Dana Michel
CUTLASS SPRING
Photo: Fanny Trichet
Tu 12.11.2019, 20:00-21:00, MDT
We 13.11.2019, 20:00-21:00, MDT
She is not present in their pornography. She is not found in their eroticisms.
She is not even a part of her own fantasy world.
"CUTLASS SPRING" is what sex might mean to me right now.
I will roam inside a question: How might I locate my sexual identity within a multitude of complimentary and seemingly contradictory identities – as a performer, as a mother, as a daughter, as a lover, as a stranger? I will map a sexual education – with all of its embodiments, fabrications, and disassociations. I will follow these trajectories toward their softest core so as to discover what I hold back and what I make explicit.
She will solicit her body and all of the many things that go with her person. She will realize what remains within her for sexual contemplation.
Inching towards uncensorship, engaging the infinite potential of everyday objects, "CUTLASS SPRING" is, at once, a manifesto and a heated reflection, an ethnography of sexual understanding and an archaeology of desire.
Dana Michel & Michael Nardone
Dana Michel is an associate artist with Par B.L.eux.
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Dana Michel
Ottawa native, based in Montreal since 2000, Dana Michel is a Canadian of Caribbean descent whose family hails from the island of Saint Lucia. She describes herself as a live artist. Exploring the world of nuance, Dana caused a stir from the start with her first creations. Since then, she has been refining her exploration of time and improvisation, finding her own way into concepts such as identity, sexuality, and work—in other words, looking for ways to expand her relationship to existence. Each of Dana’s projects exposes her vulnerability and her quest to create more vital space for us all.
“MIKE” is her fourth major piece after “Yellow Towel” (2013), “Mercurial George”(2016), and “Cutlass Spring” (2019). In this last decade, her creations have garnered some remarkable accolades. In 2014, she received the ImPulsTanz Award in recognition of creative excellence. In 2017, she was awarded the Silver Lion for Innovation in Dance at the Venice Biennale. In 2019, she received the International Prize for Live Art from the ANTI Festival (Kuopio, Finland). In 2022, she was awarded the Jacqueline Lemieux Prize by the Canada Council for the Arts for her significant contribution to dance in Canada.
Created and performed by
Artistic Activators
Sound Consultant
Sound Consultant
Lighting Design
Technical Direction
Production
Executive Production
Distribution
Key Performance – Julia Asperska, Koen Vanhove.
Co-production
Arsenic – Centre d’art scénique Lausanne (Lausanne, Switzerland), Rosendal Teater (Trondheim, Norway), Black Box Teater (Oslo, Norway), Centre Chorégraphique National d’Orléans (France), National Arts Center (Ottawa, Canada), Festival TransAmériques (Montreal, Canada), Julidans (Amsterdam, Netherlands), Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Bruxelles, Belgium), Montpellier Danse (France), Moving in November (Helsinki, Finland).
Co-produced with the support of
the Visiting Dance Artist Program, a joint initiative of the National Arts Centre and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Creative Residencies
Centre Chorégraphique National d’Orléans (France), National Arts Center (Ottawa, Canada), CounterPulse (San Francisco, United States), Dancemakers (Toronto, Canada), da:ns lab (Singapore), Galerie du Dourven – Passerelle Centre d’art contemporain (France), Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Belgium), PAF – Performing Arts Forum (France), Par B.L.eux (Montreal, Canada), Usine C (Montreal, Canada), Reykjavik Dance Festival (Iceland), Tanzhaus Zurich (Switzerland).
Supported by
Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.
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