The Un-solitary Worlds of Montreal Dance
By Tao Fei
Montreal is Canada’s long-reigning dance capital. Today home to more than 50 companies and a
dynamic community of independent dancers and choreographers, this highly bilingual city is a
hotbed of dance activity. A favorite touring stop for international companies and boasting a large
network of dance presenters, established local troupes and year-round cultural happenings,
Montreal is a magnet attraction for Canadian and international dance artists in search of creative
laboratories and professional opportunities.
Montreal experienced a contemporary dance boom in the 80’s that catapulted a local community
onto the international stage, forging a distinct choreographic signature known at the time for
androgynous physicality, high-risk, provocation, and hard doses of existential angst. This
galvanizing period for Quebec dance is largely responsible for concretizing Montreal’s
reputation as a dance epicenter. It also brought its Francophone creators into high relief,
fashioning a public portrait of Quebec dance as an immaculately conceived field of homegrown
originals.
A deeper look into the city’s choreographic history, however, reveals a rather more assorted
lineage – one of immigrant and migratory artists eagerly working with diverse influences to
create the hybridized movement palette from which Montreal dance continues to thrive. The high
degree of cross-pollination leads back to a fundamental fact: Dance repels solitudes.
Choreographic visions are realized only through dialogue, collaboration and congregation.
These inevitable encounters and exchanges define the form.
Cultural Awakening
Thanks to the singular contribution of Montreal dance historian Iro Tembeck, several missing
chapters of the city’s early dance history have been uncovered, offering important links to the
past. One significant point of origin was the Physical Education Department of McGill
University, which began offering credited dance courses as early as 1929. Key teachers such as
American émigré Thelma Wagner – who founded the McGill Modern Dance Club in 1938 and
transmitted modern techniques from her studies with Hanya Holm in New York – started a chain
of early dance practitioners in the English-speaking community of Montreal. Elsie Salomons, a
McGill graduate from the late 30’s, became a pioneering modern dance teacher, first for the
Protestant School Board and then in her own studio, where a 14-year-old Linda Rabin first got
her start.
Linda Rabin
“To study with Elsie was a real choice on my part,” recalls Rabin, who in her early teens had
been pursuing ballet and sports and heard about Salomons through a friend in the Jewish
community. “When I got to Elsie’s studio it was so fabulous. I just loved the idea of being able
to express myself through movement. [Modern dance] was something that I intuitively felt I
needed to do.”
Many of the city’s early dance emissaries were also refugee artists from Eastern and Central
Europe. Notably, Ruth Sorel, of Polish origins, and Elizabeth Leese, of German and Danish
descent, opened dance studios in Westmount in the mid-40‘s where they trained students in
classical ballet and also introduced the influential German expressionist dance style of Mary
Wigman. In 1952, Ludmilla Chiriaeff, of Russian and Polish descent, founded Les Ballets
Chiriaeff, a company that attracted professional dancers from all over Canada because of its
regular engagements with CBC Television. Six years later the company would become Les
Grands Ballets Canadiens, also acquiring a farm school, the Académie des Grands Ballets
Canadiens, which would later evolve into the École supérieure de ballet contemporain de
Montréal.
Ludmilla Chiriaeff, C.C., 1984
© 1996 Harry Palmer
Up until the end of World War II, dance as an artistic practice in Montreal had been largely
developing in the English-speaking community. Even the early visits of the prominent modern
dance companies of chirographers Ruth St-Denis, from the USA, and Mary Wigman from
Germany, and of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes from the USSR and the Jooss Ballet also from
Germany, were almost exclusively attended by an English-speaking public. Slower to emerge
from the province’s religious conservatism, the French Canadian arts community arrived at a
critical turning point in 1948 with the publication of Le Refus Global, a manifesto signed by
sixteen Quebecois artists decrying traditional social values and igniting a radical discourse of
cultural, intellectual and artistic liberation. Among the signees were dancers Françoise Riopelle,
and Françoise Sullivan, a bilingual Montrealer whose seminal essay “Dance and Hope” featured
in the treatise. In tandem with dancer and Automatist Jeanne Renaud, who had first trained in
Montreal with Elizabeth Leese, these three women would become the virtual godmothers of
Modernist dance in Quebec.
