Martin Messier’s Innervision exemplifies his multidisciplinary practice, in which dance, digital art and sound art meet.
Spectators are invited to participate in a monumental outdoor project, a living sculpture embodied by 60 dancers who are directed live by Messier via an individualized wireless system. Capturing his voice, the performers, in an aggregate mass and all dressed in black, pulsate as a single body, swelling and retracting, surging forward or going to ground. We are made to feel all the strength of the group, the social body: malleable matter, docile yet indomitable.
Inside this human wave that penetrates the audience and deploys the choreography, each dancer responds to Messier’s instructions as if guided by an inner voice, finding a balance between obedience and free choice.
Each performer holds a stone, the quintessential raw material, a reminder of the world’s beginnings, our origins, and the power of nature at the heart of a space submerged by technology. They manipulate the stones, rub them, drop them, toss and catch them, the repetition of these simple gestures evoking a portent of the future of humanity and the struggles to come.
This stripped-down, minimalist work incarnates a dialogue between interiority and exteriority, between human beings – what we carry within us and where we come from – and the external world, nature, with which we interact.
Director, Choreography
Martin Messier
Creative and choreographic advisor
Caroline Laurin-Beaucage
Scenography and Costumes
Odile Gamache
Costumes assistant
Léonie Blanchet
Music
Paul Jebanasam, Martin Messier
Dancers
Audrey Bergeron + Élise Bergeron + Marc Boivin + Charles Brécard + Sophie Breton + Ja James Britton Johnson + Marie-Ève Carrière + Miranda Chan + Matéo Chauchat + Jimmy Chung + Émilie Demers + Kimberley de Jong + Marie-Ève Demers + Amber Downie-Back + Mark Durand + Bailey Eng + Bradley Eng + Karen Fennell + Stéphanie Fromentin + Elinor Fueter + Gina Grant + Susannah Haight + Sara Hanley + Valmont Harnois + Rachel Harris + Karina Iraola + Audray Julien + Audrée Juteau + Camille Lacelle-Wilsey + Catherine Lafleur + Patrick Lamothe + Brianna Lombardo + Chi Long + Maria Mantia Papathanasiou + Lucy May + Robert Meilleur + Julien Mercille + Émilie Morin + Camille Mougenot + Gabriel Painchaud + Susan Paulson + Nickle Peace-Williams + Sébastien Provencher + Thibault Rajaofetra + Jerimy Rivera + Simon Renaud + Marine Rixhon + Geneviève Robitaille + Anne-Flore de Rochambeau + Sovann Rochon-Prom Tep + Elie-Anne Ross + Cara Roy + Olivier Rousseau + Camille Trudel-Vigeant + Silvia Sanchez + Marie-Philippe Santerre + Jessica Serli + Stefania Skoryna + Victor Sono + Melina Stinson + Zoe Vos + Paco Ziel
Artistic Coordonator
Ingrid Vallus
Production Director
Émilie Martel
Production Director Assistant
Chloé Ekker
Technical Director
Olivier Chopinet + Gabriel Duquette
Hardware Design
Francis Vaillancourt-Martin
Sound Engineer
Frédéric Auger
Photography
Denis Martin, Trung Dung Nguyen
Video recording
Robin Pineda
Technicians
Marie-Frédérique Gravel, Arthur Champagne, Pierre-Alexandre Poirier-Guay
Trainee
Madelyne Johnston, Sarah Gagné et Isabelle Paquette
Administration
Sylvie Lavoie
Management support
Machinerie des arts
Development
Diane Boucher
Coproduction + Codiffusion
Agora de la danse, Festival Transamériques 2019
Co-presented by
Partenariat du Quartier des spectacles
Creative residencies
Quai 5160, Église Ste-Arsène
Thanks to
Espace Libre, Nouveau Théâtre Expérimental, Maison de la culture du
Plateau Mont-Royal
Developed with the support of «Nouveau Chapitre», Canada Council for the Arts