Thanks to the financial support of Caisse Desjardins de la Culture
The book The Beach and Other Stories, co-written by Maria Kefirova and Michael Martini, will be available in print starting September 24, 2026. We will honour Maria Kefirova’s memory at a friendly launch gathering at the MAI Café-Bar (3680 Jeanne-Mance Street). You are warmly invited to join us from 5:30 p.m to 7.30 p.m.
Programme for the evening*
* Books can be collected or purchased throughout the evening.
5.30 pm – 6.00 pm: Welcome, collection/purchase of books
6.00 pm – 7.00 pm: Speeches, personal accounts, readings
7.00 pm – 7.30 pm: Refreshments, drinks, socialising
Bookings at Danse-Cité: communication@danse-cite.org | 514 525-3595
Pre-order the book – $23 (including tax): https://www.zeffy.com/fr-CA/ticketing/pre-commande-livre-the-beach-and-other-stories
About
Maria Kefirova had a way of shifting the gaze that was entirely her own. She drew our attention to what was beside, behind, and between things, to places no one had thought to look. A keen, off-centre intelligence. A humour entirely her own, always present, that came across just as much in conversation as it did onstage. The Beach and Other Stories was co-produced by Maria Kefirova, Danse-Cité, and Festival TransAmériques, where it premiered in June 2023. It was presented again by Danse-Cité at La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines in November of that same year.
After Maria passed away, we felt strongly that The Beach and Other Stories should become a book. Returning to this work, spending time with her words and images, is also a way of being with her still. The book brings together the text of the performance, co-written by Maria and Michael Martini, two kindred and playful spirits. This book is also for those closest to her, for the artistic community, and for the different generations of artists she touched. A performance exists for a finite time, onstage. With this book, we hope to hold on to a part of it and allow Maria’s work to continue to circulate, to be read, seen, and discovered.
We hope that those who knew Maria will find in these pages something of what they shared with her. And that those discovering her for the first time will encounter, through her work, both the artist and the person she was.
Credits
The Beach and Other Stories [Book]
A Danse-Cité production
With the financial support of Caisse Desjardins de la Culture
Texts: Maria Kefirova and Michael Martini
Graphic Design: Sydney (Syd) MacManus
Advisory committee: Lara Oundjian, Hanako Hoshimi-Caines, Michael Martini
Photos – Source: Bulgarian Visual Archive – Olivier Tulliez
Promotional photos: Kinga Michalska
Photos from the show: Vanessa Fortin
A warm thanks to Maria Kefirova's mother, Mira Nyagolova.
And thanks to the FTA - Festival TransAmériques and the MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) for their support.
The book The Beach and Other Stories was published and printed in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal on the unceded Indigenous lands of the Kanien’kehá:ka/Mohawk Nation. 150 copies were printed and bound at Graphiscan. The typeface Adelphe Floreal used for the body copy is designed by queer designer Eugénie Bidaut. The typeface LT Superior Serif used for the title and headings is designed by the foundry LyonsType. The book was brought to life in the summer of 2026, a time of deep unjust and immense resilience.
About the artist
A Bulgarian-born choreographer based in Montreal, Maria Kefirova is a performer-researcher with a crystalline mind, known for her experimental works and her ability to take an idea to its logical conclusion, turning the stage into a laboratory.
Her personal and formally demanding approach positions the body, sound and space as relational interfaces. Over the years, her oblique perspective has led not only to collaborations as a performer, but also as an outside eye and artistic consultant with many uncategorizable artists, including Katie Ward, Paul Chambers, Hanako-Hoshimi Caines, Brice Noeser, Diego Gil and many others.
In 2012, after graduating from the Academy of Theatre and Dance (DAS Theatre) in Amsterdam, she created The Nutcracker with 25 kilos of walnuts, a pair of high heels and four loudspeakers as her on-stage partners. A lavish and joyous offering, the work dismantles the idea of inner and outer limits. The body is celebrated as a complex and paradoxical reality, as in Corps. Relations (2014). In Measuring Distance (2016) she further explores space through an interplay of proximity and distance, allowing her to explore a variety of meeting points. In Backs Boxes Towels (2021), an abundance of surfaces—wallpaper, towels, screens—scrambles the trail of sounds whose mysteries she gradually reveals. The Beach and Other Stories belongs to a body of work in search of gaps where change of perception, presence and knowing are produced and new awareness can open.
Although she passed away in 2025, Maria Kefirova remains a pillar of the independent dance and performance scene.
Practical Informations
September 24, 2026, from 5.30 p.m to 7.30 p.m
📍Montréal, arts interculturels - Café-Bar
3680 Jeanne Mance Street
H2X 2K5, Montréal, QC
Free Event — Reservations required (limited seating)
To participate, please make a reservation by writing to Maud: communication@danse-cite.org
Book for sale — Collect in-person
The book is available to buy for $23. Taxes included.
Pre-order:
https://www.zeffy.com/fr-CA/ticketing/pre-commande-livre-the-beach-and-other-stories