2025-2026 - Page 4 - La Rotonde

ONIONMAN

ONIONMAN is a visceral, sensitive performance where clothing becomes both a playmate and an emotional partner. As layers are put on, crumpled, or cast off, the body reveals itself, transforms, and questions its own identity.

This debut work by Victoria Côté Péléja draws from street dance freestyle and textile manipulation. Movement emerges from the friction between fabric, breath, sweat, and the impulses of the present. Every garment put on or removed becomes a symbolic layer — social, emotional, or cultural.

What drives us to change? When does identity (re)form? ONIONMAN explores identity as a continuous transformation, at the intersection of inner and outer worlds, of self and other. The piece turns clothing into a raw, sensory language, unveiling a porous, vibrant being in constant evolution.

The double bill is presented with the support of Première Ovation.

Raven Mother

A vibrant tribute to Indigenous Elder Margaret Harris, who dedicated her life to keeping her culture alive. A multimedia story bursting with images, dances, songs, carved masks, and stunning regalia.

A leading figure in the cultural revival of Indigenous peoples from British Columbia’s Northwest Coast, Margaret Harris (1931–2020) played a key role in preserving the songs, dances, stories, and regalia-making traditions of the region. With her husband, Chief Kenneth Harris (1928–2010), she founded the Dancers of Damelahamid in 1967, driven by the urgency to safeguard these ancestral practices. Her daughter, Margaret Grenier — now joined by her daughters and granddaughters — carries the torch forward.

Raven Mother — a reference to the raven, emblem of the clan — honors the unwavering determination of this matriarch and the vital role of mothers in passing on an invaluable legacy. Bridging Indigenous traditions and contemporary forms, this work offers an immediate, essential immersion into a rich and remarkable culture.

Show Gone

With Show Gone, Toronto-based Ame Henderson and Croatian artist Matija Ferlin bring to a close a trilogy of duos that began 15 years ago — a creative friendship and a choreographic relay carried through time.

Now, after years apart — their lives transformed, their bodies changed — the two artists ask themselves: what must we reveal to each other in order to move forward together once more? How do we reconnect after life has momentarily pulled us apart?

The performance unfolds like an anti social media scroll session, laying bare both the desire to control the narrative and the impossibility of doing so. Instead of static images shown just fast enough to mimic life, it offers fragments of lived stories, at human speed. And from this endless sequence of endings, a quiet sense of beginning slowly emerges.

Homo Confortus

Danse K par K presents its ninth creation — a danced fresco envisioning a utopian world where solidarity and mutual aid prevail over the pursuit of convenience, all within a unique post-apocalyptic setting.

Homo confortus is a surreal fiction inviting the audience to step forward in history — as if in the year 3026 — observing our civilization in all its beauty, ugliness, patterns, and ruptures. At the heart of this creation lies the desire to place these ever-comfort-seeking beings into a munitions factory. A metaphor for our world?

The performance unfolds through sweeping living tableaux that explore the cycles of human experience while tackling contemporary — and often ambiguous — issues.

This group of homo confortus — outfitted with shock-absorbing foam and demonstrating a fledgling revolutionary spirit, armed with poetry and humor — questions modern individualism and imagines a utopian society. A multifaceted choreographic work committed to experimenting with new ways of creating and connecting.

Les Coz de maïs

Diving into a world where cultures meet and intertwine, Les Coz de maïs offer a unique multidisciplinary where music, dance, and poetry come together to create an unforgettable artistic journey.

Through original songs in French, English, and Wendat — blending traditional Wendat sounds with contemporary accents — the piece captures the duo’s cultural reconnection with their roots. Throughout the performance, poetry and movement build stories shaped by a worldview deeply rooted in Wendat and Québécois identities.

Les Coz de maïs celebrate the richness and diversity of cultures, highlighting the beauty of human connection through art.

In-Tessere

A danced and narrated performance that weaves, from local encounters, a sensitive mosaic of stories and presences.

With In-Tessere, Franco-Italian artist Ambra Senatore offers a tailor-made performance blending dance, storytelling, and site specific creation. Like a storyteller in motion, she draws inspiration from the place that hosts her and from the people she meets there, spinning a thread of personal and collective stories. At the crossroads of sensitivity and everyday life, the work explores the invisible connections between people, memories, and territories.

Its title evokes both the act of weaving — invisible bonds — and the gathering of fragments, like a mosaic where each tessera holds a piece of a story. Welcoming reality into its fabric, this ever-evolving work is anchored in the present moment, letting hospitality resonate as a poetic force. A significant experience of togetherness, here and now.

Ferrari en feu

Ferrari en feu is an ode to individual and collective freedom. With boldness and spontaneity, the duo embraces constraint as a space of possibility.

Balancing on the narrow surfaces of two chairs, the performers grapple with discomfort, pushing their limits, seeking to expand space both within and around themselves. Like a road trip, the piece unfolds through landscapes and encounters that leave their mark.

The Ferrari — a triumphant symbol of opulence and life’s accelerating pace — is playfully reimagined here. In an era losing its sense of meaning, Julia-Maude Cloutier and Amélie Gagnon defy pressure, resist speed, and transform the unbearable through resilience, humor, creativity, and revolt.

Margaret Grenier

She choreographed Setting the Path (2004), Sharing the Spirit (2007), Spirit and Tradition (2009), as well as the multimedia contemporary dance productions Spirit Transforming (2012), Flicker (2016), and Mînowin (2019).

Margaret has directed and produced the Coastal Dance Festival since 2008. Margaret holds a Master of Arts in Arts Education from Simon Fraser University and a B.Sc. from McGill University. She was a sessional instructor at Simon Fraser University for Foundations in Aboriginal Education, Language, and Culture in 2007. Margaret was a faculty member for the Banff Centre Indigenous Dance Residency 2013.