Press kit CAROLINE GRAVEL

MA MÈRE EST UN MÂLE ALPHA
Biographie
Caroline Gravel est une artiste en danse basée à Montréal. Depuis 2002, elle collabore à la
création, performe et participe à des tournées internationales comme artiste solo et au sein
des œuvres de chorégraphes montréalais dont Catherine Gaudet, Daniel Léveillé et JeanSébastien Lourdais. Mentorée par la chorégraphe Meg Stuart durant ses études de maîtrise,
elle s'intéresse alors au travail d’état et à la notion d’auteur dans la création chorégraphique
contemporaine. Active dans sa communauté, elle est élue au conseil d’administration du
Regroupement Québécois de la danse en 2014. Depuis 2010, elle est aussi conférencière,
conseillère artistique et enseignante invitée dans des contextes variés.
Dans ses travaux récents, Bains Publics (2013) et Ma mère est un mâle alpha (2012) lequel
le New York Times décrit comme “intriguing” with “strange, unsettling spontaneity”, elle
explore la relation des sensations à la plastique du corps et leurs résonances affectives et
perceptives.
MA MÈRE EST UN MÂLE ALPHA
Chorégraphie, performance, collage sonore
Caroline Gravel
Conseillère artistique
Sophie Michaud
Conception d’éclairages
Jean-François Bernier
Durée
20-25 minutes
Production
Caroline Gravel
Partenaire public
Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec,
Conseil des arts du Canada
Résidences
Maison de la Culture du Plateau MontRoyal
Département de danse de l’Université du
Québec à Montréal
La Rotonde-centre chorégraphique
Centre Segal des arts de la scène, Danse
Danse
Diffusion
2012
Solos and Solitudes, curated by Jenn Joy and
Noémie Solomon, Food for Thougts,
Danspace Project, New-York (14 et 15/12/12);
2013
Regular season, Danspace Project, New-York
(25 au 27/04 2013)
FOUND, La Poêle, Montréal (28/05/2013)
8DAYSII, The Dance Center, Vancouver
(16/08/2013)
SOLOS & SOLITUDES: HILARY CLARK,
CAROLINE GRAVEL, TAISHA PAGGETT
Jeudi, 11 avril 2013
By prettyfake
WHEN:
April 25, 2013 @ 8:00 pm – April 27, 2013 @ 8:00 pm
WHERE:
Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street (at Second Avenue),New York,NY,10003
United States
Admission: $18 General Admission | $12 Danspace Members
Solos & Solitudes is an evening of solos guest-curated by performance scholars Jenn Joy and Noémie Solomon who asked three
choreographers to consider philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman’s text Le Danseur des solitudes (2006), a romantic meditation on dance.
Hilary Clark, Caroline Gravel, and Taisha Paggett each imagine a solo addressing the material and temporal qualities of dance as so
many flights from “the normal order of things.”
Hilary Clark’s Accessories of Protection (2012) is structured through intuition and improvisation. This work evokes, in Joy’s words, “a
melancholic magic that speaks of the warrior’s weakness and longing.”
Montreal-based dance and performance artist Caroline Gravel’s Ma mère est un mâle alpha (My Mother is an Alpha Male) (2012) looks at
questions of relations, inheritance, and corporality using a technique of impulsion and “bodystorming” to generate materials.
Taisha Paggett’s work investigates the body, agency, and the phenomenology of race. Private Realness (2012) emerged from an interest
in understanding the expressive systems of pop culture phenomena of Zumba and the Autotune and the parasitic relationship between
people and things.
Lighting Design Kathy Kaufmann
Source: http://fakepretty.com/ai1ec_event/solos-solitudes-hilary-clark-caroline-gravel-taisha-paggett/?instance_id=2662
Vendredi, 26 avril 2013
Philosophical Dialogues Made
Physical
By GIA KOURLAS
In his book “Le Danseur des Solitudes,” the French philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman focuses on the
experimental flamenco dancer Israel Galván to explore the isolation of a solo. A solo is not necessarily
a lonely act, he writes, but “a complex solitude populated by images, dreams, ghosts, memories.”
Stillness is virtuosic; empty space is charged with energetic force.
On Thursday at Danspace Project, the choreographers Hilary Clark, Caroline Gravel and Taisha
Paggett unveiled “Solos & Solitudes,” an evening of disparate works created in response to Mr. DidiHuberman’s writings. A version of the program, organized by the performance scholars Jenn Joy and
Noémie Solomon, was first shown at the Food for Thought series, also produced by Danspace Project,
in December 2012.
Ms. Paggett’s “Private Realness” is characterized by a physical and sonic sense of volume. At one point
music — which ranges from gospel and Paul Simon to a Wicca chant — is played through headphones
wrapped around a microphone to give the sound a low-fi feel. The movement itself, inspired by
aerobics and Zumba, embraces the space with near-heroic gestures — widely spaced triplets with
shooting arms — then retreats into stillness.
But soon enough the addition of Greer Dworman turns this solo into a duet, and no matter how
skillfully Ms. Paggett imbues the space with her own presence, the idea of two bodies — even if one is
dominant — takes “Private Realness” to a formulaic place.
In the more intriguing “Ma Mère Est un Mâle Alpha” (“My Mother Is an Alpha Male”), Ms. Gravel, a
Montreal dance and performance artist, mines her mother’s way of moving to explore how absent
forces affect the body.
