embodied urgencies; Finissage
February 15, 2024, 4:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Event description
The FOFA Gallery is happy to invite you to the finissage of the annual Undergraduate Student Exhibition, embodied urgencies! Join us for a curatorial walk with curator María Escalona and Laurence Poirier, FOFA’s Outreach Coordinator at 4:00 pm, followed by a series of contemporary dance performances at 5:00 pm.
Live performances will feature works by Heather Anderson & Laura Borello Bellemare, Léa Bonenfant & Sage Fabre-Dimsdale, Anne-Marie Latulippe, and Aly Turgeon.
Snacks and refreshments will be available, and all are welcome!
The venue is wheelchair accessible.
Consult the exhibition page for more information about embodied urgencies !
Dance performances
Anne-Marie Latulippe (a.k.a “Steel Toes”) performing Apple in dialogue with Lucy Gill’s work Mastication. Photo credit: Laurence Poirier
Apple
Anne-Marie Latulippe (a.k.a “Steel Toes”)
In response to Lucy Gill’s work, Mastication, which asks us to reflect on art consumption as we ingest the product of their labour; Apple is a performance that involves sitting on a chair, in “underwear,” with an apple in one hand, and an iPhone in the other, near Gill’s piece. Never looking at the public directly with my eyes, my focus will be kept on my phone, which films the audience, who are hopefully watching me. Stillness is the main movement of this performance. Yet, I break it occasionally, adjusting to find comfort, or to take a bite of the fruit. While the gaze is challenged, the audience becomes the object of entertainment for the performer and transformed into an “art” product…without necessarily being aware of it, or aware that they have consented to it. Apple is a work that plays with the symbol of the “forbidden” fruit, while reflecting on the current rawness of the art institution, and how it is consumed.
Laura Borello Bellemare performing Being With in dialogue with Cassi Camille's work Self-preservation, an act of political warfare. Photo credit: Laurence Poirier
Being With
Heather Anderson & Laura Borello Bellemare
Being With is a 15-20-minute performance developed and performed by Heather Anderson and Laura Borello Bellemare. Thinking about the title embodied urgencies and the exhibition’s keywords: rest, slowness, urgency, and survival, our performance investigates rest as a practice in meeting what-already-is. Looking at rest as a form of resistance (as described by USE artist Cassi Camille), we are challenging the desire to move urgently to meet the demands of our time by researching rest as a means to find new paces and attentions in order to be with. How might a practice of slowness allow for new entry points and perspectives to emerge in our relationships with ourselves, each other, and our environments? Publicly performing rest by creating a “resting nest” in the stairwell of the gallery, performers take timed turns to either engage with the main gallery space or to be inside the “resting nest.” We will play with respecting or refusing the time limit as well as the borders of the “resting nest.” The movement material has been developed from somatic states of sustained curiosity and our sensorial experience; to find the new in what we might already find familiar (i.e. the artwork in the gallery and our bodily responses).
Aly Turgeon performing erode me in dialogue with the work Ambigü by Em Laferrière. Photo credit: Laurence Poirier
erode me
Aly Turgeon
erode me is a 15 minute solo work choreographed and performed by myself, Aly Turgeon. This solo is in dialogue with the photographic work, Ambigü by Em Laferrière. I am inspired greatly by the comparison of form, the simplistic beautification of the trans* body, and the profound message it sends at a time when transgender people are being villainized and dehumanized across the country. As anti-trans rhetoric runs rampant, trans* people have been called upon to stand up for themselves time and time again. The community’s resilience has been tested for as long as we’ve put words to our identities. For this project, I am thinking through the resilience of trans* minds and bodies. Specifically, I am connecting with my personal experience of trans resilience and making links to earthly processes. There are three natural occurrences that I will embody in the vitrine alongside the portraits. The waxing and waning of the moon mirrors the phases of presence in social spaces. Erosion mirrors the constant deterioration of one’s integrity, chipping away at the very things that make them whole. Smoldering conveys insistence; burning, fighting, and persisting against all odds. These concepts will be embodied through improvisation, with each concept having four minutes to move (through) me. In order to dig further into the concepts, I will dance the same set phrase at the end of each conceptual improvisation. This phrase will look and feel different each time it is danced, as it is influenced by each concept.
Léa Bonenfant & Sage Fabre-Dimsdale performing Feel you Sweat do you in dialogue with Emma McLean's installation An Invitation to Touch. Photo credit: Laurence Poirier.
