EQUILIBRIUM

In celebration of Women's History Month, Ballets Jazz Montréal is proud to unveil a heartfelt collaboration entitled "Equilibrium" with the esteemed photographer, visual artist, mother, and feminist - Maude Arsenault.

Continuing the company's lineage that was founded by two incredibly strong women, Alexandra Damiani, our current Artistic Director, who also identifies as a dancer, mother, mentor, and advocate for a feminine and human approach, is no stranger to the adversities that have plagued women in the dance world. She recently said, "The world of dance is struggling to reconcile a history of abuse and stigma towards women who decide to become mothers with a profound need to respect and appreciate the artist as a whole. This is slowly changing. Passionately and humbly, I want to play my part. I don't see feminity as gender specific. It is an energy that exists in all of us and something necessary in cultivating complete well-rounded human beings."

Moreover, in a recent article in Le Devoir, Maude explains that "a significant part of my recent practice denounces the oppression and aggression committed against women. Yet all my work evokes a certain gentleness. I think the idea of using the power of gentleness as an act of resistance defines my practice. [...] When my daughter became a teenager, I asked myself a lot of questions about what society imposes on young girls, and I realized that there were big problems to denounce." Her work aims at reconciling these issues and finding a way to express them through gentleness.

After several years behind the lens in the fashion world, Maude shifted her artistic focus toward visual arts in 2015. Her work invests the themes of female representation, bodies, and public/private spaces within the framework of a photographic and material approach that oscillates between abstract compositions, self-portraits, landscapes, and documentary images. She explores from the photographic, moving, and printed images, collages, sculptures, performances, and installations. In doing so, her projects deploy bodies as spaces and unexpected spaces of the body, in a perspective of self-determination for women. 

We hope you enjoy this creative offering as much as we enjoyed exploring this space. It is our small contribution to all the incredible women who have come before us and to those iconic women whose voices and grit have shaped this company. 

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CREDITS  

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Artistic Direction Alexandra Damiani with our artists

Photographer Maude Arsenault

Videographer of the teaser Ariane Tara

Music The Long Dark by Scott Buckley

Sylist Patou - Agence Humankind