Supported artists 2023-2024

Ford McKeown Larose

Choreographer, teacher and performer, Vanessa Brazeau has been involved in the Montreal dance scene since her graduation from the School of Toronto Dance Theatre in 2015. It was with the idea of democratizing contemporary dance and taking it out of the major centers that she set about creating her first show, Le Petit Prince. In 2022, she presented the first research phase of a new creative project entitled Charmantes at the Festival Quartiers Danse. In this project, she is interested in exploring different facets of her femininity. Vanessa seeks to tell a story through movement, which leads her to explore the fusion of dance with the art of photography and literature. She began a certificate in creative writing at the Université du Québec à Montréal, which she continues to study part-time. It's definitely her love of literature that inspires her to create: she integrates more and more writing processes into her work, through movement and the search for imagery.

Born in Mexico City, Diana trained at the Estudio de Ballet Tecamachalco, the National Ballet School of Cuba and the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. As a teenager, she discovered contemporary dance and studied various techniques alongside her classical training. After school, she became a dancer with Mexico's National Dance Company. Diana moved to Montreal to join Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, where she danced between 2014 and 2019. In 2015, Diana founded the company Vías, which she now co-directs with Paco Ziel and which has produced the works Sur ce chemin, tu es sûr de te perdre, Sabor de mi corazón, chapitre I: cumbia and Flesh and Sound. Diana has worked as a performer with choreographers on the Montreal scene such as Anne Plamondon, Martin Messier, Andrew Skeels and Sylvain Émard. Since 2016, she has been studying singing techniques with singer Mamselle Ruiz.

Choreographer, performer, teacher and Laban notator, Nasim Lootij left Iran in 2006 to study dance in Paris. Since 2015 she has lived and worked in Montreal, where she co-founded the collective Vâtchik Danse with Kiasa Nazeran, playwright, researcher and performer. Their creations: Moi-Me-Man (2017), La Chute (2019), L'Inconsistance (In progress).

Inspired by art, the socio-political history of Iran and German Expressionism, Nasim tackled Middle Eastern issues in Moi-Me-Man (2017) and La Chute (2019), devising a new choreographic language. Witnessing the great human effort made since 2020 to survive Covid-19, she advances in L'Inconsistance new political issues and explores new choreographic fields.

Sebastian Kann is based in Tiohtiá:ke. His interdisciplinary choreographic work mixes dance, text, and theatrical media. Fascinated by movement improvisation in performance, and by the pressures and possibilities of the theatre space, he aims at the production of performances which open space for ambivalence, in which what’s trippy about not-knowing links bodies up to problems and their unpredictable trajectories.

Topical Dance is enthusiastic and absurd. It sidles up to the very edge of the chasm separating the body, ambivalent and opaque, from the fantasy of its becoming transparent as a word. Peaking over that abyssal lip, it asks: what makes dance readable? And what’s behind our vigorous crush on readable dance, which we seem unable to satisfy nor jettison?

Lucy M. May is a New Brunswick born dance artist based in Tiohtiá:ke (Montréal) since 2003. Her creations have been programmed across Canada. As a performer, Lucy has honed a remarkable range through work with several iconic Canadian choreographers and mentorship in Krump under Jigsaw since 2018. Her studies in Contemporary dance were completed at EDCM and the Rotterdam Dance Academy.

Lucy’s work investigates the materiality of attention and human relationships to spaces. Improvisation resides at the heart of her practice, informed by her practice in Krump since 2016. “What binds micro to macro, macro to micro?”

A graduate of Concordia in choreography and of UQÀM for the Master's degree in dance, I have danced for Sarah Dell'ava, Katia-Marie Germain and Mario Veillette. As a choreographer, my work has been presented at Tangente (SOIE and D'où l'heureuse), Le Lieu-Centre en art actuel (Fouines), Zone Homa (Sleeping Bugs) and Quartiers Danses (Nébuleuse).

Driven by a quest to understand the human being, in its conditioned and spiritual dimension and in its relationship to the world, my artistic approach finds its foundations in the attentive presence of inner impulses. Strongly inspired by butô, my choreographic universes are profound, sensitive and poetic, sometimes playful and absurd.

