Marie Chouinard – The Reinvention of Dance
The international recognition of Compagnie Marie Chouinard is the fruit of work that was started almost 25 years ago by this Montreal artist.
From the very beginning of her career, her solo performances were filled with verve and a provocative intelligence that was a precursor to her most recent creations. Marie Chouinard sums up her dazzling success with becoming modesty: “The happiness I feel when I succeed in touching the audience is, for me, the true sign of success.”
Her first solo show, Cristallisation (1978), showed right away that she was a unique creator in the honesty of her expression. It earned her the reputation of a “new artist of the body.” Her highly personal adaptation of L’Après-midi d'un faune (1987), in homage to Nijinsky, demonstrated the complexity of her research on the human form.
The creative genius of Marie Chouinard can also temper the sometimes troubling nature of her works. Obsessed by physical forms and languages, she continually seeks out a beauty that reveals the cruelty of life – beauty that can hurt. Critics are unanimous in applauding her art. The Parisian magazine Danser says that each choreography is a masterpiece of precision and a delicious moment of intelligence … desire, animal sensuality and wildness … in fact, Chouinard reveals the very essence of life. The New York Times associates Marie Chouinard with a hurricane of unbridled imaginativeness, and calls her work a blend of the sensual and the cerebral.
In 1990, after 12 years and 30 solo choreographies, Marie Chouinard founded her own company and created her first group choreography, acclaimed in Canada, the United States and Europe.
Today, Marie Chouinard consecrates all her time to her choreography. Although all of her work is not on tour, it continues to wield a power of fascination that does not let up. While the public is dazzled by her remarkable talent, the artist is delighted with the favourable creative atmosphere that allows her to dazzle us : I have been fortunate enough to live in a society that supports the arts and the sciences, she explains.
Marie Chouinard has won several prizes and honours, including the Jacqueline Lemieux Award from the Canada Council in 1986, and in 2000, le New York Bessie for her body of work.
In 2002-2003, with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the work of Marie Chouinard will have fascinated audiences in the Canadian West, the United States and Europe, including Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France Hungary, Italy, Finland, Portugal and the Netherlands. Returning from Singapore, the Compagnie Marie Chouinard is preparing to win over Paris audiences at the Théâtre de la Ville, the mecca of world dance.