Quebec has just lost one of its greatest choreographers with the death at the age of 94 of Jeanne Renaud, whose some 40 creations have contributed to literally transforming dance into a contemporary artistic discipline.
Posted at 2:00 p.m.
Decorated with the Denise-Pelletier Prize in 1989, the Governor General’s Award for the Performing Arts in 1995, in addition to being named a Member of the Order of Canada in 1998 and a Companion of the Order of Arts and letters from Quebec in 2018, Jeanne Renaud has established herself as a pioneer of the arts in Quebec, notably by encouraging a dialogue with visual artists such as Françoise Sullivan, Fernand Leduc and Jean Paul Riopelle as well as with contemporary composers such as Serge Garant, Gilles Tremblay, Walter Boudreau, Pierre Mercure and Gabriel Charpentier.
Although she ended her career as a professor at the Faculty of Arts at the Université du Québec à Montréal from 1987 to 1989, Jeanne Renaud continued to be involved in the world of contemporary dance, as evidenced by his latest choreographies, created in 2018 for the film Brief stories of mute stones, by director Mario Côté, and in 2021 for the Feldman/Renaud projectat Salle Bourgie, with dancers Louise Bédard and Marc Boivin, for whom Jeanne Renaud had played the role of mentor at the start of her career.
“She really wanted to do one last piece, at the age of 93,” says Louise Bédard, who worked on several occasions alongside Jeanne Renaud, a great friend, as she described her.
There was a flame that never went out in relation to the dance. She was always behind us, the young artists.
Louise Bedard
Trained as a dancer in Montreal and New York in the mid-1940s, Jeanne Renaud presented her first choreographies in Montreal in 1948 with her accomplice Françoise Sullivan. She was quickly associated with the Automatiste movement, but as she was still a minor in 1948, she was not invited to sign the manifesto. Global denial as did her sisters, the poet Thérèse Renaud and the painter Louise Renaud.
In addition to multiplying original creations such as the show Phrase 65crowned with great success in 1965, Jeanne Renaud acted as an arts officer at the Canada Council for the Arts from 1975 to 1979 and at the Ministry of Cultural Affairs of Quebec from 1979 to 1985, to then act as co-artistic director of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens alongside Linda Stearns.
Gatherer
“Jeanne Renaud had an enormous talent for bringing people together and encouraging them to meet. Dinners at Jeanne’s were legendary,” recalls Marc Boivin with emotion.
He began dancing in the late 1970s with the Groupe de la Place Royale in Ottawa, founded by Jeanne Renaud and Peter Boneham. Since then, he has maintained a bond of “filiation” with the renowned dancer.
“Until the last few days, before she died, classical music was still playing in the room where she was hospitalized. You couldn’t turn down the volume of the music. I think that’s what accompanied her until her last breath, ”finishes Louise Bédard on the phone.