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2024 Season
For this first season of our Sortie du bois podcast, we are fortunate to welcome artists from various backgrounds. Coming from the beautiful province or from abroad, each one shares with us with humility their approach, their inspirations, their pride and their doubts too. A dive into the creative universe of 6 unique artists!
Episodes
Barbara K. Diabo | Dada | Laura Doyle Péan | Danièle Desnoyers | Gaspard Combes | Élaine Frigon | LFH
1. Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo - Dance - A’nó:wara Dance Theatre
Recognized indigenous dance choreographer and performer, Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo returns in this discussion to her history, her life and what gave her a taste for dance. She came to La Montagnarde with the desire to work on the staging of her new show I dream in Wampum, which will premiere next April at the Vieux-Terrebonne theatre. La Montagnarde gave her time to breathe, to respect the true rhythm of life, to draw energy from plants and stars. She also reminds us that in her culture, that of the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) people, winter is the time for telling stories. A very inspiring discussion! |
2. DADA aka Dardia Joseph - Theatre
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3. Laura Doyle Péan - Poetry
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4. Danièle Desnoyers - Choreography - Carré des Lombes
Danièle Desnoyers, internationally recognized choreographer, came to explore La Montagnarde with 6 Quebec and Italian performers to work on the Scenographies-Paysages in Sardinia project, a co-production between Quebec and several Italian producers. The artist evokes the intimate link she maintains with the Quebec forest, its textures, its sounds which remind her of those of her childhood spent playing outside. She wanted to reproduce this with her performers while developing their capacity to adapt, to leave traditional places and explore extraordinary sites. The rain and the mosquitoes did not discourage them, their bodies on alert, they gradually melted away, in this particular heritage landscape, erasing the choreography to allow the movement to emerge. |
5. Gaspard Combes - Plastic arts
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6. Élaine Frigon - Visual arts
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7. LFH - Photography
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For the lawyer and young artist Dada, the Laurentian forest was a total discovery. Born in Haiti, she grew up in Ahuntsic and had never had the opportunity to experience this aspect of Quebec territory. This isolated place allowed her to experience her emotions with fullness, to speak loudly, to shout, to experience her solitude too. She saw this stay as a space to nourish herself and digest influences. The residency gave her real creative time and guided her towards clear paths for her piece Anatomy of a Commercial Product. In this conversation with Annie, we discover her creative process, her inspirations and her artistic choices.
In this public episode, we discover this multidisciplinary artist, who came to La Montagnarde to work on a second collection of poetry after, Cœur Yoyo (Mémoire d'encrier editions) published in 2020. They tell us about what the proximity to nature, the possibility of going outside, of walking, of experiencing the seasons brought them. This offered to them a form of balance that they did not know. Laura shares with those present their creative process mainly based on automatic writing. As an activist, Laura addresses themes such as mental health and discrimination in their writing and talks to us about the liberating, almost therapeutic force of this art.
Living in the south of France, in Ardèche where he has his workshop, Gaspard is used to life in the countryside. The artist discovered the natural landscapes of Quebec and the Laurentians for the first time during his one-month residency at La Montagnarde this summer. This stay was very prolific since 4 works were created there, one per week. Gaspard talks to us about his relationship with materials, the choices he makes based on the places where he creates. He also confides to Annie his particular relationship with stones, a sort of witness to the history of humanity that he likes to bring into dialogue with elements of our more modern life. His works, imbued with humor, are striking with their apparent simplicity and accessibility, but the sculptor's attention to detail allows us to go further in the reflection.
A resident of Saint-Adolphe-d’Howard for many years, Élaine, a visual artist, has notably created site-specific installations. Here she tells us about La fuite des mariées, her latest creation unveiled during the first edition of l'Art est dans ses feuilles at La Montagnarde. This work represents a procession of dress-trees advancing through the forest. The spectators accompany or receive this escape depending on the perspective chosen. It is, according to the artist, a way of speaking about this pivotal moment that is traditionally marriage, the transition from virginity to fertility. She evokes feminicides, violence against women and the gap that sometimes exists between the ideal projected during marriage and the much more brutal reality. But this leak also tells us about trees, also threatened, endangered by logging. Here again, the personal joins the universal. 
The artist duo LFH explains the photographic method called pinhole, a technique they used in their research during their time at La Montagnarde, with all the hazards and unforeseen events that this practice can entail. The photographers' collective describes the beauty and poetry that this technique can bring to a natural environment and how proud they are to have been able to offer a creative workshop to introduce pinhole photography to the young people of the Loco Local of Saint-Adolphe-d'Howard.Partners
