≈ 75 minutes · No intermission
Last updated: March 1, 2022
The choreographic world of Mélanie Demers is both poetic and fierce, often a blistering exploration of human strengths and foibles. A courageous artist, she has taken on big themes and challenges in each of her works through a multidisciplinary lens. In this latest creation, powered by five exceptional female performers, Demers lays out with boldness and fragility the stories that women weave alone and together, lifting us through a spiritual pursuit for inner beauty. United by movement, voice and song, they navigate the course of their lives through darkness and light, leaving us invigorated and hopeful.
Enjoy!
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About the company
For the choreographer and artistic director of MAYDAY, Mélanie Demers, the stage is a platform for performers to reflect as a group, a space for calling into question the role of the artist and the genre of theatre, and where our collective and individual fates are pondered. She does not subject audiences to accusatory harangues, nor does she wallow in a mood of sterile resignation: she simply draws our attention to the dark side of the human condition. Her works are at once a cry for help and a call for change. Hence the name MAYDAY: in the eyes of Mélanie Demers this word is imbued with equal parts hope and despair.
Since its foundation in 2007, an array of charismatic and eclectic artists working with Mélanie Demers has been drawn to MAYDAY as a hub for creative exchange and reflection. Some hail from Montréal, the company’s home base, others from around the world. Each MAYDAY work is thus the fruit of a collective effort. And not only between the artists: the public enters into the creative process as well, since the physicality, imagery, and sense of rhythm characteristic of MAYDAY’s unique approach only come together as a coherent whole before an audience.
Drawing on creative energies from around the world, MAYDAY’s unique works testify to both a spirit of artistic freedom and a deep-seated concern for contemporary issues.
The company’s first piece, the duo Les Angles Morts, examines the way we perceive the world by focussing on those aspects of it that escape our awareness: things we prefer not to see, not to feel, or which we simply ignore, either driven by an instinct for survival or simply because it’s convenient for us to do so.
Sauver sa peau / Sense of Self, created in collaboration with the choreographer Laïla Diallo, confronts stereotypes with a clarion call for freedom in an attempt to reconcile the idea of uniqueness with the notion of multiple identities.
Junkyard/Paradise, a work for five dancers, explores the dual nature of the world and our capacity to enjoy life even as we are aware of its ability to alternately both redeem and horrify us.
Mélanie Demers was at work again while Junkyard/Paradis was on tour and created Goodbye, a quartet which premiered at the Festival TransAmériques in May 2012. This labyrinthine work, at turns aesthetically pleasing and artistically grating, deconstructs performance practice and offers us a tasty little guide to saying farewell.
Demers’ fascination and the relationship between words and gestures crystallizes in WOULD, a work which won the Prix du CALQ for Best Choreography at the Prix de la danse de Montréal in 2015. WOULD was followed by the choreographic relay Danse Mutante in 2019, then in 2021 by La Goddam Voie Lactée, MAMA and Confession Publique, and finally in 2022 by Cabaret Noir.
In 2021, Mélanie Demers won the Grand Prix de la danse de Montréal, which recognizes her unique contributions.
MAYDAY tours frequently and has collaborated with many international partners. It is proud to be one of the few Canadian companies to have performed in both North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
About the work
Strongly influenced by the movement to denounce sexual harassment and by the exacerbation of racial tensions, Mélanie Demers highlights the multiplicity of the feminine. In reaction to the roughness of today’s world, its callousness, its harshness, La Goddam Voie Lactée proposes a pagan mass, a celebration of the feminine in the form of a challenge.
From unusual or still unfinished assemblages, each performer is camped out at her own observation post. Sometimes they jump into the arena and grab hold of gestures, words and music, draping them around themselves like a costume. They sketch out their universe, drawing it and erasing it. An aesthetic little Big Bang, La Goddam Voie Lactée is a way of projecting ourselves into this imperfect and infinite world which is our common belonging and inheritance.
Co-producers
Festival TransAmériques (Montréal, Canada)
Agora de la danse (Montréal, Canada)
Centre chorégraphique national de Tours (Tours, France)
Centro per la Scena Contemporánea (Bassano del Grappa, Italie)
The Dance Centre Vancouver (Vancouver, Canada)
Partners
The project is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Conseil des arts de Montréal.
