Chorégraphe

In Une idée sinon vraie… Marc Boivin wanted to distance himself from an overtly personal approach to creation and to open up his process to the influence of other art forms. The artist was inspired by the way in which theatre and music can pay homage to the past while maintaining their relevance today. At once a voyage into the heart of commedia dell’arte, this creation involves role-playing and a series of transformations that reveals, through music and dance the different facets and vulnerabilities of being a man in today’s world.

Based on music composed by Ana Sokolović, this new work features the choreographer and dancer Marc Boivin and the Quatuor Bozzini. The musical score in seven movements is a reflection of seven symbolic characters in a commedia dell’arte world. In a single body, Marc Boivin expresses a parallel narrative of these diverse personalities. Like a Russian stacking doll, he goes through them one after another to reach the essence of their sensitivity and their universal dimension in a family portrait that is surprising, to say the least. The audience is plunged into a cascade of sensations that gives rise to vertigo, an irrevocable attraction for the mysteries of the individual and a questioning of our freedom to be. With great attention to detail, Marc Boivin’s unsettling performance, supported by the four musicians onstage, delivers an accomplished exercise in style. Far from conventional codes of theatre, the piece confronts the idea (that if not true is at least plausible) of what we are, of our vulnerable, changing perception of reality. A demanding solo on the perishable truths we depend on, and our multiple personalities and their contradictions

«The piece you are about to see will not appear to be new….for many years, I have been me, you have been you, those were those and the others have been the others. And in another thousands of years, when willhave turned whatever big wheel, we will come back to me standing here, you seated there, I speak and you listen….And the lines that I speak to you, that were the lines of before, will still be the lines, and you will imagine that you have heard them before just as you now feel as though you have already heard them before. » – Angelo Beolco, 1535

photo credit: Michael Slobodian

The research that underlies the solo Impact is documented and represented in the piece I13 (square). A related project, whose duration is 13 minutes and 13 seconds, this work can be seen as a visual and danced prologue to the solo.

Following a commission from Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois, Marc Boivin asked Jonathan Inksetter to create a media work, which refers to the title of the photograph Milk and Blood by American artist Andres Serrano, and exposes, in parallel, his own creation process. Images of the relations developed between artistic interlocutors in the rehearsal studio are projected on a white Plexiglas screen, while the artist dances and improvises his memory of the work, in the soundscape created by Diane Labrosse and recorded live in the studio. In this work, one sees the dancerʼs parents, the source of any biographical quest, accompanying him in his journey.

Choreography and interpretation > Marc Boivin
Visual environment and conceptual development > Jonathan Inksetter
Rehearsal mistress and artistic consultant > Sophie Corriveau
Music > Diane Labrosse
Costume > Marc Boivin + Jonathan Inksetter
Original ligthting > Yan Lee Chan

photo credit: Sandra Lynn Bélanger

In 2007, Marc Boivin was given carte blanche by Andrew de Lotbinière Harwood to develop an improvisation project for his company AH HA Productions. This process, which gave rise to the piece R.A.F.T. 70, was an epiphany for Boivin, allowing him to tap into the boundless creative potential surrounding him and providing the first glimmerings of what was to become his solo project Impact. With R.A.F.T. 70 he acquired a strong taste for the unpredictable, a state akin to the process of choreographic creation, and confirmed his fascination with others, with exchange and risk-taking. For improvisation to happen, it is essential to allow others to feed it, inhabit it, shape it freely. This experience was a paroxysm for Boivin, a revelation of what, in his view, the choreographic act and the scenic event should be. Those participating in a shared project are communicating vessels, transferring wisdom, information and energy to one another. This is the direction that the dancer wishes to take from now on in his work.

Accompanied by the same three collaborators as in R.A.F.T. 70, Boivin began to develop a solo, his first to be performed by himself. Uncertain as to which theme he wanted to address and faced with endless possibilities, he chose to base his work on a determined process rather than on a specific theme. Guided and nourished by his collaborators, he dove into abstraction, developing sequences and improvisations. The echoes of their voices resonate in his work and their experiences permeate it, bringing forth new visions, which take hold of the creator and have impact on his trajectory.

While Impact started out as an autobiographical tale, it quickly became an investigation of trajectories: the crossing pathways of beings who are in perpetual transformation and who receive the imprints of multiple influences. Working with abstraction and in steadfast collaboration with his artistic allies, Boivin realized that the themes emerging from his efforts were precisely those of exchange, transmission and the contribution of others.

Thus, Impact speaks of connections between people and of the magnitude of their influence on one another. To whom do we owe the person we become? How do other beings collide with our own existence and ultimately, what shapes our identity? One by one, humans participate in the world, leaving behind a signature, a trace that someone else will find and make his own. Their ripples collide and converge, embrace one another, morphing into new influences. Impact is also and above all a body onstage, the body of a dancer who has lived and embodied the contributions of many, and who has been attuned to their diverse voices. A body on and in which this symphony of influences is harmonized and divided.

The research that underlies this creation is also documented and represented in the piece I 13 (square). A related project, whose duration is 13 minutes and 13 seconds, this work can be seen as a visual and danced prologue to the solo Impact.

Go to the I 13 (square) section.

Choreography and interpretation > Marc Boivin
Visual environment and conceptual development > Jonathan Inksetter
Rehearsal mistress and artistic consultant > Sophie Corriveau
Music > Diane Labrosse
Costume > Marc Boivin + Jonathan Inksetter
Original ligthting > Yan Lee Chan

Impact is a coproduction of Series 8 :08 and the Dance department of the University of Calgary and Tangente. The choreographer wishes to thank l’Agora de la danse for the residency that led to to the creation of the solo.
This piece was made possible through the support of the Canada Arts Council and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.

crédit photo : Sandra Lynn Bélanger