I have been dancing for a long time – if I still did the same things I did when I started, I’d go crazy. I started at 15 or 16, and when I was young I remember going from one class to another, carrying my clothes in bags. I was idealistic and hopeful. I did classes and rehearsals during the day, and was teaching in the evening. Whenever I had time off, I learned other techniques alongside contemporary dance. I would travel from Montreal to New York, and take ballet, jazz, improvisation – gaining experience, learning and learning.
A choreographer once told me, we all have our tricks in our pockets. I thought: I have nothing in my pockets. That is why I feel I know nothing, that I’m a beginner. I told someone that, and they said: “You have one thing. You have energy!” This kind of schedule isn’t easy, but energy brings energy. It’s a privilege to be in the studio – I don’t want to miss a second.
When I joined La La La Human Steps in 1981, I felt I needed a break from class. My approach was very raw, but to emulate the company’s founder Édouard Lock’s fluid, liquid movement, I knew I had to get away from technique and do more improvisation. In my mid-20s, as my style developed, I went back to class so that I wouldn’t get trapped in dancing one way. I started doing one and a half to two hours of ballet in the morning, then run and loosen up before five or six hours of rehearsal.
Édouard and I worked together for 18 years, in a very creative collaboration. For a long time I was scared to make my own work – it’s hard to leave a master choreographer. But then I worked with Benoît Lachambre, who encouraged me to create choreography. He would arrive at the studio and find me already dancing my guts out, and helped me feel that movement was pouring out of me, and I didn’t need anyone to tell me what to do. I realise that after all these years I do know something about choreography – but it’s also day to day work. You have to look at what’s missing or what could develop.
I prefer the studio to the stage. I am a show-off in the studio: better, funnier. On stage, the show is not me any more – I’m another entity. I always think I can’t do it. It scares me a lot, because a show is a promise to an audience. When I was young, I’d sometimes hide because I was so scared. Even now, experience doesn’t relax me – except for a sense that I’ve done it before so maybe I can survive.
Routine is impossible, it doesn’t interest me. Now that I’m creating work [her debut piece was So Blue], I’m looking for things to push me forward. It isn’t about what looks good – I have to find new movement and push my limits so that I don’t repeat myself. I have a good connection, very intense, with the people I work with. We always talk about the show right away, but I don’t hang out with big groups of dancers after a show. I never did, even in the La La La years. It’s the creation and intense physical work that’s my thing. It’s always geared to something extreme because I’m exploring the extreme world we live in. I fear it and I’m part of it – this is what I dance.
