PLAN B

Van Grimde Corps Secrets (CA)

In a post-technological world where nature has yet to be rebuilt and bodies still bear traces of their colonization by machines, humans attempt to survive by reconnecting to their primitive neural architecture, in order to reshape their environment.

Within this hybrid universe, an amalgam of technological and organic relics, it is breath, sound and the trance-like states generated by the latter that engender a new genesis, perhaps the spark at the origin of renewal.

 

World premiere: 24 April at Agora de la danse, Montréal, Canada

A production by Van Grimde Corps Secrets in co-production with Agora de la danse, Montréal. With the support of Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and Conseil des arts de Montréal.

Choreography
Isabelle Van Grimde

Performance
Emmanuelle Martin, Thom Gossage

Music
Thom Gossage

Set Design
Isabelle Van Grimde, Marilène Oliver

Lights
Bobby León, Justin Houde

Costumes
Isabelle Van Grimde

Technical direction
Samuel Thériault

Production Managment
Iloé Françon

How, in the near future, can the boundaries of the body and its identity be redefined? Eve 2050 invites audiences to engage in an artistic, aesthetic and ethical reflection on the future of human beings and the body in an age of digital technology, biomedical advances and artificial intelligence. Combining dance, video, music, visual and digital arts, the work takes on various forms to be presented in theatres, public spaces and online. The work has three components, which establish different types of relationships with the audience: an interactive webseries, an interactive installation with choreographic performances and a stage production.

The web series Eve 2050 blends the real bodies of dancers with their virtual doubles, giving birth to Eve through a metaphysical tale in five episodes. Posted on YouTube, Snapchat, Vimeo and other platforms, the episodes redirect visitors to eve2050.com. This digital platform, especially designed to compile all the information that went into the creation of the triptych Eve 2050, will provide access to an interactive version of the web series, in which Internet users are immersed in an experience that engages their own body via their webcam. Each person weaves their journey to Eve’s, intimately participating in her story.

Designed to exist autonomously or as part of a performance, the installation Eve 2050 features alternative scenarios to the web series on three interactive holographic panels and two sculptures. Set up in a gallery, the panels generate five digital environments that show five facets of Eve, inviting visitors to discover her world.

In the stage production Eve 2050, eight performers control an immersive, interactive environment that evokes a connected humanity, where multiple possibilities coexist: genetic mutations, cohabitation of human and artificial intelligences, dreams of immortality, digital survival…Driven by reflections on the advances in AI, this concluding part of the EVE 2050 project points to the advent of a new species, a new take on the eternal question of our place in the mystery of the cosmos.

Through its three components, Eve 2050 combines the vibrant force of actual physical presence with the magical transformations and ubiquity made possible by technology. Nature and culture are reconciled in this meeting between the primal body—its ancestral heritage expressed through a visceral gestural vocabulary—and the body of the future, transformed by its connection with technology.

Eve 2050 is a particularly innovative project in its artistic use of digital technologies. It is based on a novel association of different image analysis and processing applications, movement sensing systems, and the latest interactive technologies. Most of the visual effects that transform Eve in the web series are generated in real time by interactive technology, not in post-production. This process makes it possible to reproduce the same effects on the bodies of spectators who are exploring the digital installation, and on the dancers performing the work on stage. Technology is used in the service of dance, creating a unique experience for each spectator.

