Louis Laberge-Cote
Louis Laberge-Côté is a Toronto-based dancer, choreographer, teacher, and rehearsal director. An acclaimed performer, he has danced nationally and internationally with over 20 companies, and has been a full-time member of Toronto Dance Theatre (1999-2007) and the Kevin O’Day Ballett Nationaltheater Mannheim (2009-2011). He has created over 70 choreographic works, which have been presented and commissioned in Canada and abroad.
His work has garnered him a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Choreography, as well as eight other individual and ensemble nominations for Performance or Choreography. He has been nominated for the KM Hunter Award in 2014, 2015, and 2016, and has received several grants from all three levels of government, the Chalmers Fondation, the Metcalf Foundation, the Laidlaw Foundation, and the Dancer Transition Resource Centre. NOW Magazine named him “Dance Most Valuable Player” in 2006 and “Best Male Dancer” in 2014. A sought-after pedagogue, he has taught classes and workshops all across Canada and is on faculty at Ryerson University. He currently shares the Vice-Presidency at the Canadian Dance Assembly and is the Chair of the Dance Committee at the Toronto Arts Council.
Current Art and/or research interest:
The moving body in the metamodern era: While considering traditional (Western and non-Western) dance techniques (classical, modern, and contemporary including ballet, butoh, Graham, Limon, Gaga, and Countertechnique), somatic practices (including Axis Syllabus, Body Mind Centering, Authentic Movement, Laban Movement Analysis, yoga, Pilates, Gyrokinesis, Open Source, and Skinner Releasing), other physical training methods (such as physical theatre, Qigong, Tai Chi, and vocal work) and several approaches to performance, improvisation and creation, I want to investigate, within a dance context, a way of working that links performative movement, technical rigour, modernist idealism, postmodernist relativism, contemporary aesthetic, and primal physical expression to a fully inhabited and malleable autonomic nervous system. With my proposed project, I want to expose myself to new information, methods, and perspectives regarding the body, performance, pedagogy and choreographic creation.
My main area of interests are: liminality (working with transitional states and impermanence; letting the fixity of ego dissolve; allowing constant transformations; living in a state of unknowingness and renewal), eidetic imagery (working with creative mental imagery to deepen the mind/body connection, to access imagination, and to transform physical, mental, and emotional pathways), flow (working in a state of complete absorption, merging action and awareness while losing reflective self-consciousness to achieve a profound sense of fulfilment and focus), paradox (working with contradictions, oscillating between opposing forces, floating in impossibility and mystery), playfulness (working with a sense of discovery, curiosity, pleasure, and joy), collaboration (working in a spirit of collaboration and exchange with colleagues, space, time, energy, the body, the senses, etc.).
More about the artist: HERE