Double bill : slip away & Yearning

A double dance program exploring inner battles related to identity, language, grief, sexism, racism, and domestic violence, followed by a discussion with the artists on May 5th after the performances.

 

Discussion with the artists on May 5.

 

edition 2025
Double bill : slip away & Yearning
May 3 — 7:00pm
May 4 — 4:00pm
May 5 — 7:00pm
May 6 — 7:00pm
Édifice Wilder - Espace Vert
Book
1st work - slip away

Description

Samantha Sutherland (Toronto)⎮ slip away

Few are fluent speakers of Ktunaxa. slip away, a contemporary dance solo created and performed by Samantha Sutherland, explores themes of loss and hope relating to the endangered state of this language. It is a family affair. Her brother composed music for electric guitar. Her mother stitched the fabric for the costume. And recordings of conversations with her grandmother underlie the piece. What happens when individuals are motivated by fear? What work needs to happen to develop a sense of hope? slip away shares accounts of the current efforts to preserve Ktunaxa and dreams of how it may continue to be enlivened in the future.

slip away is a solo created by Samantha Sutherland to share what she experienced during her journey of learning the Ktunaxa language. It was a wonderful experience, but also very frightening and challenging. There are very few people who speak Ktunaxa fluently, and many of them are elders. When they lose an elder, they also lose traditional knowledge of their language and culture. Learning Ktunaxa sometimes feels like a race against time. She felt that it was urgent to learn the language faster than it is disappearing. All of this is aimed at keeping Ktunaxa alive.

Credits

Choreography, performance, voice: Samantha Sutherland

Musical composition: Jeffrey Sutherland

Lighting design: Emerson Kafarowski

Costumes: Cindy Sutherland

Voice: Sophie Pierre

Mentoring: Olivia C. Davies

2nd work - Yearning

Description

Charo Foo Tai Wei ⎮ Yearning

As an Asian immigrant who has experienced sexism, racism and domestic violence, Charo Foo Tai Wei must constantly deal with societal challenges. She has mastered the art of pretending it’s like water off a duck’s back. Yet she also dreams of finding a place she can take root in and call home. Yearning is a contemporary dance solo that magnifies Charo’s inner battles as, like a plant, she digs her way out toward the light. It invites audience members to explore the inner wounds they need to heal.

Credits

Choreography and performance: Charo Foo Tai Wei

Sound and lighting design: David Blouin

Costumes and outside eye: Julie Pichette

Mentoring: Dulcinée Langfelder

 

Biographies

Charo Foo Tai Wei

Trained in Chinese classical dance, Charo Foo Tai Wei attended L’École de danse de Québec for contemporary dance studies. From 2007 to 2013, she acted, danced and choreographed in Robert Lepage’s The Blue Dragon (Ex Machina). In 2015, she discovered butoh with Natsu Nakajima, Yukio Waguri, Atsushi Takenouchi, and Yumiko Yoshioka. Fascinated by the quest to explore one’s trauma with organic movements, she intertwines classical Chinese dance and butoh to develop her own choreographic language. Her work Jin Gu Bang (The Golden Stick Ritual) was selected for the CanAsian Dance Festival 2019, which was co-presented by Tangente and Festival Accès Asie. In recent years, she has collaborated with Jérôme Bel, Sarah Dell’Ava, Stephanie Fromentin, Brice Noeser, Amrita Choudhury, and Liliane St-Arnaud. Recently, she made her first Stratford Festival appearances as a dancer and actor in Salesman in China and Wendy and Peter Pan.

 

David Blouin

David Blouin is a sound designer and sound engineer. His practice could be characterized as “sculptural sound environment.” The use of the live sound and other pre-recorded sources (field recordings or music) are the primary matter of his work, not to mention the importance of the creative way of using sound system reinforcement, spatialization, and processing. He has collaborated and toured around the world with Dimitris Papaioannou, Fritz company Bigi/Paoletti, and others. He has also diversified to other creative and technical specialties such as special props design.