Artists
A multidisciplinary artist, Mélanie Demers founded in Montreal her own dance company, MAYDAY, in 2007, exploring the powerful link between the poetical and the political. Les Angles Morts (2006), Sense of Self (2008), Junkyard/ Paradise (2010) and Goodbye (2012) have all been created from this perspective. With MAYDAY remix (2014), she deepened her engagement with cross-genre works and hybrid forms. Her fascination with the interplay between word and gesture crystallized with WOULD (2015), which won the CALQ Prize for best choreography. In 2016, Mélanie Demers began a new creation cycle with Animal Triste and Icône Pop; both works are touring internationally. In 2017, Mélanie Demers was invited to work as a guest choreographer at the Skånes Dansteater in Malmö (Sweden) for the creation of Something About Wilderness in collaboration with Laïla Diallo. Now that the choreographic relay Danse Mutante has hit the stage, it is time for La Goddam Voie Lactée, Confession Publique (2021) and Cabaret Noir (2022) to enter the spotlight. To date, Mélanie Demers choreographed over thirty works and was presented across Europe, America, Africa and Asia.
Frannie Holder is a Montreal-based singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. A member of the pop-hip hop band Random Recipe and the electro-folk band Dear Criminals, this versatile artist launched her musical career in 2007. Focused on live performance, Random Recipe quickly began touring internationally.
At the same time, her group Dear Criminals adopted a multidisciplinary creative process, incorporating elements of theatre, contemporary dance, opera, digital arts and film. The group’s score for the feature film Nelly received the IRIS for best original music at the 2017 Gala Québec Cinéma. In addition to performing with her bands, Frannie Holder works as a music designer for theatre and contemporary dance performances.
Brianna Lombardo completed her professional training at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre, and then worked with various international artists in Europe on a Chalmers Arts Fellowship. As an independent dancer, she worked in Toronto with Michael Trent and Matjash Mrozewski and in Montreal with Isabelle Van Grimde and Jean-Pierre Perreault before joining O Vertigo from 2004 to 2010. After six years with the company, she became a freelancer again and worked closely with Mélanie Demers (MAYDAY), Jacques Poulin-Denis (Grand Poney), Frédérick Gravel (Grouped’ArtGravelArtGroup), Caroline Laurin-Beaucage, Martin Messier, Sasha Ivanochko, Montréal Danse, and Daniel Leveillé Danse. She is presently in creation for a new work with Parts+Labour_Danse. In addition to working as a dancer, she is a certified yoga teacher with a focus on yoga for dancers, and has been teaching O Vertigo, MAYDAY and Frédérick Gravel repertory since 2010.
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Chi Long was born in Australia and grew up in Canberra, where she discovered her passion for dance. At the age of 19, she set out to explore the world, determined to pursue a career in dance. She stopped in Montréal where, a year later, she joined O Vertigo. She spent the next 11 years dancing the company’s repertoire, from La chambre blanche in 1991 to Luna in 2001. In 2002, she fulfilled a dream when she joined Compagnie Marie Chouinard. In 2006, she took a break from dance for the birth of her daughter. She was then invited to return to the stage for the remount of La chambre blanche in 2008, 17 years after the original production. Today, as an independent dancer, she has developed creative links with choreographers such as Ariane Boulet, Caroline Laurin-Beaucage, Martin Messier, George Stamos, Isabelle Van Grimde and Mélanie Demers.
Originally from France, Léa Noblet Di Ziranaldi received her dance training at the Conservatoire de Lyon and the Université Lumière Lyon 2 (BA in performance) before moving to Quebec, where in 2018 she obtained a BA in dance performance from UQAM. After graduating, she worked for a year as a performer with companies such as MAYDAY (2020 and 2021 Festival TransAmériques, From Jaffa to Agripas Festival), La Mazane (2019 Avignon Festival) and Sarah Dell’Ava (2021 Festival TransAmériques). In 2020, she co-founded Le Bercail, an itinerant community space for Montréal’s pro and semi-pro movers, and joined the collective Les Berceurs du temps as a contributor to dance projects open to everyone.
NAC Dance team
Cathy Levy, Executive Producer
Tina Legari, Associate Producer
Mireille Nicholas, Special Projects Coordinator and Assistant to the Executive Producer
Sophie Anka, Company Manager
Siôned Watkins, Education Associate and Teaching Artist
Brian Britton, Technical Director
Camylle Gauthier-Trépanier, Communications Strategist
Chatelaine Rindorindo, Marketing Strategist
International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees