Dana Gingras
Photo : ©Yannick Grandmont
Workshop - Emergent strategies
Following an experimental and emergent format the workshop will bring together many divergent strands of artistic inquiry that I have been exploring over the past few years. It will be centered around various strategies that I’ve developed to generate choreographic ideas.
Working with movement prompts and task based improvisations I will lead participants through a wide range of different kinaesthetic experiences that merge awareness with action. Working through a range of movements from the minutiae of everyday gestures to extreme off center states.
My creative process is one of trial and error, frequently delving into the territory between what is allowable and what is repressed in order to facilitate a process of transmutation. This workshop will attempt to embody the questions I am currently living and will be explored through solos, duos and a group process.
Dana Gingras
Dana Gingras is a choreographer, filmmaker, performer and teacher. Her 30-year career has moved across mediums and artistic practices and has established her as a game-changing, boundary-pushing artist. Co-founding The Holy Body Tattoo in 1993 the company changed the landscape of Canadian dance, earning numerous awards and honors for its stage and film work. Through Animals of Distinction, established in 2006 and based in Montreal, she has fostered the creation of cutting-edge works with innovative collaborations that have recently included Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Fly Pan Am and United Visual Artists. The work of AOD has been performed at some of the most prestigious festivals and venues in the world including the Edinburgh International Festival, BAM’s Next Wave Festival, ROMAEUROPA Festival, Barbican Hall in London, Sydney Festival, Adelaide Festival, CTM Festival Berlin, PuSh Festival Vancouver and the National Arts Centre. Dana was awarded the long-term artist residency at Centre Creation O Vertigo from 2017-2019 and is an associate artist of the National Arts Centre.
As a response to the recent pandemic Gingras conceived and curated Jump Cut, an 8-part multimedia digital series featuring a hybrid of dance, music and video. The series was co commissioned by CTM Festival with the participation of MUTEK and Take Me Somewhere. The series was also featured in the exhibition “Connected Alienation” at Kunstraum Kreuzberg in Berlin as part of CTM 2022. Most recently, AOD premiered Creation Destruction, a large-scale outdoor event at the Luminato Festival in Toronto in June 2022 and Mountains are Mountains at Agora de la Danse in March 2023. Montreal audiences will have the opportunity to experience Creation Destruction as part of the 2023 edition of the Festival TransAmériques.