Transart PhD student Marie France Forcier presents New Work
“Crux”
An established choreographer, Forcier reclaims her identity as a performer following a series of practice interruptions due to trauma, relocation, childbearing and the pandemic, performing in three distinct works respectively symbolic of a past-present-future trajectory in her collaborations.
“Forcier dances with assurance and originality” Susan Walker, Toronto Star
Honoring a collaborative relationship spanning decades, Verisimilitude (2019) draws on movement and spatial aesthetics from Indian martial arts (kalarippayattu) and acrobatics. In the solo, internationally acclaimed Brandy Leary (Anandam Dancetheatre) examines Forcier’s physical structure’s folding and unfolding in a slowly expanding space of light. Working within a circularity that continuously inverts space, the dancing body moves towards the full verticality of standing.
Kimberley Cooper (Decidedly Jazz Danceworks, DJD), Calgary’s most celebrated dance company’s artistic director, developed a work within Forcier’s present physical context. Shape Shifter (world premiere), indeed challenges Forcier’s current European-descent contemporary practice by closely interweaving movement and musical intricacies in manners closer to Jazz choreography. With this exceptional creative contribution to the dance scene outside of DJD’s roster, Cooper stages a duet- or quintet- depending on the viewer’s perspective, where Forcier morph into different characters as she physically interacts with live musician Jeremy Gignoux.
Through Shadow Sound (world premiere), her own choreographic offering for the event, Forcier explores the analytical psychology’s concept of Shadow Self. Physicalizing the stretching and distortion of self-perception tthrough shadow images as metaphors extending from one body to another, Forcier performs this piece with emerging artist/ former student Cindy Ansah, as a mean of simultaneous investigating physical transferance and shadowing through time.
Forcier Stage Works is the byname under which Canadian artist Marie France Forcier presents her work since 2005. Forcier is a choreographer, performer, writer, and pedagogue of western contemporary dance forms. Through studio work, public performance and community initiative, she researches at the intersection of somatic practices, trauma studies and choreography. Forcier is Associate Professor of Dance and the Dance Division Lead at the University of Calgary’s School of Creative and Performing Arts. Website: www.calgarypromusica.ca
Forcier Stage Works presents:
Crux
Friday, March 25, 2022 – 8 PM / Saturday, March 26, 2022 – 2 PM & 8 PM
DJD Dance Centre (111 12 Avenue SE, Calgary)
TICKETS: $35 (adults) / $15 (students/artists)
INFORMATION: Visit www.forcierstageworks.net