Sit, Eat and Chew 五味杂陈

A choreographic project rooted in social art practices, Sit, Eat and Chew 五味杂陈 will take the form of a guided tour through the heart of four sites in Montreal’s Chinatown, with an artistic performance at each venue.

📍 The route will start at 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐜 𝐒𝐮𝐧 𝐘𝐚𝐭 𝐒𝐞𝐧, at 2 p.m. then at 3:45 p.m.

edition 2023
Sit, Eat and Chew 五味杂陈
May 27 — 2:00pm
Free - Montreal Chinatown

Description

A choreographic project rooted in social art practices, Sit, Eat and Chew 五味杂陈 will take the form of a guided tour through the heart of four sites in Montreal’s Chinatown, with an artistic performance at each venue.

Seven Canadian artists and one New York artist are involved, along members of the Chinese Montreal community, in the creative process through multi-generational classes taught by the artists.

The objective is to gather intimate, shared, real, imaginary, or unknown family stories that have marked different generations of Chinese Montrealers, to create a choreographic work and present it outdoors in Chinatown.

***

The project Sit, Eat & Chew is made possible thanks to the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts as well as the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and thanks to the material support of Centre Yee Kang, of Rocio Machorro – Yoga Plus, of the restaurant Dobe & Andy and of the GALLIM Parent Moving Artist Residency program, Roberta Ferdschneider, Elizabeth St Clair, Benita Welch, and David Sherman.

Biographies

Léa Tremblay Fong

Of Chinese descent, Léa Tremblay Fong was born and raised in Quebec. She is a contemporary dance choreographer and performer. Léa creates and performs her work directly on the street and in living environments, where she builds bridges with diverse people and communities. From 2006 to 2011, she completed an Honours double major in Dance and International Development Studies at York University in Toronto while directing several multidisciplinary and intercultural creation projects in Toronto and Israel/Palestine. Since winter 2012, she has been pursuing her work and artistic development, primarily in Montreal. The artist intentionally practices her art outside the studio, exposed to impromptu interactions. Driven by a strong desire for social engagement, Léa takes her inspiration from the free spirit of the street, street dances, and the architectural environment. Her work probes the memories, tensions, and social ties at work in our communities and has been presented in Montreal, Ramallah (2015), and Taipei (2016).

Martine Castera

Professional dancer Martine Castera graduated from UQAM in contemporary dance and has specialized in popping, waacking, and hip hop. She has 14 years of karate practice behind her and continues to perfect her contemporary and street dance skills through various international workshops, events, festivals, contracts, and shows. 

She is part of the waacking company, Asymmetry, directed by Axelle Munezero and participates in several popping and waacking battles. She also creates her own pieces, such as Pelures, which she did in collaboration with Léa Tremblay-Fong, dancer, and Déglingué with Rodolphe Gagnon, didgeridoo player. Since 2022, she has worked on and created various solo pieces, including Je dis ça, mais je dis rien…, presented as part of the event, Still Here, which was broadcast live.

Léna Demnati

Originally from France, LenaDemnati began her professional training in contemporary dance at the Conservatoire National de Lyon. After graduating with honors, she trained at l’École de danse contemporaine de Montréal, where she worked with many renowned choreographers. She was selected to participate in several intensive workshops that confirmed her passion for the complexity of movement, including Deltebre Dance with Wim Vandekeybus and Akram Khan, Springboard Dance Montreal with German choreographer Johannes Wieland and dancers from the Hofesh Shechter company. 

Léna works as an independent dancer with several choreographers in Montreal, including Mélanie Demers (La Meute), Dana Gingras (FRONTERA and Creation Destruction), Castel_Blast (MA(G)MA, CARCASSE), Léa Tremblay Fong (Interlope and Insomniac), Isabelle Van Grimde (Eve 2050), Stefania Skoryna (Ellipses), and David Albert-Toth and Emily Gualtieri (HALVES EFER). 

Passionate about the human body, she is also a full-time student in Nutrition at the University of Montreal.

