Charles-Alexis Desgagnés is a queer creator, dancer and multidisciplinary performer based in Montreal. Self-taught and curious, he evolves in the fields of dance, improvisation, cinema and teaching. His company, Les sans-papiers, whose name echoes his career away from the big schools, is defined by a gaze that is focused on uniqueness and vulnerability. Finalist of the Révolution show in 2018, Charles-Alexis sees this opportunity as a way to popularize contemporary dance to the general public. In 2022, his group creation J’ai pleuré ce matin dans le métro brought him new media recognition. Currently, he is working on a short film project entitled La Peau de l’autre with director Vincent René-Lortie as well as developing a solo work for the stage entitled Homo Deus. Recognized for his embodied strength and his sensitivity, he develops an artistic vision whose center is the human heart.

Œuvre

A solo work carried out by queer performer-choreographer Charles-Alexis Desgagnés, artistic director of the company Les sans-papiers, Homo Deus is a metamorphosis where animalistic infatigability waltzes with somatic vulnerability. Evolving through a strange and dreamlike universe, the artist chooses to let the body take over the mind, one moult at a time, inviting a cathartic journey. Surveying head-on the theme of loneliness, the undertows of a queer identity and the uncertain future of the Homo Sapiens, the piece is simultaneously a celebration, an emancipation and a mourning.

CREDITS
Interpretation: Charles-Alexis Desgagnés.
Choreography: Charles-Alexis Desgagnés in collaboration with the creative team.
Rehearsal director and dramaturgy: Sophie Michaud
Lighting Design: Clear Seyller
Musical composition and sound design: Alexis Leroy-Pleshoyano / Mada Mada
Scenographic design and costume design: Olivia Pia Audet
Choreographic mentors: José Navas and Harold Rheaume
External eye and assistant to the rehearsal director: Janelle Hacault
Sporadic External Look: Annie Gagnon
Photographer: Damian Siqueiros
Production manager: Géraldine Lavoie-Dugré and Charles-Alexis Desgagnés
Physical trainer: Pierre-Marie Toussaint

SINDRI RUNUDDE is a Swedish-based dancer and choreographer. Sindri’s work is characterised by a multi-sensory approach to the body as a living archive. Sindri invites artists and creatives into his process to investigate and problematise how we experience the world around us through our senses and perception. The focus is on a musical and auditory method and perspective. Sindri works with sound art, visual art and performance. After training in contemporary circus and dance, Sindri has worked with various companies and institutions and presented her own projects in Sweden and internationally.

In this showing Sindri Runudde will show excerpts from two of his works, A sensoral lecture and Delighthouse and the Dark Room.

Together with composer Marta Forsberg, Sindri Runudde explores the concept of voicemail and the culture of auditory versus text-based SMS: A Sensoral Lecture is all about auditory romance and love at first frequency – an exploration of sound and especially the voice as a form of touch. Through dance, dialogue and movement exercises, Sindri invites the audience to a sensory lecture full of humour, imagination and sensitivity. The performance is based on the exploration of a tactile and auditory movement practice called “Centred Adventures”.

Excerpt from Delighthouse and the Dark Room and A Sensoral lecture

Cred A Sensoral Lecture
CONCEPT/CHOREOGRAPHY Sindri Runudde DANCER Sindri Runudde | DRAMATURGY/ASSISTANCE Emelie Empo Enlund | MUSIC AND SOUND Marta Forsberg LIGHT/TECHNICAL DIRECTION Ulrich Ruchlinski | PRODUCED BY Skånes Dansteater, SmartSE

Cred Delighthouse

Dancers: Sindri Runudde, Cajsa Godèe, Ellen Söderhult, Maia Means och Marvil Iglesias

Choreography: Sindri Runudde

Composer: Markus B Almqvist

Scenographer and costumes: Juli Apponen

Light design: Kerstin Weimers

Text consultant: Francesca Hyde

Producer: Sara Fors

In this showcase, OR/ELLER presents excerpts from two of their shows, WEB (2019) and V (2021). The two performances are the first two parts of a series of four developed from and within the same scenographic concept of two giant nets.

The dance and choreography duo OR/ELLER was founded in 2018 by Madeleine Lindh and Anja Arnquist. Their dance art is characterised by highly visual stage works. With their distinctive voice, OR/ELLER’s dance art is driven by the idea of curating their audience and not only creating dance art for the already initiated crowds. Therefore, the idea of cultivating the stage for dance art for children and young people, is a matter of the heart for OR/ELLER. Through the WEB series, OR/ELLER pursues its strong interest in meeting a wide audience.