Le Refus Global was commonly misperceived as a brash repudiation of past and foreign
prototypes when in fact its pursuit of a modern Québécois cultural identity represented an
opening to the world. Such was certainly the case in dance. Not only was there was no
previously existing professional dance establishment to speak of in Quebec, but expatriate
experience defined the discipline’s first wave of Quebec avant-gardists. The dance triumvirate of
Sullivan, Renaud and Riopelle had collectively sought training and inspiration abroad in the
dance capitals of New York and Paris as part of their artistic rite of passage.
Seeds of Experimentalism
The historical account of dance in Quebec often overlooks significant exchanges that took place
between the popular and avant-garde worlds that span the arts. A notable example is Ludmilla
Chiriaeff’s early company, Les Ballets Chiriaeff, which enjoyed nationwide exposure through its
appearances on Radio-Canada’s L’Heure du Concert, before being re-christened Les Grands
Ballets Canadiens (GBC) in 1958.
The Montreal Gazette, September 7, 1974, p.43
“Television in [the 50s] was a great opportunity for dance,” says Vincent Warren, the celebrated
former principal dancer with Les Grands who now curates the Vincent Warren Dance Library at
École supérieure de ballet contemporain de Montréal. “It was like being in a Hollywood studio.
There were costume designers, make-up artists, set designers. Dancers like Eva Von Genscy
came from all across Canada. There was no language barrier issue.” Les Grands Ballet’s media
exposure and subsequent tours across North America were instrumental in promoting dance early
on as an art form in Quebec and, being one of only three Canadian companies to offer its dancers
regular salaries at the time, dance as a profession. Incidentally, it was this professional stability
that allowed company members like Vincent Warren to participate in some of the city’s earliest
experimental choreographies.
By the early 60s, Jeanne Renaud’s teaching and choreographic collaborations with Françoise
Riopelle were gaining attention. Increasingly influenced by Merce Cunningham’s sense of
minimalism and abstraction, their aesthetic favored the clean lines of classically trained bodies
and interdisciplinary exploration. Vincent Warren, a Chiriaeff recruit from New York in 1961,
remembers jumping at the opportunity to work with the two Quebecois choreographers:
“[Renaud and Riopelle] approached me one day about performing with them, and I accepted
right away. I was happy because I wanted to do contemporary dance. For me it wasn’t enough
to do classical, I wanted to do both.”
Warren and Peter Boneham, both originally Americans, were among several of GBC members
that Madame Chiriaeff loaned to Jeanne Renaud throughout the 1960s, allowing the pioneering
choreographer to explore movement with high-caliber dancers. The exchange emblemizes the
simultaneous rise of both professional ballet and modern dance in Montreal, as well as the
natural synergies inherent to a burgeoning field. “[Jeanne Renaud] was a generous artist who
was happy to introduce us to another artistic world in Quebec,” recounts Warren. “She knew all
the painters, worked with composers like Serge Garrant, Pierre Mercure and Gilles Tremblay. It
was all new to me. Jeanne opened the gates to this avant-garde French Canadian world, and it
didn’t matter that we didn’t speak French.”
In 1966, upon the urging of dancer Peter Boneham, Jeanne Renaud established Quebec’s first
official modern-dance company, Le Groupe de la Place Royale (GPR). The company featured
select members of GBC with Vincent Warren appearing as a regular guest artist and Peter
Boneham becoming GPR's co-artistic director. The company also marked the debut of a young
Jean-Pierre Pérreault, discovered by Warren and Boneham, who went on to create over 20 works
for GPR, co-directing several of them. The groundbreaking mixed troupe was an originating
force in Montreal’s dawn as a dance epicentre. To train its formidable performers, Renaud led
French-language classes in modern dance, while Boneham taught English-based classes in ballet
technique.
