Dana Michel

MIKE

Dana Michel MIKE

Photo: Françoise Robert

On Friday 2 February, visitors of “MIKE” have free admission. On Saturday and Sunday an entrance ticket to Moderna Museet is required.
Witnessing the full experience is recommended, but you can freely leave and re-enter if necessary.


Fr 2.2.2024, 17:00-20:00, Moderna Museet

Sa 3.2.2024, 14:00-17:00, Moderna Museet

Su 4.2.2024, 14:00-17:00, Moderna Museet

“MIKE” is a performance about labor and work culture by Canadian artist Dana Michel. From the fringes comes a silent rebellion that takes its time, but also your time. The work will be embedded in the exhibition “Seven Rooms and a Garden: Rashid Johnson and the Moderna Museet’s Collection”.

The artist Dana Michel specializes in creating situations that have and develop through their own logic. Michel lives in a world of objects to which she gives new meaning and purposes, away from binary and linear thinking, making, and doing. She breaches social norms from a position of curiosity rather than provocation, gently ushering supposed “marginal figures” to the center of the conversation. With humor and sensitivity, she questions our very modes of existence.

The performance “MIKE” asserts the nomadic aesthetic that has become Michel’s calling card over the course of her career. In an open space, during three hours, “MIKE” invites the audience to spend time inside its universe. The work revolves around labor, work culture, and self-respect, and puts forward a burning question: is it possible to live public lives that reflect our inner selves? Put your faith in Michel’s hands, one yes at a time.

MIKE” is a collaboration with Moderna Museet, and will be shown there. The duration of the performance is three hours. Witnessing the full experience is recommended, but you can freely leave and re-enter if necessary. It will take place in the exhibition “Seven Rooms and a Garden” at Moderna Museet.

An entrance ticket to Moderna Museet is required, but during Friday 2 February, visitors of “MIKE” have free admission to the exhibition.

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.

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Created and performed by

Artistic Activators

Viva Delorme, Ellen Furey, Peter James, Heidi Louis, Tracy Maurice, Roscoe Michel, Karlyn Percil, Yoan Sorin.

Scenographic consultant – technical direction

Romain Guillet.

Sound consultant

David Drury.

Production

SCORP CORPS – Viva Delorme, Dana Michel.

Distribution

Key Performance.

Co-production

Arsenic, Centre d’art scénique contemporain (Lausanne, Switzerland), Centre national des Arts (Ottawa, Canada), Festival TransAmériques (Montreal, Canada), Julidans Amsterdam (Netherlands), Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels, Belgium), MDT Stockholm (Sweden), Montpellier Danse (France), Moving in November (Helsinki, Finland), Wexner Center for the Arts of the Ohio State University in Columbus (Colombus, Ohio, USA).

Creative residencies

Alkantara (Lisbon, Portugal), ANTI Festival (Kuopio, Finland), Centre national des Arts (Ottawa, Canada), Kinosaki International Arts Center and Kyoto Experiment (Japan), Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels, Belgium), Künstlerhaus Mousonturm (Frankfurt, Germany), La petite Place des Arts (Saint-Mathieu-du-Parc, Québec, Canada), Montpellier Danse, creation residency at Agora, cité internationale de la danse, with support from BNP Paribas Foundation,
RIMI/IMIR SceneKunst (RISK) (Stavanger, Norway), Shedhalle (Zürich, Switzerland) with the kind support of Tanzhaus Zürich and the Embassy of Canada in Switzerland, The Chocolate Factory (NYC, USA).

Support

The creation of this work is being made possible thanks to the financial support of Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, Ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie and Conseil des Arts de Montréal.

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