FABLES By Virginie Brunelle Comes to Théâtre Maisonneuve, Place des Arts

A sensitive observer of the upheavals of a world in turmoil, Virginie Brunelle dares to tackle a highly ambitious work for 12 performers and a live pianist, a series of disturbing tableaux that will shake you to the core.

Over the last decade, Virginie Brunelle has made a name for herself with a rigorous, intensely physical, uncompromising movement vocabulary. The starting point of Fables, presented in world premiere at the 2022 Lugano Dance Project (Switzerland), was the theme of that festival, centring on Monte Verità, the famous hill that was the cradle of an idealistic microsociety in the early 1900s. This liberated community, precursor of the hippie counterculture of the 1960s, sparked the choreographer's desire to examine feminism.

Against the backdrop of the chaos of an era turned upside down, Fables projects us into fantastical spaces from which larger-than-life characters emerge-contemporary female archetypes who paved the way to freedom from invisible yet real barriers. A universe of great evocative power, close to dance theatre, echoing a crying need for utopia, hope and humanity.

Over the last decade, Virginie Brunelle has made a name for herself with a rigorous, intensely physical, uncompromising movement vocabulary, and great musicality. After collaborating with the Molinari Quartet for Les corps avalés in 2020, she surrounded herself with composers Philippe Brault and Laurier Rajotte for Fables - Rajotte performing the score on stage.

In 2008, after graduating, Virginie Brunelle created Les cuisses à l'écart du cœur, a choreography for seven dancers that earned many awards and mentions. Emboldened by this initial success, she founded her eponymous company (Compagnie Virginie Brunelle) in 2009, and in the same year created a second work, Foutrement, which won the 2017 Prix du public presented by the CAM en tournée (CAM touring program). In 2011, Virginie Brunelle opened La Chapelle's fall season with the presentation of her third work, Complexe des genres, which received second prize at Denmark's prestigious Aarhus International Choreography Competition. Three years later, she presented PLOMB, and in 2016 she created À la douleur que j'ai.

These four works have since been toured across Europe and Canada, thus allowing the choreographer to gain recognition on the world stage, culminating in an invitation, in 2018, to create a show for Gauthier Dance // Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart. The result was Beating, a work that was first presented in Germany, with a Canadian tour in 2018-2019. In 2020, she created Les corps avalés, a piece for seven dancers, accompanied on stage by the Molinari Quartet; presented by Danse Danse at Théâtre Maisonneuve, this work was a great success with critics and spectators.

Since the spring of 2021, Virginie has been working on the creation of Fables, a major work for twelve performers whose presentation took place in May 2022 at the Lugano Dance Project Festival in Switzerland and will be presented at Théâtre Maisonneuve of Place des Arts in Montreal in December 2022. Finally, very recently, Virginie signs the production of a first dance short film entitled Reminiscences.

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