Geneviève Duong

Geneviève Duong’s considers collaborations and creations as opportunities to deepen her reflection on how to engage the body in dialogue with the built and natural environment. Her tricultural heritage, Vietnamese, Argentinean, and Quebecois incites her to create artistic experiences centered on the actualization and valorization of Quebecois culture and heritage sites. For the past ten years, Geneviève has been working in various disciplines, including production, choreography, and interpretation. She is a member of the 2009-2012 cohort of the École de danse de Québec.

Charles Gao

Charles Gao loves to dance. He also loves cooking, playing video games, reading books, and going to the beach to listen to the waves. He is currently working on a photo book project documenting the relationship between Toronto’s breaking community and the spaces in which they danced for Sit, Eat and Chew with Léa Tremblay Fong, and Kafka Paradise with David “Laos” Phipak and Berenice Dupuis.

Parker Mah

Parker Mah is a fourth-generation Chinese/Toise descendant currently based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. As a DJ, musician, multimedia artist, and cultural educator, his diverse body of work addresses themes and realities of hybridization, migration, transformation, and identity. The improvisational techniques of jazz and oral history inspire his multidisciplinary approach.

As a cultural educator, he promotes participatory art as a tool for social change, particularly among marginalized populations. He has been organizing workshops and community-building activities for over 15 years. His multidisciplinary background has led to numerous facilitation and consulting positions with prominent cultural institutions such as the Festival TransAmériques (FTA), the Quartier des Spectacles, and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MACM).

Mei-Yin Ng

Mei Yin Ng is a choreographer, dancer, and mixed media artist. In 2012, She founded MEI-BE WHATever ( www.MeiBeWhatever.com) as a collective field for collaboration and experimentation of movement and technology with investigations that culminated in the staging of multi-media events and dance films. Currently, Ng is working on a series of Chinatown story projects, cultivating local history and deep engagements with Chinatown community members and artists to develop guided immersive dance tours through various Chinatowns in North America like in New York City or in Montreal.

Phi Nguyen

Phi Nguyen’s career is a mixture of movement exploration between different artistic disciplines in constant search of new body vocabulary. Mainly trained in Chinese martial arts, Kung-Fu Wushu with Roger Itier, he has participated in several national and international competitions where he won several podium titles. Sensitive to body expression and its mechanics, Phi participated in several artistic projects mixing Wushu and dance during a tour of France promoting the movie Crazy Kung-Fu (2005) and theatre through Mathilde Monier’s project entitled City Maquette (2009).

In 2018, as a dancer and martial artist, he participated in a performance for the Chinese New Year Gala at the Sir Wilfrid Pelletier Theatre choreographed by the Phoenix School of Contemporary Dance. Currently, Phi is collaborating with Stéphanie Decourteille Danse Contemporaine in the Big Bang professional training program as a Wushu instructor where he explores with dancers the repertoire of Wushu movements and adapts it for dance creation.

Charo Foo Tai Wei

Charo Foo Tai Wei trained in classical Chinese dance. In 2005, she arrived in Quebec City, where she studied contemporary dance at the École de danse de Québec. From 2007 to 2013, she performed as an actress, dancer, and choreographer in Robert Lepage’s production, Le Dragon bleu (Ex Machina). In 2015, she discovered Butoh, a form of Japanese dance, and studied with Natsu Nakajima, Yukio Waguri, Atsushi Takenouchi.

 

She is fascinated by how the vibration of nerve cells can trigger an organic movement that develops from within the body. This discovery has inspired her research the instinctive movement of the body. 

Her first work, The Golden Stick Ritual, was selected by CanAsian Dance’s KickStart program and was presented at Tangente (2021) in collaboration with Festival Accès Asie. Today, she combines classical Chinese dance and Butoh to develop her own choreographic language.

With

Léa Tremblay Fong

Martine Castera

Mei-Yin Ng

Léna Demnati

Geneviève Duong

Charles Gao

Parker Mah

Phi Nguyen

 

 

edition 2023
Sit, Eat and Chew 五味杂陈
May 27 — 2:00pm
Free - Montreal Chinatown