Priscilla Guy

Priscilla Guy, Marie Claire Forté, Harmonie Fortin-Léveillé et Claudia Chan Tak dans Peau © Moise Marcoux-Chabot

Priscilla Guy benefits from support from Lorganisme in delegated production for her works PEAU (2023) and SKATING (upcoming creation).

Biography

© Priscilla Guy

Priscilla Guy is an artist, curator and arts researcher based in Marsoui, Gespe’gewa’gi (Gaspésie). Her stage and film works are presented locally and internationally. She publishes texts in art magazines (Moebius, Moveo, Dance Current, 24images) and participates in various academic publications as an author or editor (Oxford, Routledge, Udlap). Holder of a doctorate in feminist and cinematic studies from the Université de Lille (France), she has directed Mandoline Hybride since 2007, a banner under which she has initiated a number of dissemination projects (Regards Hybrides, Salon58, FURIES – contemporary dance festival, L’Hybride – café & bookshop). She currently sits on the boards of Studio 303 and Orange Noyée. Priscilla received the Prix Culture from LOJIQ (2012), the Prix Étincelle from the Prix de la danse de Montréal (2022), the Prix de thèse de l’École doctorale SHS from Université de Lille (2022) et the Prix du CALQ – Artiste de l’année en Gaspésie (2024).

PEAU (2023) | performance (available for tour)

Marie Claire Forté, Priscilla Guy, Harmonie Fortin-Léveillé et Claudia Chan Tak dans Peau © Moise Marcoux-Chabot

An unusual choreographic proposition, Peau uses screens, video projections and live editing effects. Four performers propose a continuous mutation of their image. It’s not a question of magnifying or destroying the image, but of mobilizing technology and textiles to create a constant metamorphosis. All these “skins” collide, giving us a sense of what the epidermis absorbs from contact with a daily bombardment of images. In contrast to an often cold and geometric digital universe, technology here is a means of returning to the self and to touch, an incursion that is as close as possible to the skin, or perhaps even… beneath it.

Choreographer – Priscilla Guy & Emilie Morin
Artistic Consultant – Marie Claire Forté
Performers – Priscilla Guy, Claudia Chan Tak, Harmonie Fortin-Léveillé, Marie Claire Forté
Musical Composition and Sound Dramaturgy – Michel F Côté
Sound Creation – Elizabeth Millar
Scenography – Julie Vallée-Léger
Light Conception – Jon Cleveland
Video Conception – Priscilla Guy
Technical Director and Stage Management – Samuel Thériault
Original Idea – Priscilla Guy, Emilie Morin et Elizabeth Millar
Coproduction – Agora de la danse
Residencies – Centre de Création O Vertigo, Brigittines (Belgium), PPS Danse, Vaste et Vague, Agora de la danse
Premiered at Agora de la danse, Montreal, Canada, November 22-25, 2023.

PATINAGE (À VENIR) | cinédanse

Priscilla Guy dans Patinage © Sonya Stefan

Skating is a docu-screendance based on a series of personal archives of figure skating. By revisiting these images from the 1990s-2000s and the memories they generate about her relationship to her own image, as well as to bodies in movement and at risk, choreographer and filmmaker Priscilla Guy questions the way in which this sport has left emotional and physical traces within her. By reinterpreting certain scenes from this skating period by swapping ice skates for roller skates, Priscilla Guy replays her own vulnerability in the face of the moving body which takes risks. It addresses the fear that inhabits us when faced with the image that we project and the fragility of our bodies in movement. Powered by the work of choreographic editing where the images shot on miniDV, 16mm film and digital format intersect, the film interweaves the conversations of three other artists participating in the project in an introspective journey that is both individual and collective. Through different archives, choreographic scenes, sound textures and visuals, the film asks the question: what dances inhabit our bodily memories and what looks have defined us?

Artistic team – Sonya Stefan, Camille Auburtin, Michel F Côté
Residencies – Contact(s), L’Animal a l’Esquena (Spain), Salon58