Image: Récital de danse, Jeanne Renaud et Françoise Sullivan, 29, 30 avril et 1er mai 1988, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, research image, Leisure studio, 2014.

Leisure @ Artexte

Spring 2014

As part of their residency at Artexte, Meredith Carruthers and Susannah Wesley (working together since 2004 under the name Leisure) will investigate the staging and re-staging of the dance Dualité, first performed by Jeanne Renaud and Françoise Sullivan in 1948.

Dualité has been performed and re-performed many times, notably, at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal in 1988 where, under Sullivan and Renaud’s direction, another pair of young dancers matched the recollected choreography of the original dance. In this project, Carruthers and Wesley investigate the documentation of these performances, both those of Renaud and Sullivan and by other dancers, hoping to gather together and make new meaning from the multiplicity of gestures that travel to us in the present.

Artist and dancer Françoise Sullivan and dancer Jeanne Renaud participated in the Automatiste movement (Sullivan was a signatory of Refus Global and author of a text that accompanied the 1948 manifesto) and laid the foundation for modern dance in Quebec. The modern choreography of Dualité both symbolizes and crystalizes the interdisciplinary collaborative nature of their practices. Performed by Renaud and Sullivan or by other dancers, each staging elicits new ways of understanding, interpreting and experiencing the work.