Rozenn Lecomte, a dance artist based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, is a graduate of the Université du Québec à Montréal. Shortly after graduating, she organized and participated in several underground events as a choreographer, performer and curator. She also produces the podcast Fil conducteur, where she talks to dance artists about various issues affecting the milieu.

Rozenn Lecomte's choreographic work is part of a political process of asserting the body in the face of fatality. In particular, she draws inspiration from the rock and punk movements to inscribe in the body a search for contestation and rebellion. As a choreographer of a space in constant mutation, Rozenn Lecomte is an artist of risky movement and presences confronted with failure.

Claire Pearl is a contemporary dance creator and performer from Tiohtiá:ke/ Mooniyang/ Montréal. She is fascinated by the transformative effects of imagination and language in the creation of new scenic worlds. Attracted by diverse experiences of the "real", she finds answers in the raw, in the flesh and, above all, in friction.

From an instinct that tends towards the strangeness of the self and the other, I attempt to create alternative universes by seeking out other ways of doing things, other modes of communication and other manifestations of desire. My creative impulses are often based on the poetic exploration of language in movement and image.

Molly Siboulet-Ryan is a Franco-Irish movement artist. In 2020, she began her creative project Bloom. She presented a first solo at Zemmourballet's Amène ta Chaise festival, as well as at the Termites festival with two infiltrative art performances in which she explored places and collected testimonies. She conceived a second solo during the Labo Libre residency in Quebec City.

Through her creative work, Molly attempts to heal the traumas caused by the Catholic Church and the patriarchal society in which women are systematically blamed. She extends her reflection on resilience by exploring the absurd and reappropriating the rituals of the Church.

Louise Michel has been working for various independent artists in Quebec and Belgium for the past 20 years. She created her first project "STROKE" aka SHUDDER with Ben Fury (Brussels, 2016), followed by Bright Worms (Théâtre La Chapelle 2021 and OFFTA 2023), a research project on bioluminescence integrating video projection and lighting devices in collaboration with sound artist Magali Babin.

Fascinated by women's ability not only to bear life, but also to generate infinite resources of fluids, both through their biological capacity to cum (fountain women) and through their ability to make the world more fluid, Geysers is an investigation into the fantastic turbulence of buried phenomena that explode and erupt from the depths.

Our collective, Entre|Nos, founded in 2022, is made up of Catherine Wilson and Olivia Jaen Flores. We are both creators and performers of contemporary dance. 

Coming from different cultural backgrounds (Mexican-Canadian and Franco-Anglo), our collaboration translates through the interweaving of our knowledge, ethnicities and individual identities, which inevitably end up being reflected in our work.

Mara Dupas is a French-Canadian artist of Martinican origin. A graduate of the École de Danse Contemporaine de Montréal, they worked as a performer with Louise Bédard, Rhodnie Désir and Charlie Prince, and created their first piece in 2022: Dépi Temps. Their work explores métissage, caribbean culture and absurdity.

I draw inspiration from Afro-Caribbean literature and folk dances to create narrative and engaged works that explore the relationship between individual(s), culture and environment. I mainly use writing and choreographic creation as mediums that enable me to speak out on societal issues.

Lauranne is a transdisciplinary artist trained in visual arts, sociology, and working as a choreographer and performer in contemporary dance. Since 2019, Lauranne has received support from several dance institutions for her choreographic creations, which are mainly performed in Montreal and the Outaouais region. Lauranne is also the founder of Devenir(s) corps, a residency and practice space for the performing arts in the Outaouais region.

Sensitive to the urgent need to change our way of being-in-the-world, notably by adopting a minimalist lifestyle, Lauranne is more specifically interested in the ascetic body and its capacity for self-sufficiency. Her artistic work is part of a praxis in search of empowerment. It is distinguished by a gestural style that is both gentle and violent, at the crossroads of trial and emancipation, effort and satisfaction.

Max is a multidisciplinary artist from Edmonton, Alberta. He studied at the University of Alberta in their Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting program and at La Faktoria Choreographic Centre in Pamplona, Spain. He has worked as a performer with the Good Women Dance Collective, Edmonton Opera, Susanna Hood, Daniel Abreu and Minggao Zhang.