Sebastian Kann is a queer performance-maker and dramaturge based in Tiohtiá:ke | Mooniyang | Montréal. Originally trained as an acrobat, his interdisciplinary choreographic work mixes dance, text, and theatrical media. Sebastian is particularly fascinated by the pressures and possibilities of the theatre space, and by movement improvisation as a strategy for revealing them. Through a collaborative practice, he aims at the production of performances that open space for ambivalence.
With Topical Dance, everything starts with an allegory :
‘A grand building of pinkish stone, curtains half-drawn in the tall windows. A balcony, like the biggest mouth, empty of anyone, awaits the speaker and the speaker’s speech. Taking his place between the pale flags, he’ll turn his face to the sun and unleash words like arrows pointing back towards something solid and vital: a conjuring more real than language. But the shadows are lengthening, a chill is in the air, and no-body has come. Absent our hero, in the shifting light, the façade seems to be clearing its throat, and then the balcony itself yawns wide open …’
Topical Dance is a conceptual dance concert which works with the scene of public speech as a maybe-allegory for one thing that dance does. Accompanied live by experimental musician Simone Provencher, Sebastian Kann dances in a space dense with images, sounds, and words, taking us on a felt journey in which our perceptual apparatus is the star of show. How and when does dance come to feel like speaking? And what gets lost, approximated, or disowned in the process?
In Topical Dance, what’s trippy about the unknown is given free rein. Words bend and spin like dancers, while dance hardens and glows like an inscription, only to fade into memory.
Danse-Cité is excited to offer a platform for works, like Sebastian's, that push at the edge of experimental and conceptual forms of dance creation.
Sebastian Kann: Creation and Performance
Simone Provencher: Sound
Erin Hill: Dramaturgy
Maria Kefirova: Movement Development
Katie Ward: Outside Eye
Tiffanie Boffa: Lighting design
Timothy Thomasson: Projections
Gabriel Cholette: Translation
A big thank you to Karine Gauthier, Nien Tzu Weng
Presented by Danse-Cité
In association with La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines
Co-produced by Sebastian Kann and Danse-Cité
Co-curated by Winnie Ho and Sophie Corriveau
Partners
With the financial support of: Conseil des arts de Montréal, Diagramme-Gestion Culturelle, Workspacebrussels, Annexe A, Circuit-Est, centre chorégraphique et Tangente
Creation Residencies: Cie José Navas, Workspacebrussels, Kaaitheater, Annexe A, Circuit-est, Tangente, Compagnie Marie Chouinard
Sebastian Kann is a queer performance-maker and dramaturge based in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal. Originally trained as an acrobat, his interdisciplinary choreographic work mixes dance, text, and theatrical media. Sebastian is particularly fascinated by movement improvisation in performance, and by the pressures and possibilities of the theatre space. Tracing the intersections of genre, style, desire, meaning, movement, and embodiment through an eminently collaborative hybrid physical-theoretical practice, he aims at the production of performances that open space for ambivalence, in which what’s trippy about not knowing links bodies up to problems and their unpredictable trajectories.
To come.
Dates:
November 27, 2024 - 7.30 PM
November 28, 2024 - 7.30 PM
November 29, 2024 - 7.30 PM
November 30, 2024 - 7.30 PM
Venue:
La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines
3700 rue St-Dominique
Montréal, QC, H2X 2X7
https://lachapelle.org/en