Stage echoes | The beauty of mourning

Winner of the Envol prize at the Prix de la danse de Montréal 2022, Claudia Chan Tak presents on stage the second iteration of her identity solo Good bye zebu, which explores rituals related to mourning.

Last November, multidisciplinary artist Claudia Chan Tak received with great emotion the Envol prize for cultural diversity and inclusive practices in dance at the Prix de la danse de Montréal. The designer’s commitment is not new, but the racism experienced by the Asian community during the pandemic – crystallized by the killing of Asian women in Atlanta in 2021 – made her an activist, says the instigator of the Artistic and Asian directory in Quebec and curator for diversity for the Phénoménam festival, which is also part of the Asian Coalition for an Empowering Succession. “All of this really allowed me to meet my community, to create new ties,” she notes.

Coming from the world of visual arts, Claudia Chan Tak made a name for herself as a filmmaker and videographer, notably by directing trailers for several Quebec choreographers, in addition to signing a few short films, before taking training in contemporary dance at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM), where she completed a thesis-creation exploring the links between documentary genre, cultural identity and dance.

She was born in Quebec to parents of Chinese and Malagasy origin, and the search for identity has always been at the heart of the artist’s artistic, but also documentary, approach. From this creative process was born the autobiographical solo Me, little Malagasy-Chinese. A trip to China, where she notably found her grandfather’s house, was the starting point for this choreographic work which was also presented in the form of an exhibition.

With goodbye zebu, she wanted this time to reconnect with her Malagasy identity, after having spent years digging into her Chinese culture. The starting point was the death, in 2018, of his grandmother, who lived in Madagascar. “I learned of her passing while I was working on a sequin dress. I had no idea how dealer with my emotions, so I sewed, non-stop, for a year. It was my ritual to live this mourning. »

From there was born the first iteration ofgoodbye zebu, an autobiographical solo with this sequined dress as its central element, which completely fills the stage. The creation is inspired by the zebu, a bovid which has a central place in funeral rites in Madagascar, and also by a ritual called “the turning of the dead”, where after seven years, the dead are taken out of the ground and wrapped in new tissues before being returned to the earth.

Then the pandemic arrived, leaving many mourners in its path. “I asked myself: how do we say goodbye if we are confined, if we can no longer travel? It was so beautiful for me, this project. I thought maybe other people needed to talk about grief and do something creative,” she recalls.

She therefore went to meet people of all ages, social backgrounds and communities, in order to discuss with them death, mourning in all its forms, rituals. While sharing their experiences and thoughts, each participant was invited to make flowers with scraps of recycled fabric; flowers that she affixed one by one on a long skirt-train, central element of the second solo that she thus created, makinggoodbye zebu a work in two distinct parts.

“Each flower reminds me of a person, their story. On stage, I wear these bereavements, these stories in my body. The dress becomes a totem. I work a lot with symbolic images. There is something sculptural in my research. We often associate death with something sad, cold, taboo, but for me there is something very beautiful in this encounter. »

At La Chapelle, February 13, 14 and 16

Also on display

Arctic gossip

Presented last year at the Festival de Casteliers (and received with much praise), the show Arctic gossip is back at the stables. Here, table puppets, music and live sound effects are used to tell the earthy and humane stories of Danish cartoonist Jorn Riel. The latter, who spent 16 years in Greenland, recounts the adventures of hunter-trappers at the dawn of the 1950s. A poetic comedy that acts as a breath of fresh air. Note: the show is intended for adults and children over 8 years old. At the Stables, from February 7 to 11.

Stephanie Morin, The Press

echo chambers

The playwright and director Philippe Ducros went to Syria twice in the 2000s. He found many friends there, but also the inspiration for his new play echo chambers. He recounts here the fate of Samia (Mounia Zahzam), a Syrian who remained under the bombs, and a Quebecer named Philippe (Étienne Pilon). In 2019, the latter decided to join the one with whom he had corresponded for four years on Facebook. His plan: to go through Lebanon. But in Beirut, popular anger is also rumbling… A play on the different destinies upset by the new world order. At Espace Libre, from February 14 to March 4.

Stephanie Morin, The Press

The future

The playwright Martin Bellemare settles down at Usine C with his most recent play, soberly titled The future. Armed with a powerful “desire to fight injustice”, the author of Mineral heart (Governor General’s Award 2020) offers a reinterpretation of the futurist movement of the last century by focusing its magnifying glass on today’s society, where science and technology often rule everything and where traditions are quickly rejected. The play, directed by Geneviève L. Blais, brings together Catherine-Amélie Côté, Noémie Godin-Vigneau, Skyler Gibbs and Alek Langevin (alternating). At Usine C, from February 14 to 23.

Stephanie Morin, The Press

Star dancers parasitize your sky

The author Jolène Ruest adapted for the stage, in concert with the director Jonathan Caron, her novel Star dancers parasitize your sky. We meet Prunelle, a young ballet graduate who divides her time between training sessions and her job at the Dairy Queen, rue Sainte-Catherine. With Javel, an exterminator, she will rediscover the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district. A creation “with shrewd humour” which pays homage to the solidarity of working-class neighborhoods. With Andréanne Daigle in the role of Prunelle. At Salle Fred-Barry at Théâtre Denise-Pelletier, from February 14 to March 4.

Stephanie Morin, The Press

Paper landscapes

Choreographer Estelle Clareton recently announced the closure of her company Créations Estelle Clareton in June 2023, after 24 years of existence. Until then, a final tour of his very successful creation Paper landscapes will take place from February to April, for a total of forty performances in several cities across Quebec. In this piece intended for an audience of 4 to 10 years old, three dancer-performers enter into dialogue with a huge sheet of paper. It is through it that they express their desires, their fears, their dreams, in a dance sometimes crumpled, sometimes bent or torn. Around the bodies, the paper becomes a veil flapping in the wind or a mermaid’s tail. This 50-minute show without words is a celebration of the ability to imagine and the importance of taking the time to feel things. At the Maison Théâtre, from February 8 to 26, then in Laval, Quebec and Beloeil.

Stephanie Morin, The Press

Miigis: The Water Panther

The Red Sky Performance company is back at Danse Danse with a new creation. Miigis: The Water Panther continues in the line that made known the Aboriginal contemporary dance company, this time around the symbol of the miigis shell, representing the original journey of the Anishinabe people (Ojibwe) from the Atlantic coast to the Great Lakes, from salt water to fresh water , in a show merging dance, athletics, music live and video projection, said to be carried by the extraordinary energy of the performers. A moving reflection on the power of nature, ancestral archetypes and the cycle of life. At the Studio-Théâtre in the Wilder building, from February 14 to 18.

Iris Gagnon-Paradise, The Press