Archive for category: Danse Lhasa Danse

Sheila Hannigan

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Nova Scotia-born cellist Sheila Hannigan is a graduate of the Master of Arts in Performance program at the University of Montreal, under the auspices of Mr. Yuli Turovsky.

She has participated in masterclasses in Banff and Switzerland, and has also received a CALQ scholarship to study non-classical music with cellist Eugene Friesen at Berklee College in Boston.

Ms. Hannigan performs regularly with several ensembles such as the Orchestre Métropolitain, Allegra Chamber Music, Montreal Chamber Music Festival, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, La Pietà, the SMCQ and is principal cellist of the ensemble Acacia, directed by Alexandre daCosta.

Passionate about world music, she also performs with Cordâme, Romulo Larrea Tango Ensemble, QAT, Absinthe, touring the US, Europe and Canada. She performs as a duo with the Franco-Brazilian singer Bia, with whom she tours in Quebec, Canada and Brazil.

Ms. Hannigan was a guest soloist on the Canadian tour of the rock band Tea Party, and has collaborated in the studio and on stage with artists such as Pierre Lapointe, Bia, Rémi Bolduc, Florence K, Richard Seguin, Patrick Watson, and was part of PPS Danse’s Danse Lhasa Danse tour from 2012-2015.

Roxane Duschesne-Roy

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Roxane Duschesne-Roy holds a DEC in classical dance performance from the Cégep du Vieux-Montréal in concert with the École supérieure de ballet contemporain. She dances for the School’s company, the Jeune Ballet du Québec and is also part of the cast of The Nutcracker for Les Grands Ballets canadiens de Montréal. Roxane made her professional debut by partnering with Cas Public, led by Hélène Blackburn, in the fall of 2003. Since then, she has been active on the national and international scenes with Cas Public.

She is part of several productions, including Estelle Clareton’s Furies/Gamma, Sylvain Poirier’s Others, Ismaël Mouaraki’s Loops for urban dance, Johanne Madore cie Corpuscule Danse’s Le baiser, Georges-Nicolas Tremblay’s Interdit de s’embrasser and Pierre Lecours’ Les Steppes. In addition, she is involved in the distribution of three short films, Sur le fil et Boite noire from the Mass Vidéo Film productions as well as Training Session by director Christian Lalumière. Roxane also joins the show Danse Lhasa Danse, a production of PPS Danse and Coup de coeur francophone. In addition to her job as an interpreter, she is very involved in teaching dance. Given her great passion for music, she also performs as a percussionist-dancer. In 2011, she co-founded Le Broke Lab, a collective dedicated to micro-laboratories for research and creation, with performers Merryn Kritzinger and Susan Paulson.

Élise Legrand

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Graduated from the Conservatoire de Danse de Montréal (2002), Elise Legrand performed with dance companies such as Sinha Danse, Sursaut, Axile, ZemmourBallet and Danse Lhasa Danse, and has participated in many tours throughout Canada and overseas.

As a choreographer and artistic director based in Sherbrooke, she develops her own artistic projects with a deep interest for site specific work, bringing contemporary dance into unconventional spaces and creating works that are directly inspired from a specific context. She is also inspired by multidisciplinary creation and regularly integrates other art forms to the choreography, such as visual arts, poetry, music and circus arts. Her work has been presented in public spaces, outdoor sites, museums, art galleries and theatres in Quebec and Canada since 2005. 

She is also co-founder of the circus company LaboKracBoom, singer and accordionist with Ze Radcliffe Fanfare, and holds a bachelor’s degree in Art History (University of Montreal 2006). www.eliselegrand.ca

 

Karen Young

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Karen Young was born in Montreal, Quebec. She started in folk music in the late 1960s with Garden Of Ursh (1971), and moved into jazz in the mid-1970s with the successful bebop vocal group, Bug Alley, of which she was a member from 1975 to 1979. In the early 1980s, she played the lead roles in the musical theater productions Mata Hari and Angel, written by David Rimmer and Edward Knoll.
In the mid to late 1980s, she was a member of the celebrated bass and vocal duo, Young and Donato, with Montreal jazz bassist Michel Donato. Their album Young & Donato was nominated for a Juno Award in 1985. The next album, Contredanse, won a Felix Award for Best Jazz Album in Quebec in 1988. The duo toured four times in France (1987-90) and the United States (1989-90), as well as a few concerts in England in 1989.
She toured with her groups mostly in Canada in the early 2000s, such as at the Kaslo Jazz Festival (2003) with a psychedelic style of music or as a member of the Sylvain Provost Trio at the Festival Jazz en Rafale (2008).
His eclecticism and familiarity with world, classical and jazz styles allow him to present works ranging from traditional, Latin and contemporary jazz to, more recently, medieval (album me, corps et désir, 2007) and electro jazz (album Electro-Beatniks, 2009).
Young created her own independent label in 1991, Les Disques URSH. Since then, she has released nine albums featuring combinations of artists from different backgrounds and musical traditions.

Geneviève Toupin

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Since the release of her award-winning debut album in 2009, Geneviève Toupin has been performing near and far, with a growing audience in Canada and Europe.