13/11/2018Eve 2050OFF-CINARS 2018 @ Arsenal art contemporain, Montréal
15/11/2018Eve 2050OFF-CINARS 2018 @ Arsenal art contemporain, Montréal
16/11/2018Eve 2050OFF-CINARS 2018 @ Arsenal art contemporain, Montréal
17/11/2018Eve 2050OFF-CINARS 2018 @ Arsenal art contemporain, Montréal
08/10/2019Eve 2050Agora de la danse, Montréal (CA)
09/10/2019Eve 2050Agora de la danse, Montréal (CA)
10/10/2019Eve 2050Agora de la danse, Montréal (CA)
11/10/2019Eve 2050Agora de la danse, Montréal (CA)
05/11/2020Eve 2050Muffatwerk, München (DE) - POSTPONED DUE TO COVID-19
06/11/2020Eve 2050Muffatwerk, München (DE) - POSTPONED DUE TO COVID-19
07/11/2020Eve 2050Muffatwerk, München (DE) - POSTPONED DUE TO COVID-19
08/11/2020Eve 2050Muffatwerk, München (DE) - POSTPONED DUE TO COVID-19
11/11/2020Eve 2050Festival Tanz Karlsruhe (DE) - POSTPONED DUE TO COVID-19
12/11/2020Eve 2050Festival Tanz Karlsruhe (DE) - POSTPONED DUE TO COVID-19
24/11/2020Eve 2050FIAV Casablanca (MAR) - POSTPONED DUE TO COVID-19
25/11/2020Eve 2050FIAV Casablanca (MAR) - POSTPONED DUE TO COVID-19
26/11/2020Eve 2050FIAV Casablanca (MAR) - POSTPONED DUE TO COVID-19
27/11/2020Eve 2050FIAV Casablanca (MAR) - POSTPONED DUE TO COVID-19
28/11/2020Eve 2050FIAV Casablanca (MAR) - POSTPONED DUE TO COVID-19
11/11/2022Eve 2050Muffatwerk, München (DE)
12/11/2022Eve 2050Muffatwerk, München (DE)
13/11/2022Eve 2050Muffatwerk, München (DE)
16/11/2022Eve 2050Festival Tanz Karlsruhe (DE)
17/11/2022Eve 2050Festival Tanz Karlsruhe (DE)

Les Méconnus → 23/09/2018

Pieuvre.ca → 23/09/2018

Concept, Artistic Direction and Choreography
Isabelle Van Grimde

Interactive Visual Design
Jérôme Delapierre

Composition
Thom Gossage

Web Series's Production
Robert Desroches - DAVAI

Choreographer's Assistant
Sophie Breton

Performers
Sophie Breton, Justin De Luna, Chi Long, Marine Rihxon and Gabrielle Roy

Additionnal Performers in the Web Series
Georges-Nicolas Tremblay, Félix Cossette, Emmanuelle Martin, Erika Morin, Marie Mougeolle, Bronte Poiré-Prest, Soula Trougakos, Rhéa Sky Walsh, Angélique Willkie, Alice Delapierre and Kim Long

Visual Works
Marilene Oliver

Interactive Sound Technologies
Frédéric Filteau

Costume Design
Pascale Bassani

Concepts and preliminary research for the costumes
Manon Desrues and Jérôme Delapierre

In an era of increasing virtualization, Isabelle Van Grimde immerses her dancers into an interactive visual environment orchestrated by live music. Here the choreographer explores questions of identity fluctuation, perceptions and the future body. A thousand and one stories overlap, forming the framework of a dreamlike and eerily poetic work.

For this production, Isabelle Van Grimde invited two young dancers, students from the École supérieure de ballet du Québec: Samaël Maurice (aged 12) and Maya Robitaille (aged 14). Their presence reveals other aspects of the choreographer’s gestural language, provides another perspective on the dancing body, and other identification possibilities for the audience.

Composing a symphonic work in a choreographic context was the challenge facing Tim Brady and Thom Gossage in creating the musical environment for Symphony 5.1. The result is a composition for guitar and percussion, an open work with structured improvisation.

Generated primarily in real time, the dreamlike landscapes by artist Jérôme Delapierre capture the essence of the ever-increasing virtual world in which we live. Combining an infrared motion-capture system and a technology as unobtrusive as it is complex, the interactive design propels the choreographic language, while the visuals lend the dancers a second skin.

 

A production by Van Grimde Corps Secrets. In coproduction with Agora de la danse, Bradyworks, Brian Webb Dance Company and École supérieure de ballet du Québec. Artist Residencies at Agora de la danse.

Artistic Direction and Choreography
Isabelle Van Grimde

By and with
Sophie Breton, Samaël Maurice, Maya Robitaille and Georges-Nicolas Tremblay

Composer - performers
Tim Brady, Thom Gossage

Video, Interaction and Stage Design
Jérôme Delapierre

Choreographer’s assistant
Marie-Ève Lafontaine and Sophie Breton

Technical Director
Émilie Bérubé-Dionne

Sound Engineer
Bernard Grenon

Slow down. Come in close, encounter yourself, fall into another dimension. With the interactive installation Corps secret / Corps public, the trio of Isabelle Van Grimde, Anick La Bissonnière and Thom Gossage combine movement, architecture and sound to transform our everyday environment and to challenge how we use images and time.

