Marie Chouinard Double Bill at Sadler's Wells

The Canadian artistic director Marie Chouinard is known for producing daring and relentlessly original dance performances, based on a desire to satiate her curiosity about what the human body is capable of. Inspired by the raw materials of flesh, bones and muscles, she is driven by a need to root out the organic, genuine truths that the body retains as a carrier of meaning.
Before founding Montreal-based Compagnie Marie Chouinard in 1990, Chouinard provoked shocked and enthusiastic responses as a solo dancer who masturbated or urinated on stage, or put herself up for auction. Between 1978 and 1990 she created over fifty choreographic productions, action-performances, vocal works, installations and films in which she refined her interest in the human body.
Celebrating the human form as a vehicle of life, Chouinard endeavours to create choreographic pieces that expose the body as being infinitely intelligent. Each gesture is revelled in; not a single detail is left neglected.
This interest in the body and body distortion has seen Chouinard’s performers wear pointe shoes and crutches together, adorn themselves with prosthetics or strip off to perform naked. Contrasting lightness and provocative explosiveness, her edgy artistic vision is one that appeals to both traditional contemporary dance lovers and the more experimental crowd.
Now a fixture on the bill for the world’s major stages and festivals, Compagnie Marie Chouinard celebrated its 25th anniversary last year and has a busy international touring schedule planned throughout 2016.
London dance audiences can look forward to seeing two of Chouinard’s most recent dance works: Soft Virtuosity, still humid, on the edge (2015) and HENRI MICHAUX: MOUVEMENTS (2011).

Soft Virtuosity, still humid, on the edge explores different tempos - from frantic pace to extreme slowness – through various forms of perambulation. Divergent walks are matched with video projections of the dancers’ faces, resulting in a kaleidoscope of constant movement.


For the second portion of this double bill, Chouinard has decrypted the images contained in Belgian surrealist Henri Michaux’s book Mouvements, reinterpreting them into a unique and entertaining choreographic score. In this ingenious meeting of dance and visual arts, the audience reads along as the watercolour images, ink drawings and words are projected onto the back wall of the stage and the bodies of the dancers contort into living calligraphies.

Warning: This production contains nudity