Le Groupe de la Place Royale souvenir program, c. 1968
During this time, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens began to diversify its repertory. With the arrival
of Montreal-born Fernand Nault as associate director and resident choreographer in the mid-60s,
the company started expanding its classical repertoire to include more contemporary works.
GBC's mixed repertory tradition, geared towards neo-classical and contemporary choreographies,
continues to distinguish it from the more purist approaches of Canada’s other two major ballet
companies such as the Winnipeg Royal Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada.
In 1968, a second experimental dance company appeared, emerging out of the Université de
Montréal: Le Groupe Nouvelle Aire (GNA), created by one of the professors in the Physical
Education department, Martine Époque. GNA investigated modern dance aesthetics with
ambitions of forging a new “Quebecois” dance technique. The company’s studios eventually
became an unofficial headquarters for the city’s contemporary dance community, where growing
ranks of local dancers attended open classes and workshops given by GNA members and teachers
like Linda Rabin. Active until 1982, GNA was the creative and professional launching pad for
many marquee names of the vanguard 80’s, among them Édouard Lock, Ginette Laurin, Louise
Bédard, Paul-André Fortier, Daniel Léveillé and Louise Lecavalier.
Rounding out a diversifying scene, in 1972 Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal (BJM) was founded by
Hungarian refugee Eva von Gencszy, a former dancer with Les Ballets Chiriaeff. Gencszy’s new
brand of jazz-dance, which she had been developing throughout the 1960s as a blend of ballet
technique and American Broadway aesthetics, hit a populist fever pitch in the 1970s. Often seen
as an outlier due to its sheer commercial appeal, the self-sufficient company was an overnight
success, selling out performances, multiplying its schools around town and touring
internationally. While it has since moved away from its ballet-jazz roots, and now called BJM
Danse, this company is still one of the city’s most widely traveled.
Eva von Gencszy, c. 1965
Photo courtesy of the Banff Centre for the Arts Archives
Explosion of the Independents
1979 proved a pivotal year in contemporary dance pedagogy, with the establishment of dance
departments at two major Montreal universities. Australian-born teacher, choreographer and
performer Elizabeth Langley had worked in Melbourne, New York and Ottawa prior to her
arrival in Montreal and was called upon to develop a contemporary dance programme at
Concordia University, which bgecame a full-fledged department in 1986. Her pedagogical
vision for the program, based on creative process, continues to feed new ranks of choreographic
talent into the community every year.
That same year across town, Quebec modern dance pioneer Françoise Riopelle was freed from
her teaching responsibilities in the Theatre Department of the Université du Québec à Montréal
(UQAM) to design the university’s first dance department. Among the first lecturers she recruited
was Dena Davida, whom Riopelle had previously hired to teach contact improvisation classes.
American-born Davida, who arrived to Montreal in 1977 with experience and contacts in postmodern dance, would become an important figure during the decade to come.
Dena Davida
Photo : François L. Delagrave
With the guidance and encouragement of Françoise Riopelle, Dena Davida formed an early
collective for emerging choreographers called Qui Danse?, a forum in which Marie Chouinard
created some of her first dances. “[Françoise] gave me faith to do it and really helped me and
supported me in a moral way as well,” she remembers. The initiative inspired Davida to establish
a permanent space for new dance, and in 1981 she founded Tangente. “It was a loft, and I just
invited people to perform continuously and give workshops, some from the States and Europe.”
Davida also curated a dance series at the Musée des beaux arts. In 1985, along with her museum
colleagues Diane Boucher and Chantal Pontbriand, she would inaugurate Montreal’s
international contemporary dance festival, Festival International de Nouvelle Danse (FIND).