Feel you Sweat do you
Léa Bonenfant & Sage Fabre-Dimsdale
Feel you Sweat do you is an immersive performance by Sage Fabre-Dimsdale and Léa Bonenfant that delves into the concept of consent in the arts, more specifically, the performers explore how audiences interact in gallery spaces with different practices. By placing the human body in close proximity to Emma McLean’s installation An Invitation to Touch, we aim to provoke thoughtful reflections on the meaning and implications of touch within the context of art galleries. We aim to investigate the definition of “respectful touch” and how it pertains to the individual. We wish to prompt contemplation on the impact of touching something inanimate versus animate, hopefully fostering self-awareness and responsibility in the audience’s interactions. You are invited to touch/feel the parts exposed.
About the dancers
Heather Anderson (she/they) is a dancer, poet, and daydreamer. Their work looks at dance as speculative fiction; a shapeshifting and time-traveling practice that supports critical somatic investigation into living a deeper, wider, and more complex relationality. Currently pursuing their BFA in contemporary dance at Concordia university, they were one of 2023’s nominated undergraduate fellows for LePARC (Performance Arts Research Cluster) at the Milieux Institute for Arts. Heather’s current research involves working with plastic-as-kin and as site for embodied grief practices and stories.
Laura Borello Bellemare (elle/she/they) is a movement artist, both as a performer and choreographer. In addition to their training in contemporary dance, Laura likes to play outside, to bike around, to cut & glue, to write, and to juggle, among other things. In past years, she has engaged with several collaborative dance and interdisciplinary creation projects. Interested in the strength of art as a tool for building communities and for being together, Laura co-directs the collective event très bonne idée, which rethinks spaces of meeting and sharing for movement artists, outside traditional venues. Laura is currently completing a BFA in dance at Concordia University (2019-) and has recently been working on ideas surrounding themes of familiarity, home, and our relationship with territory.
Léa Bonenfant is a Montréal based artist exploring the realms of choreography, contemporary dance, the art of drag, singing,costume and accessory design. Being non-binary, their artistic approach delves into subjects of marginality, consent culture, questioning performativity, care culture (both individual and collective) and the valourization of our body archive through the ideas of radical softness. Having completed a DEC in dance at Cégep de Saint-Laurent, they plan to complete their BFA in Contemporary Dance at Concordia University in spring 2024. Modern dance, gymnastics, cheerleading, piano, choir and sewing have also built their artistic background. Their creative processes develop environments where people can collaborate and feel safe to be profoundly authentic with themselves and others through dance and ideas. They are profoundly committed to developing community support systems through art and with the body.
My name is Sage Fabre-Dimsdale, I’m an Indigenous artist of Dehcho Dene and mixed European descent. Originally from the Northwest Territory, now living in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, I come from a background in breakdancing and contemporary dance, as well as working through mixed media and collage work. Dance is the space for centering all focus to the present moment in a ritualistic act of risk taking and self-expression. The blending of the conscious and subconscious leads the senses into the unknown, letting the imagination make use of the physical body’s capabilities. This practice gives openings for new sensibilities to exist and inform my decision making, which is integral to my overall understanding of the world around me. My work is a reflection of my experience as a post-colonial Indigenous person in an urban environment, distanced from my communities and reminded of the cost of the systems we exist in today. My existence is a statement, and I create with appreciation for those who came before me. I seek to find connections through art and storytelling, provide a sense of community to those feeling out of place, and share the spaces of my imagination with others.
Montréal-born and based, Anne-Marie Latulippe was introduced to movement through Martial Arts, but quickly branched off to dancing during her childhood in the 1990’s. After studying social sciences and travelling for many years, Anne-Marie pursued her dream to study dancing in 2016 at CÉGEP de Saint-Laurent, and graduated in 2019. She is currently at Concordia University in her 3rd year in the Contemporary Dancing Major. As a Roller Derby athlete known as “Steel Toes” she has recently collaborated with the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Joliette in 2023, as part of a travelling performance experiment that used VR technology initiated by sound artist Lauren Tortil, and which involved roller-skating through the streets of Joliette, while playing Lauren’s composition on a speaker.
Aly Turgeon (he/they) is a queer, interdisciplinary dance artist from amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton, AB), currently based in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal, QC). Aly is a contemporary dance student at Concordia University, where he has focused on deepening his approach to the generation and staging of choreographic work. Their work mainly investigates questions of humanity and language, centres queer identity and experience, and exposes the complexities within community and interpersonal relationships. Aly is passionately invested in the intersections that exist between visual art mediums and performance art. His process involves prompt/free writing and drawing, collage, graphic design, installation, and multimedia animation. Aly’s recent dance film, PERMISSIONTODREAM? was presented in July 2023 as part of the REELING: Dance on Screen Festival at Mile Zero Dance (Edmonton). He will be debuting a collaborative choreographic work in the Art Matters Festival (Montréal) in March of 2024.
