We All Fall Down
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 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 : Tout s’effondre
Tout s’effondre explores the themes of falling and collapse with equal parts virtuosity and vulnerability. Using William Butler Yeats’ classic poem “The Second Coming” as a source of inspiration, this new creation employs the motif of chaos as a vector of physical poetry in a never ending cycle of death and rebirth.
Choreography – Helen Simard
Performance – Rodrigo Alvarenga-Bonilla, Bailey Eng, Alyssa Favero, Sage Fabre-Dimsdale, Stephanie Fromentin, Justin Gionet, Mecdy Jean-Pierre, Maude Laurin-Beaulieu, Marie Lévêque
Music – Roger White
Dramaturgical Support – Erin Lindsay
Rehearsal – Brianna Lombardo, Kaia Mienna
Lighting – Tiffanie Boffa
Creation residencies – Agora de la danse, Studio Cas Public, Centre de Création O Vertigo, Maison de la culture Notre-Dame-de-Grâce
Financial supports – Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Conseil des arts de Montréal, Agora de la danse