Undoubtedly the cultural event that secured Montreal’s position on the world map of
contemporary dance, FIND brought instant international exposure to several generations of local
dance. The meteoric rise of a group of young Quebec innovators like Jean-Pierre Pérreault,
Édouard Lock, and Ginette Laurin, all of whom formed their companies in the early 1980’s,
helped brand Montreal’s “nouvelle danse” as an iconoclastic school of hyperkinetic raw
physicality, dark visions and punk ethos.
Virtually all of the key players of the 1980’s
vanguard were presented alongside international greats like Pina Bausch, Merce Cunningham,
Trisha Brown and William Forsythe. A prestigious engagement for the most cutting-edge
innovators on the international circuit, the biennial FIND was Canada’s only major international
dance festival during its eleven-year run.
Montreal’s dance boom was the product of discipline-wide efforts to foster and promote dance as
a bona fide profession and integral art form. The city’s dance infrastructure was systematically
reformed throughout the 80’s, a period during which schools, discipline-specific organizations,
and the national arts lobby took the shape we recognize today.
One important voice was Montrealer Linda Rabin, who returned after ten years abroad and
whose initial association with Groupe Nouvelle Aire jumpstarted her local teaching career. “I
came back from my time away with information and a pathway that was different from my
[Francophone] colleagues,” recalls Rabin, whose background was in the American modern dance
techniques of Martha Graham and José Limon. In 1981 Rabin and Candace Loubert founded Les
ateliers de danse moderne de Montréal Inc (LADMMI), the first training school in Montreal
entirely devoted to modern dance. In Rabin's words, “There was definitely a demand for it.
Dance was growing in Montreal. It was a rich and busy time with many new voices and faces on
the scene.”
Rabin's 1977 seminal work “The White Goddess” featured one of her most talented students, the
young Margie Gillis. Now a household name in Canadian dance, the Montreal-born Gillis burst
onto the scene in the late-1970’s, captivating the country with her cathartic solo works. After a
groundbreaking 1979 appearance in China, she acquired the title of Canada’s definitive
ambassador of dance, occupying the posts of Canadian Cultural Ambassador in 1981 and Quebec
Cultural Ambassador in 1986.
Margie Gillis
Working with LADMMI at its home on the third floor of the Belgo building, Gillis would have
surely crossed paths with American dancer/choreographer Jo Lechay, who had moved into the
studio across the hall. There, Lechay taught popular classes and based her pick-up company
featuring dancers like Andrew de Lotbinière-Harwood. Lechay’s old studio is now home to
Studio 303. “People were just flocking to take these classes in these new places and get new
information,” remembers Philip Szporer, Montreal dance writer, lecturer, and long-time observer
of Canadian dance. “New ideas were constantly filtering into the stream, creating a very dynamic
community composed of many different currents.”
The early- to mid-1980s also saw the formation of many discipline-specific arts organizations.
Alongside Danse-Cité (1982), the Regroupement des Professionnels de la Danse de Québec
(1984) served as a powerful arts lobby for professional dance artists and was instrumental in the
development of the 1987 law on the Status of the Artist, the first to be enacted in Canada.
Meanwhile, an official Dance Policy published by the Parti Québécois advocated for the
development of provincial choreography, leading to initiatives like Montréal Danse, a
contemporary repertory company founded in 1986 by Paul-André Fortier and former co-artistic
director of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Daniel Jackson.
As Quebec contemporary dance entered the mainstream during the 1980’s, even Les Grands
Ballets Canadiens ventured to commission pieces by Montreal experimentalists Paul-André
Fortier and Ginette Laurin, creating controversy among its subscribers. It was also a period that
also marked by the emergence of Ontario-born James Kudelka, who was given carte blanche
during his decade-long choreographic residency with GBC. He created his first neo-classical
masterwork, “In Paradisum”, for the company in 1983 and subsequently went on to become one
of the most accomplished Canadian ballet choreographers of his generation.
“It was a time of nurturing and growth,” says Linda Rabin. “The water was available and we
were the seeds. Today we see what it has flourished into.”
