient humanity. Intrigued by the depths of individuality, a theme rooted in her bi-cultural origins, Peña’s choreography is imbued with vulnerability, complexity and dynamic physicality, extending beyond simple movement by means of conceptual research. With a background in industrial design, her works are influenced by the visual arts and spatial qualities, focusing on the body as matter that exists in relation to time and space.

Catherine Gaudet

Catherine Gaudet is interested in the transformations of the body generated by the ambiguity that animates human activity. She approaches choreography as a study of the unconscious, elusive aspects of the human being and hopes to bring to light what is being camouflaged. She has developed a physicality where the body becomes a resonator of complex, contradictory sensations simmering under the surface. Her dance vocabulary is characterized by subtle changes in muscular tension that reveal the entanglement of many different ideas, states and impulses. The body is both transmitter and receiver of invisible forces, witness to an existential history that is both personal and universal. The raw aspect of body states is intermingled with precise lines and set to a finely written score. Deeply committed to the work, the dancers rise to the challenge of precise control over the form, plus its deconstruction by open performative states.

Isabelle Van Grimde

A choreographer, founder and artistic director of the Montreal dance company Van Grimde Corps Secrets, Isabelle Van Grimde has had an international career marked by interdisciplinary collaborations that expand the horizons of contemporary dance while multiplying possible perceptions of the body and the piece being staged. Her work is characterized by the quality of the dialogue she encourages between dance and music and, since 2008, by the harmonious integration of new technologies. Open to the world, she conducts theoretical and basic research on the body, research that nourishes and supports her artistic approach. She has been moving away from theatre venues in favour of presenting dance in galleries, public spaces or on the Web. In 2011 the Canada Council for the Arts awarded her the Jacqueline Lemieux Prize for her contribution to enriching artistic life in Canada and abroad.

Out Innerspace Dance Theatre

Out Innerspace is a Vancouver based Contemporary Dance organization founded in 2007 by directors David Raymond and Tiffany Tregarthen. OIS has dedicated over 10 years to creating extraordinary and integral dance experiences through uncompromising rigour and unreserved ingenuity. Full-length works Me So You So Me (2012), Vessel (2010, 2013) and Major Motion Picture (2015) have enjoyed 5 National Tours and performances for 23 schools through ArtStarts. Major Motion Picture is the 2014 recipient of the CanDance Creation Fund commission. OIS was a featured company at the 2017 MilanOltre Festival in Italy and celebrated as “One of the most beautiful and interesting works of the entire festival.” (labottegadelbarbieri.org). Their latest creation, Bygones is co-produced by  Agora de la danse, La Rotonde and Dance Victoria and was awarded 2019 Chrystal Dance Prize and Dance Centre Artistic Residency.  An initiative of Out Innerspace, Modus Operandi offers pivotal post-secondary contemporary dance education to young aspiring professionals and is grounds for some of Canada’s most exciting new dance artists.

Mélanie Demers

A multi-disciplinary artist, Mélanie Demers founded her company MAYDAY in Montreal in 2007. Exploring the powerful connection between the poetic and the political, she deepened her commitment to her art with work that took on hybrid forms. Her fascination for words and gestures crystallized in WOULD (2015), which received the CALQ Award for best choreography. Combining theatricality, literature, music and the visual arts, she embarked on a new cycle in 2021 with La Goddam Voie Lactée and Cabaret Noir. She has a repertoire of more than 30 dance pieces, which have been presented in theatres and at festivals in Europe, America, Africa and Asia.

Jacques Poulin-Denis

Jacques Poulin-Denis is a true artisan of the performing arts. A composer, choreographer and performer, he embarks on projects that blur the boundaries between dance, music and theatre. His works have been presented in some twenty cities in Canada, and also in the U.S., Europe and Asia. He collaborates closely with the choreographer Mélanie Demers, with whom he has worked as a performer and composer since 2006.

Emmanuel Eggermont

The French choreographer recently completed the finishing touches to his new piece Πόλις (Polis) at Agora de la danse as part of an artistic residency exchange program with the Centre chorégraphique national in Tours, France.

Public presentation on March 21 at 4 p.m.

After graduating from the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine d’Angers (France, Class of 1999), Emmanuel Eggermont, join during three years the spanish choreographer Carmen Werner in Madrid. In 2001, he has been invited in Seoul to participate in a project combining pedagogy and choreography. From his two years spent in South Korea, and later from his work with Raimund Hoghe (BoleroVariations, Si je meurs laissez le balcon ouvert and L’Après-midi…), he developed an attention for the essence, what is essential. without denying a research on the possible impact of staging, he has perfected a precise and minimalist choreographic style, to improve the way each detail is valued (given focus), to escape the “profusion” of performance. He developed his choreographic projects since 2007 in Lille (France) at L’Anthracite. Since March 2010, Emmanuel Eggermont has been in research residency at L’L (Brussels), a process which led to the successful creation of T-Wall (2011) and Vorspiel (2013), a piece in wich he invited musicians, actors and fine artist to join the performance. In 2014, he has been invited to participate in Sujets à Vifs for the Festival In d’Avignon. Emmanuel Eggermont recieved a writing bursary by association Beaumarchais-SACD for the choreography Strange Fruit which premiere in may 2015.

© L’Anthracite – Emmanuel Eggermont

Ji-hyé Jung dans Πόλις (Polis) © L’Anthracite – Emmanuel Eggermont

Daina Ashbee, Louise Bédard, Raphaël Cottin (en collaboration avec le CCN de Tours), Justine A. Chambers + Laurie Young, Mélanie Demers, Catherine Gaudet, Dana Gingras, Ame Henderson, Alexandra ‘Spicey’ Landé, Catherine Lavoie-Marcus, Jean-Sébastien Lourdais, Katya Montaignac, André Pappathomas, Adam Kinner, Émile Pineault, Manu Roque, Emmalie Ruest, Roger Sinha.