A step beyond

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This article was published 29/03/2016 (3694 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Every artist needs a muse, and Q Dance’s artistic director/choreographer Peter Quanz has found his in Montreal-based artist Émilie Durville.

“Émilie epitomizes what I’m looking for as a member of Q Dance,” Quanz says, referring to the “experimental dance laboratory” he founded in 2010. “She invests her entire soul into whatever she is dancing, and transforms herself in a way that is so generous and genuine for the choreography. I learn from Émilie that the possibilities are infinite and steps don’t matter. It’s about creating an experience with music.”

 

Winnipeg audiences can judge for themselves when the lithe dancer appears as a guest artist this weekend in Quanz’s eighth production. The mixed repertoire show, co-presented with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, opens Friday evening at the Burton Cummings Theatre and continues with performances Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon.

The two-hour (including intermission) program features five contemporary ballets performed by a multi-generational cast of 12 dancers ranging from 18 to 54, including Jo-Ann Sundermeier, Q Dance’s only remaining founding member.

“One of best qualities that Peter has a choreographer is that he is so adaptable,” Durville says of her creative match made in heaven with Quanz. “Each one of his works is like having a conversation in movement, and it’s extremely interesting to see how one piece is so different from the next. You can’t believe it’s the same choreographer, but you know it is.

“Peter also doesn’t try to make his dancers become like everybody else, but pushes our limits and then sees how we react.”

Durville graduated from École Nationale Supérieure de Danse in Marseille, France, in 2001 before joining La Compania de la Comunidad de Madrid two years later. She began dancing with Montreal’s Les Grands Ballets Canadiens in 2004, where she was eventually promoted to first soloist in 2011. Restless to explore her own artistic voice, the gutsy ballerina stepped away from the comforting security of a well-established ballet company in 2013. She now earns her living in Montreal as a freelance dancer, teacher, ballet coach and assistant choreographer.

She first crossed paths with Quanz during the restaging of his neoclassical ballet Kaleidoscope for Les Grands in 2008. He was so inspired by her deeply felt artistry, he cast her in the lead role of Camille Claudel, Rodin’s passionate lover, in his critically acclaimed full-length ballet Rodin/Claudel, premièred by Les Grands in September 2011. Durville says that experience marked a turning point in her own career.

“We both put our hearts into that show and found we loved working together,” she explains. “Peter made me realize why I am a performer and why I dance. He made me feel extremely free in my interpretation, but at the same time, it felt like we were speaking the same language. Somehow I felt I had been waiting for that very special role, and he made it happen.”

She performs in the world première of his ensemble piece 1490, which opens the program with Durville perilously hurling her body across the stage to pop out from underneath the Burt’s curtain, with less than a metre to spare to the stage’s edge. She fearlessly vows to practise Quanz’s nail-biting choreography “a thousand times” to make it perfect, cognizant of the pressure of setting the tone for the entire show.

She also portrays the stern Ballet Mistress, jealously lording power over Sundermeier’s pristine prima ballerina, in Quanz’s guffaw-inducing Murder Afoot, which turns classical ballet convention on its head. Durville will also be seen in the world première of Vancouver guest choreographer Heather Myer’s In the Wake, further showcasing her ability to seamlessly morph between choreographic styles.

Life as an independent ballet dancer can be difficult, but Durville says her dance card is quickly filling with independent projects for the rest of 2016. She performed in Czech choreographer Eva Kolarova’s Fragmented Minds in Montreal last month, with a remount planned for that same city’s Festival TransAmérique (FTA) in June. She’ll also guest-teach for Montreal’s École de danse contemporaine this summer, with a performance tour to Panama slated for October. Plus she’s already been invited by Quanz to perform in his next production in April 2017 — with a standing invitation for future Q Dance shows.

Given her penchant for pushing creative boundaries, one might wonder how Durville regards her own expressive artistry.

“I think I’m still a ballet dancer on paper, because I trained so hard to become one and the past is important,” she says. “But so many people have opened doors for me, and I realized that I could do many different things. And you find your own way, and your own voice, and your own specific way of moving that’s just you.

“I’m just a very curious and adaptable artist.”

holly.harris@shaw.ca