In the family performance V, you are greeted by a peculiar dance experience, where a colossal set and a gigantic scarf act as the hollow nest of two peculiar characters. In WEB, 4-6 year olds are invited into the dancing set, where a sensory choreographic adventure takes the children on a dancing journey.
“We want to create dance art that takes your breath away, where the performance unfolds for viewing with a tone that is both complex and simple, kind of like that irresistible feeling of an approaching positivism, where both the seriousness and the humor have their place.”
OR/ELLER collaborates with an artistic team consisting of William Rickman, Johannes Fäst, Tobias Hallgren, Agnes Florin, Sepidar Hosseini, Anton Andersson and Naemi Gustavsson.

Credits WEB:
Choreography & dance: OR/ELLER – Anja Arnquist & Madeleine Lindh
Set design: Johannes Fäst
Lighting: Tobias Hallgren
Music: William Rickman
Illustration: Agnes Florin

Created in co-production with Dansens Hus Stockholm.
With the support of; Kulturrådet, Stockholm City & Region Stockholm.

Length:
35min

Credits V:
Concept, choreography, dance: OR/ELLER – Anja Arnquist, Madeleine Lindh
Set design, construction, production: Johannes Fäst
Lighting design: Tobias Hallgren
Music: William Rickman
Costume design: Jenny Nordberg
Scarf, performance design: OR/ELLER – Anja Arnquist, Madeleine Lindh
Graphics, illustration: Agnes Florin
Typography: Sepidar Hosseini
Programming, lighting design: Calle Mårtensson
Production: OR/ELLER – Anja Arnquist, Madeleine Lindh
Photo: Elin Berge and Joakim Nyström
In collaboration with: costume studio, props, stage technology and production at Norrlandsoperan
Co-production: Norrlandsoperan, Dansens Hus Stockholm
With the support of
Culture Council, Region Stockholm, City of Stockholm

Length 50 min

[…it is contained in…] A tribute to water, our greatest life source. The duo is exploring the different qualities that water has and how it reminds us to stay connected to our natural surrounding and relearn some of our fundamental needs to become more human: Feel, adapt, remember, connect, communicate, be. The performance is an honest journey together through nothing and something, little and much, silence and harmonies, stillness and movement.

Choreography: Joanna Holewa Chrona, Yared Tilahun Cederlund
Dancers: Joanna Holewa Chrona, Yared Tilahun Cederlund
Music: Yared Tilahun Cederlund
Vocals: Ntsika Fana Nxganga
Light: Carima Neusser
Costume: Victoria Tcha
Film and photo: Erik Linghede
Producers: AFIA and Land Before Time
Co producers: Slingan
Graphic design: Mei-Li Wu

With Support from:
Konstnärsnämnden, Region Skåne, Norrlandsoperan and Kulturrådet, Dalateatern

Title: Intérieurs (2019) — Best choreographic work award at Les Prix de la danse de Montréal 2019-20
Choreographer and dancer: Caroline Laurin-Beaucage
Teaser: https://vimeo.com/471187948/b1906c8ab2
Web page: https://www.lorganisme.com/en/works/interieurs/

Short description:
This show captures the existence of an artist. Her gestures, her physicality, her presence, the soundscape and set design all bear the sensitive, living, vibrant imprint of her journey as a performer, a choreographer, a mother, a human being. The recollections of her personal peregrinations, in constant transformation, resonate and shine on stage, reflecting the inner monologue of body and soul.
Interieurs is a journey
A fresco
Images that capture
That spark the imagination
States of body and mind that call me back
Between memory and presence
Between breath and disappearance
I am within
Behind the scenes of the soul
In the secret garden, the afterthought, the overlap

Between child and adult
I’m going back home … back inside.

This is ring juggling as you’ve never seen it before!
Get prepared to expand your mind, as the circle is revealed anew in front of your eyes. With outstanding body control and an eye for details, HOLY presents unprecedented balance juggling. By utilizing custom made techniques and modern aestethics, Emil Dahl balances rings to create new shapes and shows all the possible ways to balance rings.

HOLY is the result of five years of research into the circle through a juggler’s eyes. The simplified scenography concists of nothing but the essential: a square on the floor, a pedestal, a glass of water and nine rings. This simplicity allows you to see the juggling in its purest form. Working together with some of the world’s best jugglers, this tasteful composition will give you a unique experience and forever change how you perceive juggling!

Kompani Giraff is a Stockholm based circus company that creates visual and unique circus performances with a foundation of poetic narrative and a passion for magic in everyday life situations. With this foundation, the company seek to explore new ground in contemporary circus and makes inventive and engaging performances for young audiences where contemporary circus, magic and object manipulation meet in a scenic universe unlike any other.

