≈ 1 hour · No intermission
Last updated: October 17, 2018
It's always such an absolute honour for me to share with you a world of dance, shaped by some of the most gifted and innovative artists working across a broad spectrum of styles and influences. I am committed to bringing the best and brightest dance companies to Ottawa and I hope you will join me throughout the season on this extraordinary journey of life in motion!
Paul-André Fortier has continued to push the choreographic envelope throughout his long and influential career. Collaborating with visual artists, theatre makers, composers and other dance artists, he has both provoked and captivated audiences over a 40-year career. In Solo 70, his final piece, Fortier’s desire to ignite our emotions and imaginations remains as profound today as ever.
FUN FACTS!
Paul-André began his career with Le Groupe Nouvelle Aire in the 1970’s, dancing in the first works of Edouard Lock and Daniel Léveillé.
His site-specific piece Solo 30x30 was performed in over 15 cities around the world – rain or shine!
He is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Governor General’s Performing Arts Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award (2012).
Fortier is apparently an excellent gourmet cook!
Word from Paul-André Fortier, O.C., O.Q.
In creating this final solo, I pulled out all the stops and took great pleasure in surrounding myself with artists and collaborators whose work I deeply admire. It took us two years to build this show –two luminous years of research, work, dialogue, and exchange. As we crossed the finish line, we took stock of the richness of what we had brought one another. Our interconnections were magnificent, and the thread of those encounters runs through the work you are about to see.
I had an intense desire to include electric guitar; Jackie Gallant obliged me, and I am very grateful to her. As I am not an actor myself, I chose Étienne Pilon to say what I could not; his immense talent, his precision and his generosity astound me. And for the first time in my 40-year career, I created a show in tandem with another creator, playwright Étienne Lepage, who wrote the script and quickly became the co-author of the show. The risk and the experiment were well worth it. The presence of artist Marc Séguin as set designer reassured and inspired me throughout our creative venture. My long-time collaborators Jock Munro, Denis Lavoie, Ginelle Chagnon, Karyne Doucet‑Larouche and Jean‑François Gagnon proved to be once again ideal creative partners.
This work concludes an important chapter of my life. After 40 exciting years of creation and performance, my company, Fortier Danse-Création, will close its doors at the end of December 2018. Thank you to all my collaborators, and to the audiences who have shared my journey.
Solo 70
Here is a man who has danced, and who dances still. A man whose body has lived fully, and who carries on, pursuing a formal aesthetic. His aura is nearly mythological, and the depth of his experience reaches into his very soul.
Inviting the younger generation into his world – a writer, an actor, a punk guitarist, and others – he asks them to accompany and nourish him, yet also challenge him, pushing him into the unknown and beyond.
The world is changing, as is he: style, tastes, questions and concerns. In response, what is important is to converse, to move, to sing, to debate, to sweat, and of course, to dance. And dance again. Always and forever. As if for the very first time. As if for the very last time.
This encounter could suggest alarming conflicts, but also surprising points of contact. A clash of conventions and languages in search of a common goal.
Expect neither retrospective, nor exegesis: only an indestructible desire to ensure that creativity and its conventions change with the times, and that they leave nothing behind but the burning embers of the present.
Fortier Danse-Création
Fortier Danse-Création was founded on 1981 and has the mandate to support the creation, production and dissemination of works by Paul-André Fortier. His talents as a creator, performer and teacher have made him one of the leading figures in Canadian and Quebec contemporary dance. His creative work is distinguished by its search for renewal and a desire to surpass himself and include solos, group pieces and site-specific works. Recognized on an international level, his works have been presented in 10 countries.
In 2010, he was appointed Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by France and, in 2012, received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award – Canada's foremost distinction for excellence in the performing arts – and an appointment to the Order of Canada. In 2018, he received the Ordre national du Québec.
Artists
Paul-André Fortier entered the world of dance in the 1970s. As a member of Groupe Nouvelle Aire, one of the country’s most innovative choreographic ensembles, he, along with other exceptionally creative artists in the group, contributed to building the reputation of Quebec dance from the 1980s until today.
Fortier first distinguished himself as a dancer. A “natural” dancer - as self-taught dancers were described at the time - he was known for his strong stage presence and elegant, refined interpretations. He soon became a leading figure on the Montreal dance scene, then on the Canadian stage, a position he has retained. He was involved in all of the innovative projects at the time, with his mentors (Martine Époque and especially Françoise Sullivan, whom he called his “artistic mother”) and his peers (including Edouard Lock and Daniel Léveillé), who began to create their own works, as did he.
Fortier’s career as a choreographer had an immediate and significant impact on the dance landscape. He was known for “inventing” new concepts that differed in both form and content (if one can be dissociated from the other), beyond the scope of tradition and convention. Very early on, he became the forerunner of a style, recognized by his peers, that used theatricality to draw attention to the stresses and tensions of the modern world, with intense, determined and rigorous form. During this period, he was one of the first to lead the way toward a style of dance freed from the constraints of the past, inspiring a whole generation of choreographers to be open to modernism and creative risk.
