Anne Thériault

Anne Thériault © Alex Tran
Biography
Anne Thériault is a choreographer and performer. She has collaborated with a number of artists across various artistic disciplines since 2008, including Martin Messier (Derrière le rideau, il fait peut-être nuit et Con grazia), Julie Favreau (Doux), Lynda Gaudreau (Out of Grace), BOP, Karina Champoux, Frédéric Tavernini and Dave St-Pierre (Quatuor pour la fin du temps), Frédérick Gravel, Simon-Xavier Lefebvre, Dana Michel, and Dave St-Pierre and Louis Bouvier (POP project). Her works have been presented at several festivals in Québec and abroad, notably the Festival TransAmériques, OFFTA, and the Akousma and Actoral festivals. Anne Thériault graduated from the Department of Dance at the Université du Québec à Montréal and the École de danse contemporaine de Montréal (LADMMI). She has distinguished herself as a performer in the past 10 years, performing works by choreographers including Nicolas Cantin, Benoît Lachambre, Jean-Sébastien Lourdais, Dave St-Pierre, Marie Béland, Emmanuel Jouthe, Frédéric Tavernini, Lynda Gaudreau, and Danièle Desnoyers. In 2013 she experimented by pairing dance with theatre in Ainsi parlait… (Thus spoke…) by Frédérick Gravel and Étienne Lepage, and La Fureur de ce que je pense by Marie Brassard. She has been invited to serve as curator for the first edition of Visite Libre, organized by LA SERRE – arts vivants in 2017.
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