The artist Angela Laurier, who dazzled Quebec with her contortions, acrobatics and tightrope choreographies during the very early days of Cirque du Soleil, died last week, at the age of 62. A pioneering artist who opened important avenues for the creative and authorial circus, for contortion and for a certain political outlook in circus and on the circus, according to her peers. Memories.
“She had a strong and beautiful presence,” emphasizes Gilles Ste-Croix, co-founder of Cirque du Soleil. In 1988, in the show The circus reinventedwhich would establish the spirit of Cirque du Soleil, Angela Laurier played the Queen of the Night.
“He was a central character. She was really transforming, becoming a spider. She was very focused, always making her playing personal, intimate. »
“Before, in Quebec, the art of contortion came from Asia,” continues Mr. Ste-Croix. It was special to see a little Quebecer — she was very small, and very young — doing it. »
“She broke the mold of contortion,” says director Alice Ronfard, “traditionally done by a very young girl. She made it a tool of sensuality, and politics, with her screaming body, her audacity, her delinquency, her punk side. »
“Already in what she proposed, which was not just a series of movements and contortions, she opened a path,” relates Andréane Leclerc, performance artist from contortion.
“She took the side of the creative circus and the author’s circus very early on. She is a strong woman, and she has endured. Even today, when you approach 30 years in the circus… Phew. It’s old ! Angela has played for over 40 years. » She still had projects and ideas for shows.
“Its theatricality, the choreographic aspect, very danced, mixed with contortion, it was a precursor of that,” argued in turn the co-founder of the 7 fingers of the hand Isabelle Chassé.
Make contortion imaginable
Child of the ball, member of the Laurier tribe, made up of nine children, including her actress sisters Charlotte and Lucie, Angela Laurier trained in gymnastics at a very young age.
Competitions, musical comedy and filming of the cult TV series Pumpkin pop are part of the daily life of his youth. Then, “she showed up at the embryonic circus school, at the time on rue Papineau”, where she worked with Guy Caron, recalls Gilles Ste-Croix.
His debut in the circus followed, first in Belgium, in 1984, before returning the following year for Cirque du Soleil. She is 22 years old. She performed in these legendary years, until 1988.
“Already, she contested the issues of making profits through spectacle,” notes Alice Ronfard. She wanted to be in human-based projects. She had a big mouth, a singular madness that belonged only to her. And we sat her down. We broke it. It is hopeless. »
Jinny Jacinto and Mme Chassé, who were the next quartet of contortionists at Cirque du Soleil, starting in New experience, saw their childish hearts being marked by Angela Laurier. “She had her arms wide open, and said ‘You are next,’” says Mme Jacinto. She was the one who made it become imaginable for me to be a contortionist. »
To be broken
Angela Laurier then plays Puck in the vision directed by Robert Lepage of Dream of a summer night by Shakespeare. At the turn of the 2000s, she began to develop her own writing for the body and the stage.
The show My big brother, directed by Michel Dallaire in 1999, will be followed by half a dozen creations. These circus autofictions, autobiographies narrated with lots of bodies or very personal documentaries, will be performed regularly in France, a little less in Quebec.
Also at the turn of the 2000s, she moved to France, where the creative circus is more funded, “but where the hierarchies are much harsher,” laments Alice Ronfard. “But what did she go there to do?” She ended up being isolated there. »
It is his audacity that I will keep within me. When I want to destroy everything, it’s her that I think of, and that I will think of.
She began a fruitful collaboration with the choreographer François Verret, linked up with contemporary circus artists in France, and became rarer in Quebec. We could see here in 2010 I wish I could laughdirected by Lucie Laurier, performed with her brother Dominique, suffering from schizophrenia.
Weir, seen at the La Chapelle theater in 2009, is also a show in this line. “I was pretty broken,” the artist then said to Duty to present this intimate show on the effect of his father’s depression, treated with electroshock.
In 2012, she created The Beast Angela at Subsistances de Lyon, a rotating show, always autobiographical, mixing circus, theater, singing and rock’n’roll. “Angela, Angela, you still have some nice leftovers to serve before you finish them,” she chanted.
She also participates in cultural activities in reintegration and in prison.
“It’s his audacity that I will keep within me,” concludes Alice Ronfard. When I want to destroy everything, it’s her that I think of, and that I will think of. She had a singular madness, a joy of living through laughter, and at the same time, this is peculiar, an incapacity to soothe her own soul. »
Actress Lucie Laurier shared the pain of her bereavement on Facebook. “We surround our mother with all our love, tested too often,” she wrote.