MONTREAL DANCE TODAY
Today, Montreal is home to an ever-proliferating field of independent performers and creators.
The city is host to more dance programming than any other Canadian city; artists and audiences
have to keep up with a constantly mutating landscape of seasons, festivals, showcases and
independent dance events.
For three weeks every summer, New York’s Juilliard School ships some 60 top-notch dance
students North of the border to work with Montreal choreographers. “The dancers who come
here [with a program like Springboard Montréal Danse] usually freak out when they see all the
dance activity that’s going on and immediately want to move here,” says Windsor, Ontario
native Andrew Tay, a busy Montreal-based dancer, choreographer and independent curator.
In late 2010 Tay wrapped a four-performance run at Tangente, one of the city’s several smallscale theater venues devoted to emerging Montreal artists. He premiered a new piece in which he
performs alongside a dancer from UQAM, another from LADMMI and a third graduate from
Concordia. Then there’s also “Short&Sweet” and “Piss in the Pool” to keep him busy; Tay
curates the popular annual events with his artistic cohort Sasha Kleinpatz, another Concordia
graduate. They are known collectively as Wants & Needs Danse, and they’re among a new
generation of dancers in a city positively brimming with activity.
“Piss in the Pool”, 2010
© Wants & Needs Danse
The now well-established infrastructure of schools, performance spaces, training opportunities
and service organizations is unparalleled in Canada, and has helped cultivate and sustain the
careers of a wide array of independent artists, ranging from established freelancers like
Vancouver native Deborah Dunn, to mid-career artists such as Chanti Wadge and George
Stamos, as well as a whole swath of emerging creators, including Andrew Turner, Dana Michel,
Katie Ward and Erin Flynn, to name only a few.
Andrew Turner
The healthy, exponentially-growing volume of young dance artists in the city can be largely
attributed to the fact that two of its top universities offer degree programs in contemporary
dance, ushering some 40 young dance graduates into the field every year. Concordia University
attracts Anglophone students while their Francophone counterparts tend to choose the Université
du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) which also offers a Master of the Arts and a Doctorate
programme.
Currently chaired by Michael Montanaro, former Assistant Artistic Director of GPR, the
Contemporary Dance Department at Concordia is one of Canada’s leading university programs
in dance. In keeping with Montreal’s tradition of innovation in the field, the three-year BFA
program continues to distinguish itself by focusing on choreography and the creative process.
LADMMI, the contemporary dance conservatory founded by Linda Rabin, remains a sought-after
option for young aspiring dancers and currently offers an intensive three-year training program
leading to a college diploma. In 2006 LADMMI received confirmation of a grant from the
Ministry of Culture to build new facilities, which will more than double its current size, in the
heart of the Quartier des spectacles.
Among the multitude of possibilities to show work, two important points of entry dominate:
Studio 303, the interdisciplinary performance and work space run by Miriam Ginestier, and
Tangente, Dena Davida’s small-theater institution. Théâtre La Chapelle, directed by long-time
Canadian dance producer Jack Udashkin, also becomes an option for artists who have already
built a solid reputation.
While presenting opportunities are plentiful, competition is high. As such, self-producing is
becoming a vital professional skill for emerging artists on the local scene. “Artists have to be
incredibly entrepreneurial right now,” says Dena Davida.
In 2010, Studio 303 Director Miriam Ginestier organized SPARK, a one-off showcase and
networking event for a handful of artists associated with the space. Not yet sure if it will become
a recurring project, Ginestier nonetheless sees its importance as a model for future initiatives.
“I’m hoping SPARK will inspire artists to take charge of their own careers, work together to put
on their own showcases and invite handpicked international producers and presenters to come
see them. The funds are there, people just have to mount the project.” Small companies like
Andrew Tay and Sasha Kleinplatz’s Wants & Needs Danse and the dance collective La 2e Porte
à la Gauche have already started producing and curating their own underground events as
platforms both for their own works as well as for those of their peers.
