This event of cocktails and celebration will kick off  the Fleur de Lys, fleur de thé’s festival at the bar on the docks of La Vieille Usine. Festival artists will present their works and lead a discussion after their respective presentations. Participants will have the opportunity to meet and learn from the festival artists through discussions about what it means to be racialized and a minority artist in Québec and challenges they have faced along the way.

Above the moon is a recital which oscillates between Indian traditional and contemporary dance. Tanveer Alam will present two Kathak dance performances, a pure Kathak work and a traditional dance from North India. The Kathak work is choreographed by himself while the second work is created by Harikishan S. Nair.

Misheel Ganbold, a dancer and choreographer, will follow by presenting two contemporary dance performances. These performances will feature modulated choreography, a type of choreography that is transformed and affected by the environment.

This puppet show is inspired by a Chinese fable and is suitable for the whole family. Original music accompanies the performance of shadow puppets for a night of storytelling. The decorations and the puppets are inspired by miniature illustrations (through the medium of Iranian traditional painting), and the original music is a combination of oriental and occidental instruments. This performance serves as a bridge between the occidental and oriental arts.

Adult admission fees (30-minute show): $20

Child admission fees age required 4 years minimum (30-minute show + 45-minute workshop): $20

Musicians Anjana Srinivasan (violin), Shawn Mativetsky (tabla) and Thanya Iyer (piano) invite will take us on a magical journey with their Carnatic music– a traditional type of music from South India. Together, they will create harmonies by infusing traditional pieces with contemporary tones.

During this workshop, Zolzaya Bold, director of the Mongolia Canada Association, with Baatarchuluun Van, will present Mongolian culture through its cuisine and diet. Participants will partake in a ravioli-making workshop led by the duo, complete with a tasting. This culinary experience features steamed raviolis (buuz) and grilled raviolis (khuushuur), paired with Mongolian drinks.

In the South-East of the mirror is a gallery of selected works by painter Khosro Berahmandi. This gallery presents a retrospect of his artistic works from the last five years.

Stemming from a singular and poetic “plastic” vocabulary, In the South-East of the Mirror explores a flood of images drawn from a dreamlike fantasy where finesse and imagination create the surreality of a magnetizing dream.

Exhibition from August 16 to September 23, 2023

Misheel Ganbold is from Mongolia and lives in Canada. During her childhood, she learned how to juggle her identity through the existence of two countries, two languages and two cultures. She started dancing in high school and surrounded herself in a world of movement.

She invested her time in urban dance and hip hop music, and competed in dance competitions. In 2011, she pursued her passion in a professional way.

When she left school, she participated several times in Springboard Dance Montréal’s program. This program gave her the opportunity to dance for renowned international companies, including the  Batsheva Dance company and the Götheborgs Operans Danskompani. Since then, she has collaborated with Laurence Nerbonne, KNLO, and Alaclair Ensemble as a dancer.

Ganbold has worked with Apashe and Jean-Michel Blais, as well as the biggest artist in the world, the famous Céline Dion. She has also been a part of large productions such as Bud Light Sensation Innerspace, La Fête des Lumières à Lyon et le Vaisseau Fantôme–created by François Girard with the Opéra de Québec in collaboration with Metropolitan Opera in New-York. Today, she works for Le Fils d’Adrien dance company of Harold Rhéaume and MAYDAY of Mélanie Demers.

In the summer of 2022, she started a personal project by returning to Mongolia to create a production about dancers from the Hun theatre company, an 18-minute work that has been received well by all audiences.

Tanveer Alam is based in Toronto. He began his Kathak dance journey with Sudeshna Maulik, later pursuing an apprenticeship with the late guru Sandhya Desai. Alam graduated in 2019 from the School of Toronto Dance Theatre.

Alam has played various roles in the works of Rina Singha, Lata Pada, Padmini Chettur, Brandy Leary, Harikishan S. Nair, Sashar Zarif, Lucy Rupert, and Peter Chin. As an emerging choreographer, he presents some of his works in the SummerWorks Festival, Battery Dance Festival +, MAI – Montréal, arts, interculturels, CanAsian Dance Festival: Grit Short Dances, and Tangente. Alam has been supported by the Conseil des Arts de Toronto, Conseil des Arts de l’Ontario, and Conseil des Arts du Canada.

During the 21/22 season, Alam worked with Padmini Chettur, an international choreographer, in her new play Chalking, which was commissioned by Anandam Dance Theatre. He also created and danced in The Tagore Project (co-choreographed by Atri Nundy), a Tangente and Sampradaya Dance creation. Most recently, Alam has co-created In Multiplicity with Nithya Garg, presented through the Independants Projects section during Nuit Blanche (Humber Galleries), and choreographed Haazri, a new Kathak solo for the Sharing The Stage program by the National Ballet of Canada.