This is a risk that Fortier has always been willing to take. Never one to use set formulas in his choreography, he has always been an “art adventurer” (in the truest sense of the word), for whom creating means stepping into the unknown, into the void. After experiments with dance theatre that left an indelible mark on choreographic practices in Quebec in the 1980s, he embarked, in grandiose fashion, on a solo adventure with a trilogy* accompanied twice by Betty Goodwin. Following that decisive encounter with a world rich in form and symbolism, the choreographer-performer returned to the very basis of dance: movement itself, culminating in Tensions and Lumière.
While aware of developments on the current art scene, particularly with the advent of multimedia and new technologies, Fortier does not blindly follow contemporary trends and today’s penchant toward “everything technological.” On the contrary, he has carefully calibrated the symbolic and aesthetic scope of his projects, notably in Tensions and Spirale, a choreography for 12 dancers created for the Ballet de Lorraine, in Nancy, France.
In 2006, he broke new ground with Solo 30x30, which has stood the test of time as a performance and physical feat. This piece, performed outdoors, has taken him around the world, from London to Rome, from Nancy to Ottawa, Montreal, Bolzano, Yamaguchi, Newcastle, Lyon, Vancouver, Liège, New York, Lorient and Paris. This ritual played out for thirty consecutive days, rain or shine, for passersby who stop to watch - or who don’t - is an act of humility that I personally find astonishing. This unique experience has also inspired many artists in the countries he has visited: videographers, photographers, composers, and even writers at the International Literature Festival held in Montreal in 2011.
From his very first solos, Paul-André Fortier has collaborated with other well known artists, including visual artist Pierre Bruneau, composer Alain Thibault, Japanese artist Takao Minami, lighting designer John Munro, filmmaker Robert Morin and writer-performer Rober Racine. With the latter three, Fortier created Cabane, which premiered at the TransAmériques Festival (FTA) in 2008, then toured Canada and Europe. This was followed by Vertiges in 2012, an unusual and poignant duet with improvisational violinist and composer Malcolm Goldstein: two men, both mature artists, sharing a single creative path. This unlikely duet was followed by Misfit Blues (FTA 2014), a wacky, zany little theatrical piece created and danced with choreographer-performer Robin Poitras, on a set designed by Edward Poitras.
Nearly 40 years have passed since Derrière la porte un mur, and more than 50 choreographies. Paul-André Fortier is now concerned about passing his legacy on to future generations. He is restaging Bras de Plomb with Simon Courchel, offering him 15 X AT NIGHT, a kind of night-time version of Solo 30x30. He is dancing in the Pluton 2 project, a solo by Frédérick Gravel. While he is involved in writing and publishing the Testament artistique, an artistic legacy for the dance community, he is still involved in creative projects for the future, looking ahead to celebrating his 70th birthday. Stay tuned…..
Michèle Febvre
Étienne Lepage est auteur dramatique, scénariste, traducteur et créateur transdisciplinaire. Son travail est présenté un peu partout en Amérique du Nord et en Europe. Parmi ses nombreuses créations, notons Rouge Gueule, L'Enclos de l'éléphant, Ainsi parlait... et Histoires pour faire des cauchemars, qui, par leur étonnante richesse et diversité de genre, ont su dévoiler son talent immense. Il collabore à plusieurs reprises avec la metteure en scène Catherine Vidal, notamment pour Robin et Marion, adaptation d’une pastorale, présentée en 2012 au Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui. Il est de ceux qui font confiance en l'intelligence des enfants, en leur capacité à développer un rapport riche face à une matière problématique.
Jackie Gallant is a musician, video artist and sound designer who creates and performs for dance, video and film. She began her musical career as a drummer for several Montreal rock groups. Since then she’s toured nationally and internationally with everyone from La La La Human Steps to Lesbians on Ecstasy. As sound designer and composer she has worked with, among others, actor/directors Marie Brassard and Brigitte Poupart, video artists Nelson Henricks, Nikki Forrest and Dayna McLeod and choreographers George Stamos, Sarah Williams and Karen Fennell. In fall 2015 she composed, directed and performed in the pop-opera (POD~the musical) as part of Montreal’s Phenomena festival. In the spring of 2016 she created the multimedia piece The King of Pop. Recently, she’s been involved as composer and performer in projects with Fortier DanseCréation (Trois and Solo 70) and Hélen Simard (Idiot and Requiem Pop). 2019 saw the release of the concept album 100 Years, by the duo Home Alone (a collaborative project with musician Yan Basque). In 2021 she has been collaborating with video artists Midi Onodera and Sonya Stefan.
