Location: Design Room
Moderator: Heather Fitzsimmons Frey
Murielle Bechame, “Le théâtre, une transmission du temps long”
Héritages en transition : répéter le changement pour les futurs du théâtre et de la performance
Cette proposition interroge la tension entre temporalité longue et présentisme dans les arts vivants. Si, comme le rappelait Amadou Hampâté Bâ, « une société humaine se construit sur le temps long de la transmission », nos pratiques culturelles se trouvent aujourd’hui confrontées à une injonction à l’accélération, renforcée par les régimes temporels mécaniques et informatiques. La mémoire, externalisée et fragmentée en données, tend à effacer l’origine et les processus de recomposition. Or, le théâtre et la performance, par leur nature éphémère, reposent sur une logique de transmission comparable à celle de l’oralité. Combien de spectacles disparus ont pourtant transformé le théâtre, au point qu’il ne peut se penser sans eux ? Face à un présentisme qui écrase la notion de futur, ces pratiques résistent aux modèles informationnels dominants et posent la question du choix et du désir pour la société de demain. Cette communication propose d’explorer comment le théâtre, par ses temporalités longues, réaffirme la valeur de la transmission dans un monde obsédé par l’immédiateté.
Tessa Perkins Deneault, “The great inheritance: Companies, choreographies, and artist-driven archival projects in Vancouver dance”
This paper will outline the numerous Vancouver dance organizations that have been bequeathed to the next generation over the past ten years, and the implications of this great inheritance. These organizations include EDAM Dance, Les Productions Figlio, Kinesis Dance Somatheatro, and the Vancouver International Dance Festival (Perkins Deneault, 2024). The paper will also examine the parallel phenomenon of artist-driven archival projects, such as the Karen Jamieson Legacy Project, which aim to preserve an artist’s legacy while passing on choreographies.
As company founders reach the age of retirement, a new generation of dance artists is inheriting the organizational wealth of established non-profit organizations and associations. These administrative structures provide a solid foundation for emerging artistic directors and choreographers to present their own work, often with a new name: Serge Bennathan’s Les Productions Figlio is now Ralph Escamillan’s FakeKnot; Paras Terezakis’s Kinesis Dance Somatheatro is now Rachel Helten’s Soma Anima Arts.
Legacy projects such as the Karen Jamieson Legacy Project and associated Coming Out of Chaos digital archive preserve an artist’s work while they are still active. Artist-driven archives are created by an artist as a part of their creative process and are a deliberate curation of their own legacy (Candelario, 2018).
The bequeathing of dance organizations, artist-driven archival projects, and choreographic inheritances are signals of a dance scene in transition and a moment to consider lineages and legacies of dance in Vancouver. Which dance futures are being rehearsed? Which legacies are being preserved? How can we ensure lineages and legacies of artists who laid the foundation for a thriving contemporary dance scene are not forgotten?
References
Candelario, R. (2018). Choreographing American Dance Archives: Artist-Driven Archival Projects by Eiko & Koma, Bebe Miller Company, and Jennifer Monson. Dance Research Journal, 50(1), 80–102. https://www.proquest.com/iipa/docview/2158646112/abstract/3B99436AB08A462DPQ/1
Perkins Deneault, T. (2024). New leadership and new directions for Vancouver dance institutions. Dance Central. Fall 2024. 4-11. https://issuu.com/thedancecentre/docs/dance_central_november_2024/s/61232316
Cyrus Sundar Singh, “Floating to The Lure of The Promised Land”
CATR2026’s 50th Anniversary also marks the 40th Anniversary of another Canadian story: the rescue and arrival of 155 Tamils Refugees off the southern coast of Newfoundland in 1986. Floating to The Lure of The Promised Land [Floating…] is a 20-minute participatory-performative-experience that collectively tells the story of these brave men, women, and children who risked their lives for the promise of tomorrow.
The essay/script, with verbatim transcripts from interviews, is presented against the backdrop of the on-screen audio/visual elements along with the participation of members of the audience who read/perform from the first person verbatim transcripts. The site becomes the stage and all gathered become the players in the story—all complicit in the telling and the experience.
The multimedia presentation moves through: an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp in Jaffna, Sri Lanka; onboard a resurfaced refuge lifeboat, which carried Tamil Sri Lankan refugees to Canada in 1986; a 150-day vigil by the Mothers of the Disappeared in Kilinochoci, Sri Lanka; onboard trains, planes and motor-scooters—all contained within 20 minutes.
Floating… aligns with the following conference themes:
Archival, oral history, and counter-archival practices in revising performance histories
Contesting colonial conceptions of legacy, ownership, and institutional structures
Rehearsal as a political site for imagining alternative futures (Afro-futurism, Indigenous futurism, and other cultural imaginaries and cosmologies)
Reconceiving pedagogies and institutional practices for new directions in theatre and performance
Challenging inherited structures of exclusion along lines of race, gender, ability, mental health, wellness, and other intersections and/or protected characteristics
Biographies:
Murielle Bechame est doctorante en recherche-création en arts de la scène et de l’écran (Université Laval et Université Paris-Nanterre). Sa thèse explore les dispositifs temporels dans le théâtre de Maeterlinck, articulant histoire scientifique et sociale du temps et modélisation scénique avec technologies génératives. Metteuse en scène et professeure, elle interroge les imaginaires et temporalités contemporaines à travers dramaturgie, esthétique et numérique.
Tessa Perkins Deneault is a PhD student at SFU’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology. She contributes to The Dance Current, Dance International, and Dance Central. She recently published “Dancing on the Mountain” in A Magical Time: The Early Days of the Arts at Simon Fraser University.
Cyrus Sundar Singh: Gemini Award-winning filmmaker, scholar, speaker, composer, singer-songwriter, author, and published poet, this AcademiCreActivist arrived in Toronto as a fresh-off-the-boat ten-year-old from India and almost embraced the winter. dr. Cyrus’ creative research and multimedia productions have traveled the world from Senegal to Sri Lanka, and cross-Canada delivering over 60 multimedia projects.