Almost four years after its last indoor show, La Tresse, a collective made up of Geneviève Boulet, Erin O’Loughlin and Laura Toma, returns to the stage with KIN, from April 19 at the Agora de la danse. In addition to having opened their creative process to performers outside the company, the three artists questioned themselves on the microcosm, what it contains, what it hides and on the intelligence of nature.
“Our starting point was to bring other voices with us. Working all three as choreographers and performers, we’re used to it, but we wanted to explore the idea of making La Tresse work with other people, that everyone has a voice, a place and that we understand”, recalls Erin O’Loughlin when talking about the starting point of KIN, at the end of 2020. Indeed, for the three accomplices, creating a project together has always been “fluid”. The fact of integrating two other artists, namely Lucy M. May and Matthew Quigley, however, made it possible to go even further. “It helped us to clarify our roles too, to consolidate them. By opening up the space to others, we also asked ourselves: “is it still La Tresse? ” We had to guide while keeping the openness, it was a challenge, but it allowed us to define even more the signature of La Tresse ”, adds Laura Toma./p>
Founded in 2014, the La Tresse collective has since carried out several indoor projects as well as two site-specific creations. “It’s really something that we wanted to explore, but in which we dived a little in spite of ourselves, because of the pandemic, remembers Geneviève Boulet. Our universe lends itself very well to spontaneity, to less codified creations”. Through this, the three artists also developed a greater “taste for nature”. “Our former research, our residencies, and our outdoor projects have greatly nourished KIN. We really amplified our relationship to the environment, to contact and to the public,” she adds.
Our gestures are often motivated by sensuality, sensoriality too. There is a lot of connection with our creature bodies, our fantasies… we like to create imaginary worlds and trip on pleasure, the absurd, joy, instinct.
Liberated, but precise
“Our gestures are often motivated by sensuality, sensoriality too. There is a lot of connection with our creature bodies, our fantasies… we like to create imaginary worlds and trip on pleasure, the absurd, joy, instinct”, describes Erin O’Loughlin speaking of the specific and artistic touch of the collective. According to her, this new creation came to “highlight” all these characteristics.
To create, La Tresse always uses improvisation systems. “Despite this, we are quite meticulous and we come up with very choreographed proposals. We really like to polish the detail, to be precise in terms of the intention of the gesture, it’s important for us”, adds Geneviève Boulet. The voice also plays an important role in the universe of the three dancers. “At first we sang just because we like it, but now it makes more sense. We are looking for the connection that it creates with the vibrations, but also the ritual aspect that it brings”, explains Erin O’Loughlin.
Awaken sensory curiosity
For KIN, the choreographers thought about building a whole new world, going somewhere else, but in the end, that first idea quickly disappeared, as Laura Toma explains. “It was a challenge to imagine another world that starts from nothing… wow… It was too many possibilities so we came back to Earth and we decided to think of it differently”, she recalls, amused. Despite this earthly desire, the three co-founders of the collective decided to create characters. “We are humans, we have legs, eyes, etc., but we are different beings, a little fantastic,” she continues.
Thus, for this new creation, La Tresse wanted to “centralize its view of nature and all the modes of communication that exist on earth between the different organisms”. “We want to offer to see our world differently, how beautiful it is and all the things that nature offers”, adds the dancer.
For Erin O’Loughlin, KIN is a “zoom in the microcosm”, but also a reference to the Greek definition of the word “apocalypse”. “It means ‘revealing what is hidden’, so it’s a bit of understanding what is underneath things, what we don’t know yet… Another thing that is part of our work is the concept of birth, rebirth, cycle and continuity,” she explains.
Finally, the three creators wanted through this artistic proposal to offer a “rich immersive experience for the senses”. “The scenography is oversized, it moves with us, we play on the proportions of the space, concludes Geneviève Boulet. We want the public to feel enveloped, that KIN awakens their senses, their curiosity, that our universe is not just digested by the intellect, but also absorbed by the bodies, the sensations. »