PARADOXE MÉLODIE

2014

In this new piece, Danièle Desnoyers has refined the dialogue between movement and sound that she has been developing for over 25 years, provoking a clash between the sonorities of the harp and the contemporary sounds of electoacoustic music. While her writing continues to expand with skilful phrases that draw out emotion from the body’s innermost depths, the choreographer brings live music back to this work with the on-stage presence of harpist Éveline Grégoire-Rousseau. The latter performs a composition by musical director Nicolas Bernier, manipulated live by the sound technician and combined with a pre-recorded electroacoustic score.

By awakening our auditory and emotional memories with its etheral sonorities, the harp evokes a desire to rise upwards—along with certain clichés that are diverted with a good dose of humour. The arpeggios are delightfully perverted by the electroacoustic work, while the decidedly contemporary dance serves to defy the instrument and its associated imagery. Embodying an interplay of energetic and semantic contrasts, of tensions between opposite poles, between precision and extravagance, contraction and release, order and chaos. The ten dancers of Paradoxe Mélodie offer multiple variations on our relationship with beauty.

Paradoxe Mélodie is a production of Le Carré des Lombes in co-production with Théâtre National de Chaillot (Paris), Cultuurcentrum (Bruges), National Arts Centre (Ottawa), Canada Dance Festival (Ottawa), Centennial Theatre (Sherbrooke), Danse Danse (Montreal), CanDance Network (Toronto), Faculty of Arts of Université du Québec à Montréal.

With the support of Place des Arts (Montreal), Centennial Theatre (Sherbrooke) and Circuit-Est centre chorégraphique (Montreal).

Credits

Choreography

Danièle Desnoyers

Rehearsal Director

Sophie Corriveau, Assistant : Emmanuelle Bourassa Beaudoin

Music

Nicolas Bernier

Harpist

Éveline Grégoire-Rousseau

Lighting

Marc Parent

Costumes

Denis Lavoie

Makeup & Hairstyle

Angelo Barsetti

Dancers at the time of the creation

Tal Adler Arieli, Karina Champoux, Molly Johnson, Jason Martin, Brice Noeser, Pierre-Marc Ouellette, Nicolas Patry, Clémentine Schindler, Anne Thériault, Élise Vanderborght