Wearing a dress with ankle boots, she is full of agitation. Ms. Gravel focuses on slippery transitions, in
which she digs into the floor with the surface of her shoe — pressing down at every angle — to give the
work a strange, unsettling spontaneity. There actually could be ghosts in the room.
For “Accessories of Protection,” Ms. Clark scatters an assortment of glittering silver structures
throughout the space to create a skyline. At the start, reading from a text, she informs us that she is a
warrior: “Throw your sticks and your stones, throw your bombs and your blows, but you’re not going to
break my soul. Katy Perry said that.”
How brave is this warrior? In the work, Ms. Clark dwells more on the vulnerability of her heroine with
desperate runs around the stage. As Rihanna’s “Diamonds” plays, she places a shimmering, diamondshaped piece of the set on her head, but her expression isn’t about power; it’s despondent. (It’s also too
literal.) While Ms. Clark is as forthright and funny as ever, the work drifts too deeply into camp; it
could have been harrowing.
Given this remounting, it seems likely that the first iteration of “Solo & Solitudes” had a certain
freshness. While the frame of Mr. Didi-Huberman’s writing makes for a fascinating premise for an
evening of dance, in practice it’s too much like a task, dutifully fulfilled. To varying degrees, the dances
were overworked, when instead they should have made the air crackle.
“Solos & Solitudes” continues through Saturday at Danspace Project, St. Mark’s Church, 131 East
10th Street, East Village; (866) 811-4111, danspaceproject.org.
Samedi, 27 avril 2013
Solos & Solitudes: Hilary Clark, Caroline Gravel, Taisha
Paggett
By Eva Yaa Asantewaa
Danspace Project, YC
April 25–27, 2013
Reviewed April 27
For their shared curating gig at Danspace Project, scholars Jenn Joy and Noémie Solomon drew
inspiration from musings on dance by Georges Didi-Huberman, French philosopher and art historian.
Assuming–I suspect correctly—that most of us have not made the acquaintance of M. Didi-Huberman,
the pair introduced their program, “Solos & Solitudes,” by cutting right to the chase. Most people, they
told us, think of dancing in social terms, involving a lot of bodies. But, their philosopher argues, a solo
might be the one place where dance is most visible.
Solos simplify things, don’t they? Perhaps, that is what M. Didi-Huberman had in mind. But, wait: Not
so fast!
In Private Realness, Taisha Paggett, a Los Angeles- and Chicago-based dance artist who is black,
complicates simplicity by entering the space not by herself but with a white woman. Dancer Greer
Dworman, described in the program as a “choreographic assistant,” stands on the sidelines for the initial
passage of the work, then participates in various ways. The barefoot Paggett, dressed in a chaste, though
somewhat lacy, white skirt and jacket, moves around to gospel music, Paul Simon’s “Graceland,” and a
Wiccan chant about tree roots and branches—some hints, there, of cultural overlapping and
appropriation. The “soloist” is never alone because, wherever she goes, the specter of the white race—
and of black experience under dominant society—is always there. Skewing this notion of solitude
in Private Realnessis Paggett’s top move. As dance, though, the work seems slight, dry, and less than
sharp in execution.
Soloist Caroline Gravel, from Montreal, has someone there with her, too—her mother, though not
literally. Ma Mère Est un Mâle Alpha begins with the sound of loud, insistent, and persistent birdcalls.
Gravel approaches us and introduces herself, speaks the title in English (“My Mother Is an Alpha
Male”) and strides away. Immediately, one senses a certain aggressive and borderline-comic matter-offactness about the woman, as presented here, that will blossom into something outlandish.
And so it goes. “My mother is an alpha male, and if no one were watching would move like crazy all
the time!” But we are watching and, through Gravel, Mother is here. She bursts into awkward trots just
short of a stumble, jerks and hurtles atop bony knees, stomps her noisy boots, swings her arms
violently, throws her head and long brown hair forward. All of that, combined with Gravel’s wearing
what appears to be an early ’60s thrift-store mini-dress, sloppily belted, makes me nickname her Alice
in Blunderland.
At times, the audience chuckled—an exhale from the solemnity of the Paggett piece. Despite
skepticism, I found myself falling for Gravel. (A favorite moment: The dancer, with her back turned to
us, crying in obvious disbelief, “Are you still watching me?”) But the highpoint is her audio recording
of an auctioneer in full-throated flow. I still haven’t figured out what that was doing in the solo, but
what vocal virtuosity!
Most anticipated on the evening’s bill, Hilary Clark did not disappoint. Dressed in a filmy tunic over
neon leggings, she reads from a journal illuminated by a tiny, portable reading light and comically lays
down the law. “Move over Superman! There’s a new witch in town!” She sounds more like a teenager
screwing up her shaky courage—faking it, not making it—than a woman warrior or, for that matter, a
star of the New York avantgarde. But this may be what it means for Clark to be out there, in space,
alone. Her solo’s title, Accessories of Protection, appears to refer to the tall and little structures adorned
in silvery paillettes, spread around the floor and listlessly rearranged by the dancer. Rihanna’s
unconvincing love song, “Diamonds,” plays while Clark encases her whole head in this wearable art,
the paillettes glittering like cheap rhinestones. It’s silly and she knows it. The thing is: Who doesn’t
love cheap rhinestones?
Source : http://www.dancemagazine.com/reviews/April-2013/Solos--Solitudes-Hilary-Clark-CarolineGravel-Taisha-Paggett
Contact
Caroline Gravel
6286, rue St-Denis, Montréal, Québec, H2S 2R7, Canada
+1 (514) 279-4088
[email protected]