Dance performance - Lewis et Lucie, Une évocation poétique de la marginalité, de la solitude et des petites cassures de la vie.

The Centre for Human Rights & Legal Pluralism 2014-2015 Disability and Human Rights Law seminar series presents Lewis et Lucie, Une évocation poétique de la marginalité, de la solitude et des petites cassures de la vie, a live dance performance with dancers and choreographers Daniel Firth and Jane Mappin.

The dance
A man sits alone on a park bench,  talking to passersby, hoping for a moment of society. Speaking in stilted phrases, he offers fragments of his personal history, impressions, and obsessions. He embodies his words in movement, dancing with the damaged grace of those who live out of the mainstream. The outline of his story emerges – a small, sad story, repeated every day on park benches the world over, of an existence that never quite took full shape. Lewis et Lucie is a poetic evocation of marginality, solitude, and the tiny, crushing burdens of the past.

Daniel Firth – dancer
Daniel Firth is a dancer known for his great artistic sensibility. He is trained in classical ballet, modern dance, gymnastics, and continued his modern dance training in 1990 with LADMMI in Montreal. In 1993, he joined Montréal Danse, where he performed roles created by more than fifteen internationally renowned choreographers. Daniel has also worked for William Douglas, Estelle Clareton, Chantal Caron, and many independent choreographers, and has performed in Canada, the United States, South America, and many European countries. He has been involved in an array of related artistic projects, such as Une âme immortelle with director Bernard Hébert, and L’homme de verre, directed by Raymond St-Jean. More recently, Daniel completed his training in massotherapy, which he currently pursues in parallel to his dance career. After five years in the Lower St-Lawrence region, where he managed his own dance company and created his own works, Daniel has returned to Montreal where he now works with Jane Mappin in the duo “Lewis and Lucie”.  Their recent work on the dance trilogy Je marche à côté de moi has allowed him to re-envision his career.

Jane Mappin - dancer and choreographer
For the past thirty years, Jane has worked actively as interpreter, choreographer and teacher. As creator, she is interested in the relationship between dance and other forms of artistic expression. Her choreographic work has been shown across Canada, South America and Europe. After working for five years at Le Groupe de la Place Royale, in Ottawa, Jane became an independent choreographer in her native Montreal, in 1989. In 1999, in the context of a master’s degree in creation, Jane choreographed Les anges monstrueux (1999).  Jane has collaborated with visual artists (Mikihiro Nishumatsu, John Heward, Jean Gervais, and with the work of William Perehudoff) and filmmakers (Léa Pool and Pepita Ferrari). In 2003, Jane presented Cinq voix, cinq visages, an interdisciplinary work involving five dancers, five seven-year old girls, video and two singers. She has since collaborated twice with cellist Erich Kory, and photographer Michael Slobodian. Jane danced for Charmaine Leblanc in Quarantaine (2004) and Terminus (2012), a co-production of Dansecité). In 2013, Jane created L” with interpreter Daniel Firth. Their collaboration continues with Je marche à côté de moi, a trilogy treating the delicate subject of mental illness. Jane has taught and choreographed at L’École supérieure de ballet du québec since 2007.

Interprètes : Daniel Firth, Jane Mappin
Chorégraphie : Jane Mappin en collaboration avec Daniel Firth
Conseillère à la dramaturgie: Marie Brassard
Musique : Erich Kory
Voix sur la trame sonore : Sophie Faucher
Texte : un extrait de « Accompagnement » de Saint Deny-Garneau

"Fort belle chorégraphie, d’une grande intensité et d’une terrible vérité. Très exigeante pour le remarquable danseur qu’est Daniel Firth subtilement secondé par la chorégraphe et danseuse Jane Mappin. Une musique qui danse elle aussi, tout comme le texte de Saint-Denys Garneau habilement découpé, rythmé, au point d’en devenir lui aussi musique."

- Jean Chapdelaine Gagnon, Quartier des spectacles | 16 septembre 2013