Montreal is home to an entire economy of dancers, from large-scale established companies to a
growing number of mid-sized companies, many of whom have already won recognition abroad.
They all attract top-tier dancers from the international milieu, and therefore work and rehearse
predominantly in English. Just as Montreal acts as a launching pad for its hometown companies,
it draws an endless stream of visiting companies to its theatres.
Due in large part to the market created by Montreal’s now-defunct Festival international de
nouvelle danse (FIND), Festival TransAmériques (FTA) is Montreal’s definitive contemporary
dance and theatre showcase for leading-edge artists on the international circuit. Since its
inception in 2007, the smaller OFFTA festival has become a major player in the promotion of
Montreal's emerging dance community. Running in tandem, and tacitly in dialogue with its bigbrother festival the Festival TransAmériques (FTA), the OFFTA is a choice platform where local
experimental dance artists can gain key visibility with audiences at a time when scores of
international presenters are in town.
SIDEBAR
A Guide to Dance in Montreal
Here are ten (and a half) sites that put Montreal at the heart of dance in Canada.
Agora de la Danse (840 Cherrier)
Founded in 1991, the contemporary dance-devoted theatre is the place to catch new works by
mainstay local choreographers and their mid-sized companies, as well as the annual showcase of
UQAM’s latest crop of graduates. The Agora also offers artist residencies and funding for
creations.
Bibliothèque de la danse Vincent-Warren (4816 Rivard)
Housed in the same building as Les Grands Ballets Canadiens and the École supérieure de ballet
contemporain, Montreal’s largest dance library is a treasure trove of books, videos and rare
dance artifacts, a major collection totaling over 20,000 documents. Open to the public Tuesdays
through Saturdays; on-site consultation is free.
Danse Danse (www.dansedanse.net)
Running October through April/ May and now in its 13th season, Danse Danse presents top-flight
national and international artists and companies in major venues like the Théâtre Maisonneuve at
Place des Arts and the Centre Pierre-Péladeau.
Festival TransAmériques (www.fta.qc.ca)
Montreal’s biggest international dance and theatre festival is only four years old (in its new
incarnation) and has quickly become one of the city’s premiere cultural events. FTA runs for two
weeks every summer, late May-June, and its dance programming takes over downtown venues
like Usine C, Théatre Maisonneuve and the Cinquième Salle at Place des Arts.
OFFTA (www.offta.com)
A boutique multidisciplinary performance festival running concurrently with the FTA, the
OFFTA is probably the best showcase of emerging Montreal dance talent, with a special regard
for experimental creators. Its programming is virtually 100% local.
Place des Arts (175 Sainte-Catherine West)
Home to Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Montreal’s five-hall performing arts hub presents highprofile dance acts year-round through Danse Danse’s programming and a dance season at the
Cinquième Salle, where RubberbandDance Group is currently in residence.
Regroupement Québécois de la Danse (www.quebecdanse.org)
Arguably the nation’s most powerful arts lobby for dance professionals, the RQD currently has
over 500 members (individuals and organizations) and is an invaluable community resource.
Studio 303 (in the Belgo building, 372 Ste-Catherine West)
The interdisciplinary performance and work space run by Miriam Ginester is the city’s definitive
entry point for young dance artists and new arrivals to the city. Studio 303 presents mostly short
works on shared programs and offers artists support labs and a ten-month series of professionallevel workshops.
Tangente (Presently moving to a new building in the Quartier de spectacles.)
Dena Davida’s intimate contemporary dance space is undoubtedly the most prolific presenter on
the scene. Since 1981, Tangente has seen a veritable who’s who of Montreal dance pass through
its doors and continues to be where emerging, innovative artists get their first big break.
Théâtre La Chapelle (3700 Saint-Dominique) / Usine C (1345 Lalonde)
Montreal dance-goers make sure to check the season programs of these two multi-disciplinary
venues, where cutting-edge local and international dance is regularly programmed.