On November 30, 2016, the Fondation Jean-Pierre Perreault launched Sylvie Pinard’s book L’INVISIBLE VISIBLE – Transmission d’outils d’interprétation en danse, in collaboration with the Department of Dance at UQAM.
A founding member of the group Nouvelle Aire, Sylvie Pinard danced professionally for over 25 years for a number of Quebec choreographers—including Martine Époque, Edouard Lock, Jean-Pierre Perreault, Paul-André Fortier and Iro Valaskakis Tembeck—as well as for American choreographers. She was also a professor at UQAM from 1980 to 2012. Over the course of her career as a dancer and professor of contemporary dance, Sylvie Pinard has always been fascinated by the notion of stage presence. In her view, dance specialists—in contrast to those trained in the dramatic arts—have not paid sufficient attention to the expressive work of dancers; nor have they developed concrete approaches similar to those of Barba or Grotowski for theatre.
Her impetus for writing this book stemmed from her observation that there are very few documents, particularly in French, on the development of expressivity among dance artists. The writings of Howard Gardner on multiple intelligences had a decisive influence on the way Pinard developed her teaching approach around the concepts of kinesphere and dynamosphere. Her book offers a comprehensive training program for dancers, based on a synthesis of her various discoveries and teaching approaches as both a Laban analyst and professor of performance.
L’INVISIBLE VISIBLE is a guide to discovering one’s expressive body. As Sylvie Pinard writes in the preface, “This book aims to elucidate and expand the notion of presence in dance. Does the act of dancing always involve the concepts of kinesphere and dynamosphere, and to what degree? How does the invisible become embodied? How can it be made visible? This book attempts to answer these questions.”