Dulcinée Langfelder

Born in New York, Dulcinée Langfelder studied dance with Paul Sanasardo, theatre with Eugenio Barba and Yoshi Oida, and mime with Étienne Decroux. She learned animation by making flip books, and she learned to sing in the streets of Paris. In 1978, she came to Montréal to join the Omnibus troupe, with whom she worked until 1982, and then briefly with Carbone 14. She has to her credit about 20 choreographies for theatre, musicals, television, and cinema. She founded her company in Montréal in 1985, creating multidisciplinary/multimedia works that have toured extensively: Vicious Circle (1985), The Lady Next Door (1989), Hockey O.K.? (1991), Portrait of a Woman with Suitcase (1994), Victoria (1999), Dulcinea’s Lament (2008), Pillow Talk, an essay on dreaming (2013), and Cheek to Cheek; love with a capital C(2020). Her works, performed in several languages, have won the hearts and minds of many, as well as various awards. Throughout her career, she creates choreographies that question the multiple perceptions of the body and mind, and that encourage the inner force of the individual, mutual understanding, and tolerance between people. Her diversity of talents, her socio-satiric sense and the inspiration she brought to the artistic milieu earned her the honour of being named Personality of the Year by the Montréal newspaper La Pressein 1990. In 2022, she was inducted into the Ordre des arts et des lettres du Québec.

Emerson Kafarowski

Emerson Kafarowski (she/they) is a lighting designer and multidisciplinary artist based in Tkaronto. A graduate of the Toronto Metropolitan University School of Performance Design and Production program, they’ve worked on projects and performances in dance, theatre, opera, and live music. Dedicated to life-long learning, Emerson gravitates towards projects that explore the intricacies of different human experiences, in which voices of the past and present are uplifted. In addition to lighting design, Emerson is a skilled ETC lighting programmer, as well as a technical director and touring production manager, travelling across Canada, the U.S.A, and Europe. She has had the pleasure of working with and designing for many inspiring artists and companies, including BoucharDanse, Citadel + Compagnie, Fall For Dance North, MOCA Toronto, Naishi Wang, Soulpepper Theatre Company, Toronto Dance Theatre, and Venusfest.

Jeff Sutherland

Jeff Sutherland (Ktunaxa name kawisqa kiǂq̓aǂǂi, Standing Elk) is an Indigenous musician based out of Vancouver and a founding member of Flint & Smoke, a rock ‘n’ roll band. His sister Samantha and he enjoy collaborating by combining their artistic talents and mediums. The blues is Jeff’s true musical passion. Thumping R&B beats remind him of the pow wow songs with which he grew up. Apart from music, Jeff is an associate commercial banker at TD Bank in their Centre for Excellence in Indigenous Business Banking. He is also an amateur Lego artist, and a lover of science and the humanities.

Julie Pichette

Julie Pichette is a multidisciplinary artist who works in the fields of dance, visual arts, and scenographic costumes. She graduated from L’École de danse de Québec and completed a master’s degree in visual arts in creation in 2011. Her work is oriented towards solo choreographic creation from the costumes and landscapes she conceives and crafts. She has been perfecting her butoh Japanese dance techniques with masters since 1995, Bharatanatyam in Chennai since 2003 (Shobana Bhalchandra), and in Montréal with Sattvika Danse since 2008. A teacher and creator at Entr’actes for more than 25 years, a choreographer and a performer, she participates in various artistic events, often tinged with butoh (Québec, France, Italy, Germany, India).

Samantha Sutherland

Samantha Sutherland is a contemporary dance artist, choreographer, and teacher based in Tkaronto. Her ancestry is Ktunaxa and Scottish. She grew up on Coast Salish Territories and graduated from the Arts Umbrella Graduate Program in 2018.  Samantha has been choreographing dance works since 2021 and has had the pleasure of presenting in festivals across Turtle Island, including the Matriarchs Uprising Festival by O.Dela Arts with presentations both in Vancouver and at the National Arts Centre, Sharing the Stage with The National Ballet of Canada, Night Shift by Fall for Dance North, Dance Made in Canada, and Weesageechak Begins to Dance. Recently, Samantha premiered her first ensemble work naⱡa at the Citadel Spring Mix festival in Toronto. She has performed in dance works by Indigenous choreographers Alejandro Ronceria and Jera Wolfe. She is currently a guest teacher at the Centre for Indigenous Theatre and an Artistic Associate with O.Dela Arts.

© Aidan Tooth Photography
Partner

Tangente

The first organization to specialize in dance presentation in Québec, Tangente (est. 1980) champions emerging choreographers and offers contemporary dance programming from September to May. Each show is a unique experience that opens onto the experimental and the interdisciplinary. Our two intimate and transformable theatre spaces in ÉDIFICE WILDER – Espace danse allow us to ensure that the avant-garde and the alternative scene have a foothold in downtown Montréal.

With

Charo Foo Tai Wei

Samantha Sutherland

edition 2025
Double bill : slip away & Yearning
May 3 — 7:00pm
May 4 — 4:00pm
May 5 — 7:00pm
May 6 — 7:00pm
Édifice Wilder - Espace Vert
Book
in collaboration