Comedian, puppeteer and producer, Mojtaba has worked in this field for thirteen years. He graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Tehran University in 2002. After his arrival in Québec in 2014, he founded Valise Théâtre with the objective of producing puppet shows that are for all audiences. He is interested in new performance methods in contemporary puppet theater and exploring the living and interactive links between puppets and puppeteers.

Ghazaleh is a puppeteer and playwright. After her studies in Tehran University’s Faculty of Fine Arts, she continued her artistic approach in the puppet theater industry. Since 2016, she has served as a co-director of Valise Théâtre. Ghazaleh’s philosophy posits that puppet theater and manipulation art express the enthusiasm of discovery and connection to the world of childhood.

 Leaning on her studies in Carnatic violin and occidental classic and Carnatic singing, Anjana Srinivasan explores the music world as a way to reach souls through melodies and emotions.

Srinivasan was born in Montréal and has South-Indian origins. She has extensive training in classical and Carnatic violin. She received a Shastri Indo-Canada’s scholarship in 2000 and pursued advanced training in Carnatic violin with legendary violinists as Sri Lalgudi Vijayalakshmi and Sri Lalgudi G.J.R. Krishnan in Chennai, India. She continued to practice under these virtuosos in the last nineteen years and travels on a regular basis across Canada to perform in concerts and international ensembles.Anjana passes on her art by giving violin courses to young and adult audiences from Montréal and areas around the city. She actively participates in the organization of educational and musical opportunities for music students in Montréal. In addition to her career as a musician, Anjana is also a family doctor in Montreal.

Shawn Mativesky is a dynamic performer. He is considered one of the most important ambassadors of the tabla in Canada and one of the principal pioneers in bridging the classical music of the western sphere and of India. Acclaimed as an outstanding soloist and an eminent disciple of the renowned Pandit Sharda Sahai, Mativesky is committed to promoting the tabla and traditional North Indian music by giving lectures, workshops and performances in Canada and around the world. Mativesky is established in Montréal, and he teaches tabla and percussion at McGill University. His most recent solo album on tabla, Rivers, is rooted in the rich traditional table of Benares. Mativesky’s newest book, titled RUDIMENTAAL, presents works for the snare drum inspired by North Indian tabla.

Thanya Iyer is a multi-instrumental composer, arranger, conductor, and music therapist. She grew up immersed in music through singing, playing the violin and piano, and learning Indian Carnatic dance. Iyer’s curiosity in multiculturalism has helped her collaborate with a variety of artists, ranging from those who work in experimental free jazz to country-folk andIndian fusion. Iyer has performed in festivals across Canada and the United States, including the Montréal International Jazz Festival and the True/False Film Festival. She has also toured across Europe.

Zolzaya Bold is an elementary school teacher and French teacher at the Commission scolaire de Laval à Montréal. She obtained her Doctorate in Education and completed her Masters in French Education, Translation, and Language at the National University of Mongolia.

Zolzaya has lived in Montréal since 2009. She was appointed as the Director of the Mongolia Canada Association in 2013, and has worked since in sectors which promote arts, culture, and histories of Mongolia in Canada, and aims to eradicate the erroneous use of the word, “Mongol”. She is a board member of Mongol Identity.

She is the author of the guidebook, “Bienvenue en Mongolie”, published in both French and Mongolian, “The Book of Traveling Phrases”, published in French, English, and Mongolian, “Learn French with Zaya and Friends”, and an illustrated French-Mongolian dictionary.

Baatarchuluun Van is a calligrapher and painter of Mongolian origin.

 Multidisciplinary artist Khosro Berahmandi is Iranian, and he came to Canada in 1983 at the age of 22. He currently lives and works in Tiohtia’ke – Montréal. Khosro first studied Visual Arts at Concordia University in Montréal, after his studies in University Paris VIII. A prolific and renowned artist, he has produced more than 50 collective and individual expositions to this day, through projects carried out across Canada, Europe, and the United States. Khosro Berahmandi art embodies a microcosmic singularity, one derived from a personal mythology, that echoes the pictorial approach of the iconography of Indo-Iranian miniature paintings from the 12th to the 14th century. His creative trajectory demarcates an exquisite aesthetic embodied in the perpetual labyrinth of aggregate and enigmatic beings, a semi-figurative “bestiary” which both challenges and fascinates audiences. The works have universal appeal in their ambiguity of immediate reference, as if echoing a lost text once spoken that is now whispered.