Duos pour corps et instruments – Excerpts 2014

A choreographic work and sound installation featuring an instinctive, visceral dialogue between movement and sound, Duos pour corps et instruments today bears the stamp of a new contemporaneity. Its three exceptional dancers, each of them preeminent figures in Quebec dance, are as charismatic and emblematic of the Desnoyers style as the original trio. The choreography—composed of light and sublime distortions, variations on a theme, situational interplay, crossings and uncrossings of legs—remains unchanged. The expenditure of the bodies reveals the raw energy, sensuality and boldness of a generation accustomed to performance art.

The release of weight leads to a certain nonchalance, while the relationship to the ground and to sound is all the more spirited and physical. At once liberated, sensual and languid, the dancers’ entire bodies vibrate with the interferences produced by their interactions with the amplifiers as they brazenly perform in close proximity to the audience. In turn mischievous, rebellious and explosive, they weave their relationships of complicity and rivalry in a refined and unfettered dance that seeks to eliminate the distance between stage and audience, between seeing and experiencing. A pivotal work in the artistic path of the Montreal choreographer, the piece has lost none of its charm, power or relevance.

Danièle Desnoyers / Le Carré des Lombes would like to acknowledge the Fondation Jean-Pierre Perreault and Circuit-Est centre chorégraphique for their involvement in the archival process of the re-creation of Duos pour corps et instruments, as well as the dance department of UQÀM. Duos pour corps et instruments is a co-production of Le Carré des Lombes and Montreal’s Contemporary Art Museum (residency project).