After winning numerous prizes for her self-titled French debut album, Toupin went on to release her first English language album in 2012.  The road to the release of her second album The Ocean Pictures Project reads like a traditional folk tale, a kind of tapestry woven together from various traditions and lands.

She also garnered attention for her Tournée des Cafés webseries.  The project was such a succes that she filmed new episodes for broadcast on TFO TV in 2013.

In 2014, Geneviève Toupin presented her new project and alter-ego Willows, blending her Métis roots and her Franco-Manitoban heritage.  The collection of intimate songs go from haunting harmonies to catchy melodies, all the while invoking the prairie wind with her warm vocals.  Willows was met with glowing reviews and what followed was a very busy few years of cross-Canada touring, a Canadian Folk Music Award nomination and a Trille Or for Best Album from Western Canada,.  Named after the California coastal city and the Saskatchewan ghost-town which both share the same name, Willows is a sonic landscape of desert light and open skies.

Bïa

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Brazilian, Montrealer by adoption and fertile songwriter, Bïa embraces the true meaning of the term “world artist”. She distinguishes herself as a performer and often carries the texts of great authors in her different languages.

Her albums have been awarded or nominated for prestigious prizes (Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros, Félix, Juno Awards). Writer and columnist, she published a novel published by Édition Boréal ” Les Révolutions de Marina ” (nominated for the Archambault Prize) and regularly contributes to programs on Radio-Canada. She also travels often (France, Brazil, Toronto) for shows based on her dual belonging to the Brazilian culture and to the French-speaking world and what she does with it musically.

Bïa participates as a performer in prestigious tours: “Hommage à Jacques Brel”, “Corps, Amour, Anarchie”. In 2015, the luminous Bïa is back in force with a new album: Navegar. Written, dreamed and recorded between Rio and Montreal, the album is crowned with a Félix and a large tour follows. She forms a duo – Bandidas – with the Mexican Mamselle Ruiz, to set the stage ablaze with a repertoire that embraces the music of Latin America. Their eponymous album was named Best World Music Album at the Adisq.

In 2019, Bïa will tour France and create a show in Italy dedicated to Gianmaria Testa, alongside the great trumpet player Paolo Fresu. In the winter of 2020, she participates in the recreation of “Danse Lhasa Danse, an ode to life” a tour of 10 cities follows.

Annie Gagnon

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Annie Gagnon studied visual arts and then turned to contemporary dance and graduated from the École de danse contemporaine de Montréal (EDCM) in 2002. As a performer and choreographer, she has presented her pieces throughout Quebec, including Si j’étais une de ces femmes, Tout à Trac, Lotus, La Marche invisible, Étude sur le cœur, Les femmes de la Lune Rouge, Reviens vers moi le ventre en premier and Rituel Géométrique. Annie is the rehearsal director and artistic advisor for several choreographers and dance companies: La Compagnie Marie Chouinard, O Vertigo, Estelle Clareton, Alan Lake, Emmanuelle Calvé, Jessica Serli, Destins croisés and PPS Danse.

Myriam Allard

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Born in Quebec City to a Franco-Manitoban father and a Greek-British mother, Myriam Allard grew up in a home where music, dance and openness to others were part of her daily life. Her encounter with Flamenco was an earthquake: in 1998 she left her native land for Spain where she lived and trained with great masters for 6 years before moving to Paris for 2 years. Her professional debut was on the stages of the traditional tablaos in Spain, before joining various training courses in Europe, the United States, and Japan – including the company of Israel Galvan.

Full of her experiences overseas, she returned to Montreal and founded La Otra Orilla – the other shore – with Hedi Graja in 2006. This is a space where they create open and poetic works: an unexpected combination of dance, song, music and theater. Their creations have been performed in Quebec and Canada, as well as in the United States, Scotland and Colombia, and have resonated with audiences everywhere they go.

For Myriam Allard, the body knows everything. It is plural, and it dances. Each gesture translates her quest for transcendence, each play of tension seeks the encounter with the other. Relying on her profound mastery of flamenco codes, her dance frees itself from canonical aesthetic frameworks and develops a language within which the instinctive alternates with the sensitive and the refined: and in the depths, a latent force and a muted tension spring forth.

Over the years, Myriam Allard has become a national reference. In turn choreographer, performer, artistic director, mentor, collaborator, teacher and mother of two, she never stops sharing her vision of the world by reflecting more and more light.

Frédéric Darveau

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After having been introduced to the violin in Montreal and the guitar in Paris from an early age, I continued my studies in music at the Vincent d’Indy School of Music and the Université du Québec à Montréal.

As a professional bassist and double bassist, I have accompanied several artists in the music scene in America and Europe. I have also been used in a few television series, plays and films as an actor in secondary roles.

Currently I am dedicated to the musical direction and design of special events for several artists, productions, companies and private clients.

In 2006, I established the music services company Whip Cream Music Inc. and in 2013 I founded Stock Collections (www.stockcollections.com). It is a transactional website that offers a royalty-free music catalogue. I supervise its creation, production and business development.