Three intriguing structures inhabit the Espace culturel Georges Émile Lapalme at Place des Arts. Flexible and translucent, their walls are a mirror skin where our reflection merges with the reflections of other strangers in transit… and with the reflections of the dancers during performances in an enticing hybridization of bodies, a parallel narrative that adjusts to changing rhythms. An impromptu dance takes shape in the instant of our interrupted journey; looks are exchanged. The wondrous visual fusion of our identities varies depending on the light. Captured by sensors, each of our movements modulates the soundtrack, recomposing the rustling and murmurs of an almost supernatural urban jungle. A portal opens up into reality and we are propelled into the space-time of an elsewhere that is in the here and now.

A production by Van Grimde Corps Secrets. In coproduction with Festival TransAmériques, Place des Arts, Anick La Bissonnière and l’École supérieure de ballet du Québec. Creatives Residencies at Place des Arts and Agora de la danse. Van Grimde Corps Secrets is funded by the Canada Council for the Arts (CAC), the Conseil des arts de Montréal (CAM) and by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) for this production and through its program to aid in the deployment of digital infrastructure.

Artistic Director
Isabelle Van Grimde

Architectural Installation (Dystopie)
Anick La Bissonnière

Sound Installation (Per Tempus)
Thom Gossage in collaboration with Frédéric Filteau

Choreographic Installation
Isabelle Van Grimde

Created with and performed by
Sophie Breton, Marie-Ève Lafontaine, Samaël Maurice, Maya Robitaille and Georges-Nicolas Tremblay

Lighting design
Bruno Rafie

Sensor Engineering
Frédéric Filteau

Technical Director
Émilie Bérubé-Dionne

Production Director
Mikaël Vitali

Choreographer’s assistants
Marie-Ève Lafontaine and Sophie Breton

A cross between choreography, spatial and acoustic architecture, exhibition and interactive digital technology, The Body in Question(s)2 explores the ways in which the massive social, cultural and technological changes in modern societies are affecting how we conceptualize and interpret the body. Transforming the seven rooms of Enterprise Square Galleries in Edmonton, Isabelle Van Grimde has created an organic space that she invites us to inhabit rather than pass through. Within it, she sets up a dialogue between the living body and its genome, its digital conversion, its virtual image and oneiric dimension. She instils tension between the primitive body and the future body, pondering the status of the physical body in an increasingly virtual world, and the impact of computers on our mental and physical processes. This questioning becomes all the more poignant, since a digital platform allows visitors to get a live, behind-the-scenes view of the creation and to make a web recreation of the very work that surrounds them. From one room to the next, visitors discover works by nine visual and media artists, essays by two scientists, and the subtle movements of six dancers aged 23 to 60. Video installations relay their performances in the rooms they no longer occupy, maintaining a constant choreographic presence in the exhibition. Defying the notions of space and time, this intriguing work uses the viewer’s body to reinvent itself. An intimate experience whose duration and nature is determined by each visitor.

Curator, Artistic Director and Choreographer
Isabelle Van Grimde

Space Design
Éric O. Lacroix

Performers
Marie Brassard, Sophie Breton, Marie-Ève Lafontaine, Robin Poitras, Georges-Nicolas Tremblay and Brian Webb

Visual Artists
Derek Besant, Brennan/Caulfied/Mills, Kate Craig, Foumalade, Anick La Bissonnière, Éric O. Lacroix, Nadia Myre, Marilène Olivier and Monique Régimbald-Zeiber

Isabelle Van Grimde is choreographer and artistic director of the dance company Van Grimde Corps Secrets. Her interdisciplinary approach makes her a leading figure in research on the body.

Van Grimde Corps Secrets is an artistic creation company whose works are centered on an indepth reflection on the human body, from yesterday to tomorrow. One of the distinctive features of Van Grimde Corps Secrets’ approach is its transdisciplinarity: it combines dance with new technologies, in a collaboration nourished by research in the pure sciences and humanities, as well as dialogue with other art forms.

The creative avenues discovered through these exchanges give rise to multidisciplinary stage productions, interactive installations, public art exhibitions and webbased creations.

Transes

Eve 2050

Symphonie 5.1

Corps secret / Corps public

The Body in Question(s)²