Choreographer Catherine Gaudet signs for experienced performers Louise Bédard and Sarah Williams parallel worldsa duo that opens a door to new worlds.
A creation is never really finished before the night of the premiere, the artists of the scene will often tell you. And again… Putting it into words before it is brought into the world thus becomes a sometimes arduous exercise, observes Catherine Gaudet, met a few days before the premiere of her new offering, parallel worldsa duet for Louise Bédard and Sarah Williams.
Arrive in the studio with a plan, things to say? Catherine Gaudet prefers the opposite path, where words are sometimes in vain. “I often say that dramaturgy starts from the body; it never comes from outside. This dance, this movement, starts from an intuition. This unconscious desire will give the dramaturgy of the show, never explainable in a very coherent way, because there are many layers, levels of reading. But I am convinced that it is within this journey that we find meaning. »
It is this same intuition that prompted the performer Sarah Williams, after seeing a solo that Catherine Gaudet had created for Louise Bédard in 2018, to probe the choreographer in order to work with her. “I didn’t know Catherine, but I had seen her work, including this solo which I really liked. So I asked Louise if it meant to her that we dance together and if she believed that Catherine would like to create for us”, recalls the one who, for 30 years, has danced for many creators, including Louise Bédard. Everyone liked the idea, and that’s how a long creative process started in 2020, some time before a pandemic hit us.
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, THE PRESS
Catherine Gaudet, surrounded by Louise Bédard and Sarah Williams
“It seemed to me that Catherine made me see a side of Louise that I had never seen, that she had challenged her. I like it. It’s scary, visiting new places, but it keeps me growing,” adds Sarah Williams.
I reacted with a lot of enthusiasm, and fear too, it’s still intimidating. I never know what I’m going to create before entering the studio. It was a new encounter and I really didn’t know what was going to emerge from it.
Catherine Gaudet
From one encounter to the next, the piece was built, transformed, mutated. For the past three months, the work has been more intensive, and opens up to new territories. “At first, I wanted to see Sarah and Louise in a new light, in a light that seemed to me to be linked to a form of unconsciousness, to leave room for memories, real or imagined. We started from that idea… and then it really changed! laughs Catherine Gaudet.
“I’m used to working with the same people,” she continues. My mechanisms, my tools, I know what it will give. And on Louise and Sarah, it looked completely different. From then on, I can’t decide where it’s going to go. I decided to follow this trend. It’s a door that I half-open, a new space that corresponds a lot to the dream in my eyes. »
“Geometric and hypnotic”
Those who have seen Gaudet’s creations have experienced in their flesh the state in which they can plunge us; from repetitions to accumulations of infinite variations, subtly, but certainly, one can only let oneself be caught up in it. Work on rhythm, pulsation, spatial paths; these motifs that Catherine Gaudet has been exploring for some time continue to inhabit her, she notes.
In this creative cycle – “a call that I am not capable of intellectualizing” – the choreographer imagines spatial paths where the body follows a very precise rhythm. ” [Dans Les mondes parallèles]these memories, which for me are more performative or theatrical, I tried to include them in a journey where there is a certain form of repetition, constancy, a current that never stops, creating a geometric base and hypnotic”, explains the choreographer.
These performers from another generation, very different from each other, but carrying a richness, layers of experience in their bodies, but also in their imagination, thus find themselves on stage, crossing a multitude of different territories. . “They are connected, like in a dungeon, but they are really two parallel worlds that evolve side by side. It is the collision of these worlds that creates a third world, and gives rise to meaning. »
From May 17 to 20 at the Agora de la danse
Who is Catherine Gaudet?
- Holder of a bachelor’s and master’s degree in dance from UQAM, the choreographer signed her first choreography in 2004. In 2019, she founded the Compagnie Catherine Gaudet.
- His works have been presented in Denmark, France, the United States, among others, and in numerous festivals, including the FTA and the Biennale de Lyon.
- To date, she has signed nine long works, including The fading of the marvelous (2018), To dissolve (2021) and The pretty things (2022). In 2022, she won the Grand Prix de la danse de Montréal for these three creations.