Anne Thériault

Biography

Anne Thériault is a singular creator and performer, aged 45, who has been enriching local and international stages since 2005. She has developed numerous collaborations with artists from diverse backgrounds, including Louis Bouvier, Virginie Reid, Marie Brassard, Martin Messier, Danièle Desnoyers, Alexia Bürger, and Dave St-Pierre. She is a founding member of Lorganisme, a structure for choreographers that emphasizes the strength of collective practice within artistic creation.

Since 2021, she has been an invited researcher at L’L, an experimental performing arts research structure based in Brussels, where she is expanding a field of inquiry focused on aging and contemporary artistic writing. In parallel, she is involved in multiple research projects, collaborates with various artists as a dramaturgical advisor, and serves as a guest curator for several events on the Montreal performing arts scene. She also teaches occasionally in the Department of Dance at the Université du Québec à Montréal, as well as in Quebec’s college-level institutions.

Approach

Anne Thériault has spent a decade developing choreographic material based on the cinematography of bodies and minimalist gesture. At the crossroads between dance and performance, the choreographer-performer seeks to transpose onto stage the magic of the cinema and its capacity to capture the imagination. Most of her works are inhabited by an aura of mystery, strangeness and suspense. Anne Thériault plays with the audience’s senses and perceptions through precise work on atmospheres in the form of light and sound, sometimes going as far as to stimulate the sense of smell by introducing food on stage. As well, she builds a strong relationship between sound and movement so that the soundtrack – as it does for the big screen – creates atmosphere and lends colour or a specific intention to the artists’ actions on stage. The most minimal, seemingly everyday movements are invested in order to promote a sensory experience that lets the spectator give free rein to his or her imagination. The audience’s perceptions and sensations thus lend meaning to movement.

Recent work : Requiem

Under the invitation of visual artist Louis Bouvier, choreographer Anne Thériault and composer Virginie Reid take a performative look at the installation La conjugaison des pensées complexes presented at CIRCA art contemporain. Following the stage work Récital (2018), Requiem presents itself as a first evolving choreographic study, an open dialogue, a celebration of sound and vibration. Together these two works form a performative and reflexive dyad. In Récital, as a theremin approached, the specters of nostalgia, family, mourning and imagined futures that will never come to pass appeared. Echoing this, Requiem offers a lunar ode to all the performances that are no longer part of the realm of the living. Around theremin sculptures shaped by Louis Bouvier, the performers compose a performative score celebrating the memory of all the artworks which have marked us. Those that still haunt us and still inhabit our dreams.

Presented as part of La conjugaison des pensées complexe, exhibition by Louis Bouvier, from March 18 to April 22, 2023.

Performance – Anne Thériault and Virginie Reid
Artistic consultant – Rosie Contant
Costumes – Hannah Isolde
Exhibition and installation – Louis Bouvier
Sound design – Léandre Bourgeois

Upcoming dates

8 oct. 2024 – requiem, CAM en tournée – Maison de la culture Rosemont, Montreal, QC, Canada

MARCH 2025 / requiem / CAM en tournée, Maison de la culture Marie-Uguay, Montreal, QC, Canada

MAY 2025 / requiem / CAM en tournée, Maison de la culture de Pointe-aux-Trembles, Montreal, QC, Canada

JUL. 2025 / requiem / Galerie d’art d’Outremont, Montreal, QC, Canada

SEPT. 2025 / requiem / CAM en tournée, Maison de la culture Lachine, Montreal, QC, Canada

NOV. 2025 / requiem / CAM en tournée, Quai 5160, Maison de la culture Verdun, Montreal, QC, Canada

MAR. 2026 / requiem / CAM en tournée, Maison de la Culture Lachine, Montreal, QC, Canada