About the performance:
In the performance ALL HELL IS BREAKING LOOSE, HONEY Frédérick Gravel takes on the confusion of the contemporary American male, whether he hails from a bland suburb, a country road or a cowboy movie. He is accompanied by the musician Stéphane Boucher, a multi-instrumentalist who creates sound and music turmoil, Dave St-Pierre, the enfant terrible of trash choreography and Nicolas Cantin, an actor fascinated by clowning.
Gravel himself is also onstage for the festivities for he is a musician, set designer and, as he likes to say, a “bad dancer who hopes to become an interesting bad dancer”. The music is performed live – with scratching of dirty chords, the lighting is vibrant and the piece plays with irony and distancing. It is a tale of distraught men, the ordinary run-of-the-mill North American male –beer, T-shirts, baseball caps, cowboy boots, beer bellies and their hesitations, outbursts of violence, confusion, brusque changes of mood, right left, front and back, lurching in a drunken haze of beer and powerlessness.
About the choreographer:
Frédérick Gravel graduated in 2009 from UQAM’s (Université du Québec à Montréal) dance faculty with a thesis on “The role of the dance artist in a democratic society’’. The choreographer, dancer, musician and lighting designer Frédérick Gravel has been active on the Montreal scene for the past ten years. He turns the structures of choreography upside down, merging into his work various elements from rock and performance art.
His productions Gravel Works, Tout se pète la gueule, chérie , Cabaret Gravel Cabaret and his most recent performance Thus Spoke…,have received great national and international reviews. His works are created in close collaboration with all members of Grouped’ArtGravelArtGroup/GAG, a shifting collective of dancers and musicians actively involved in the creation process.
Concept and direction: Frédérick Gravel / Grouped’ArtGravelArtGroup
Dancers and musicians on stage: Nicolas Cantin, Dany Desjardins, Tomas Furey, Frédérick Gravel
Original musics: Stéphane Boucher
Light: Alexandre Pilon-Guay
Dramaturgy: Katya Montaignac
Rehearsal director: Anne Lebeau
Artistic advisors: Ivana Milicevic, Claude Poissant, Hugo Gravel
Executive producer: Daniel Léveillé danse
Coproducers: Festival TransAmériques in collaboration with Place des Arts;
Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis
Pictures: © Grouped’ArtGravelArtGroup
Promotion and development: George Skalkogiannis for Memoranda Management
With the support of: Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec; Canada Arts Council
Frédérick Gravel receives administratrive and developement supports from Daniel Léveillé danse company (Montréal) as part of his touring sponsorship project.