We All Fall Down

Mecdy Jean-Pierre and Maude Laurin-Beaulieu in Papillon © Do Phan Hoi

We All Fall Down (WAFD) is a non-profit organization that supports and promotes creation, research, and innovation in the performing arts, through interdisciplinary propositions. Founded in December 2019, WAFD formalizes a 20-year collaboration between choreographer Helen Simard and composer Roger White. Under their artistic co-direction, the company examines the relationship between movement and sound, in order to create vibrant, surprisingly organic, highly emotional shows where performers are in a constant state of metamorphosis. Their interdisciplinary approach brings together diverse, bilingual teams of collaborators from dance, music, theatre, poetry and visual art practices, in order to examine and celebrate the complexity of the human condition through paradoxical works that are at once beautiful and haunting, accessible and provoking, familiar and strange. WAFD creates shows for both adult and young audiences, which have been presented in Quebec, Canada, Europe and Africa.

Biographies

Helen Simard © Roger White
Roger White © Do Phan Hoi

Helen Simard is a choreographer, rehearsal director, dance dramaturge and co-artistic director of WAFD. Originally from Kingston, Ontario, she has lived and worked in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal for more than two decades. Her background in b-girling and contemporary dance informs her raw, highly physical movement language, yet it is her obsession with deconstructing time and space that make her choreographic approach unique. Using repetition, complex patterns and techniques of sensory overwhelm, Simard creates hypnotic, dreamlike performances that blur the boundaries between conscious and subconscious spaces. Being bilingual (English and French), she is fascinated by states of inbetweenness, as well as practices of translation and misunderstanding. Past works such as No Fun (2014), Idiot (2017), Requiem Pop (2019), Papillon (2020), and Dans les bras de Morphée (2024) are joyfully chaotic and complex in their simplicity, walking a fine line between the real and the imaginary. Simard holds a BFA (Concordia University, 2000) and MA in Dance (Université du Québec à Montréal, 2014).

Roger White is an autodidact composer, sound-based artist, and co-artistic director of WAFD. He began his career as an active musician and DJ in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal’s underground music scene. Today, White primarily composes music for dance, using audio synthesis, hypnotic sound loops and binaural recording techniques to create immersive sonic landscapes that invite spectators to sink into altered levels of consciousness.

Recent work : Dans les bras de Morphée

Dans les bras de Morphée explores the realm of the subconscious, plunging into a strange, playful choreographic universe where the limits of reality are perpetually being redefined. Based on lucid dream techniques and reoccuring dream imagery, this creation for young audiences is centered on the surreal and fantastic worlds that we visit in the night.

Choreography – Helen Simard
Performance – Rodrigo Alvarenga-Bonilla, Aurélie-Ann Figaro, Cai Glover, Kennedy Henry, Brianna Lombardo, Roger White
Music – Roger White
Support for dramaturgy – Mathieu Leroux
Rehearsal – Kaia Mienna
Lighting and technical director – Tiffanie Boffa
Costumes – Tricia Crivellaro
Assistant to costumes – Jade Simard
Accessories assistant – Andrew Jamieson
Marionette consultant – Jesse Stong
Outside observers – Nindy Banks, Sébastien Provencher
Masks – Wintercroft, Strangeface Masks

Coproduction – Agora de la danse
Creation residencies – Agora de la danse, Cas Public, Créations Estelle Clareton + Studio LaLola, Pôle Territoire Danse
Financial supports – Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Conseil des arts de Montréal