At CINARS Kompani Giraff will pitch the following performances:

Moln (Clouds) is imbued with music and inspired by the life and work of legendary poet Karin Boye. It´s framework is the tale of a collection of individuals living at each other´s mercy in vacuum between childhood and adolescence. Dystopian, yet life-affirming, it moves between the ordinary and the grand.
Duration: 1 hour, 4 artists
Premiered April 2021

We are the Queen of the Air is an airborne requiem for life as a circus performer. It is a free interpretation of Pauline Wolff’s darkly shimmering novel about a particular clan of aerial acrobats, a family that, after centuries of secret endeavor – a legacy passed down from mother to daughter – has finally achieved its forbidden goal and learned to fly.
Duration: 2 hours with intermission, 6 artists
Premiered Sept 2022.

Goldberg Variations 
During the demonstration of a chain reaction machine where objects, movement, rhythm and momentum are supposed to play in symbiosis with each other, everything seems to go wrong. It turns out that the usual physical laws no longer apply, only magic and illogical causal processes work.  The title is a dual reference, referring both to Rube Goldberg – known for his drawings of incredibly complex machines made from everyday objects that performed rudimentary tasks.
Duration: 1 hour, 2 artists. 
Premiere April 2023

Below Zero is a Swedish circus company doing modern and innovative circus performances with their very own aesthetics. Below Zero’s style is characterized by a combination of high technical skills, a choreographic approach to circus movement and a poetic narrative orbiting around captivating themes.
The company’s first piece PACE got high praise after its premiere in 2019. PACE is an intimate duett with the hand to hand couple Axel and Sara. It touches on the idea of relationships – power, imbalances, trust and consent.

KORUS premiered in 2022, here the company gathers as a collective voice shaped by bodies. Through balance and pure strength they investigate our current times, what collective cooperation really means and how we tend to deal with turbulent times.

RAAF is currently in creation, premiering in the summer of 2023 and is a high-wire duet where two old ladies, or birds, or friends – well whatever you make of them, dances together and remembers a life that has passed by.

Svalbard is a Swedish based, transdisciplinary, contemporary, performance company originating in Circus and founded by four graduates of DOCH in 2014 (current members: Ben Smith – UK, Alexis Akrovatakis – Greece, Tom Brand – Germany, Santiago Ruiz Albalate– Spain). Previous work includes their award-winning debut “all genius all idiot” which toured globally in 30 countries across 4 continents 2016 – 2021.

Svalbard creates and produces performances/experiences that are showcased/toured, in parallel they strive to generate process based work and research opportunities for themselves and others within the community. Always eager to break expectations and challenge contexts their work has been described as edgy, raw, anarchic and queer.

They are currently in the process of creating ‘Braintown’ a large-scale, site specific, immersive performance consisting of circus, dance, cinematography, theater, and multi-media installation. The show explores the dynamics of intersection between the 4 pillars of human knowledge: science, art, politics, religion, and questions the necessity of their separation in our modern world.
Simultaneously they are working on a new touring production based around the theme of presence in relation to the digital and physical realm with a giant whale ribcage as a centerpiece on stage.

Cirk-L is a Swedish circus company founded by Mattias Lindström & Magali Bancel, with a large expertise in working for diverse institution, organization, and individuals.
Cirk-L specializes in stage performance with crossover art lab, creative rigging and innovative construction. Latest was the success performance, “The Last Fish”- circus and music performance with an industrial robot that went viral, idea and concept by Magali and Mattias, produced by Östgötateatern.

Cirk-L latest production “Sinfonia Volante” is an outdoor, high flying, circus and music show based on “wall-acrobatic”, where the circus artist and musician from Norrköping Symphony Orchestra- who all hang in ropes and harnesses- revolves around a specially designed 18m high rigg.

“Sinfonia Volante”, the flying symphony. A dazzling show, combining high-flying acrobats with three musicians, also in weightlessness.
“Sinfonia Volante” invites each of us in these times of pandemic and geopolitical worries to a fascinating inner journey, which will lead us from a frustrating loneliness to the joyful certainty that if we join forces, everything is finally possible.
The main character of this show is a huge metal rigg, symbol of the mountain to climb, or to topple. The very long skirt of the harpist, falling from the adjoining platform, acts as a nurturing mother, who draws from the depths of the earth, our roots, the strength essential to the journey.
An outdoor, high-flying, circus performance played around an 18 meter specifically designed

rig. Based on “abseiling” or so-called “wall-acrobatic”, where the circus performers and musicians – who are all hanging from ropes and harnesses – take over the airspace and make it their stage.

Koncept & Idé: Mattias Lindström och Magali Bancel
Regi: Magali Bancel
Konstruktion och kreativ rigging: Mattias Lindström
Cirkusartisterna: Elsa Näslund, Emelie Sandberg, Anna Gehlin, Mira Leonard, Mattias Lindström
Musiker: Martin Orraryd, Delphine Constantin-Reznik, Johan Wiklund från Norrköping Symfoniorkestern
Ljus design: Anna Tubianna
Ljud design: Anders Bagler, Lars Bomansson
Kompositör: Martin Orraryd, Johan Wiklund
Kostym design: Magnus Möllersted