With its celestial bodies launched into orbit, vibrating in a lustful and hypnotic ritual, Dog Rising mirrors the life cycle, the dynamic flow of matter. From primitive impulses to gestures that are at times sexual, at times mechanical, Clara Furey’s new creation comes together like a polyphony of pulsating bodies, in turns dissonant and in unison. The choreographer pursues her exploration of physical phenomena, initiated with Cosmic Love. She turns her attention to the way sound vibrations penetrate the bones, the way our skeletons absorb shocks, and listens closely to the presence of the body as it fully manifests itself.
On stage, Baco Lepage-Acosta, Be Heintzman Hope and Brian Mendez erect an architecture of pleasure. The trio is inhabited and nourished by empathy and acute attention to the energy of the body and to others. Through their tireless movement work, tensions are released in the endless repetition of cyclical gestures. Dog Rising invites us to embark on an extreme journey, a mesmerising, haunting, and penetrating spiral. It is an invitation to grow and regenerate physical strength through shocks and discomfort sublimated into joy, with a musical score by her loyal collaborator Tomas Furey.
Featured Artists
Clara Furey (Montreal) · Choreographer
After completing musical training at the Conservatoire de Paris, Clara Furey launched her career as a singer-songwriter.
She later trained as a dancer at the École de danse contemporaine de Montréal and worked with choreographers such as George Stamos, Damien Jalet, and Benoît Lachambre. An artist accustomed to collaborative work (Untied Tales with Peter Jasko, showcased at the Venice Biennale in 2016, Ciguë with Éric Arnal Burtschy), Furey created her first solo work as artistic director in 2017 with Cosmic Love, a collective piece with minimal gestures, exploring the voids and invisibilities in the interactions between body, song, and space.
As both a choreographer and a performer, Furey is interested in shifting codes within various forms of art by way of an interdisciplinary dialogue. In 2017, she performed When Even The 90 times alongside a sculpture by Marc Quinn as part of the Leonard Cohen exhibit at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. She is the choreographer of Rather a Ditch (2019), a solo piece written for Céline Bonnier centring on the permeability of bodies, as a response to Steve Reich’s album Different Trains.
Her works toured in numerous festivals including the Biennale of Venice, Les Rencontres Chorégraphiques in Paris, the Festival TransAmériques in Montreal, ImPulsTanz in Vienna, Performance Mix in New-York City and in different countries such as Lithuania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Spain, The Netherlands, Belgium, Azerbaïdjan and Bulgaria.
With Dog Rising, Furey concludes her exploration of tension and immobility, freeing previously contained energies in a performance focusing on persistence, groove and pleasure. She insists on the repetition of infinite loops through an extreme physical journey, a mesmerizing, haunting and penetrating spiral.
Be Heintzman Hope · Creator/Performer
Moving between sound and performance, Be Heintzman Hope is a facilitator of music, dance and embodiment
ritual based between Tio’tia:ke/Mooniyang, colonially known as Montréal and the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musquem), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Wateuth) peoples.
Their practice bridges dance training with conflict resolution, healing and community arts. They hold workshops in transitional spaces, dance institutions, universities, DIY contexts and festivals that center
queer, trans, racialized bodies and sex workers - offering meditation, singing and dance as medicines to those on the front lines of their healing journeys. They have facilitated workshops for various organizations
and institutions such as Sherpa Centre de Recherche, Queens University, University of the Arts Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, Mascall Dance, Toronto Dance Theater, Ponderosa, Studio 303, The Toronto
Dance Community Love-In, Articule, Festival TransAmériques and The Center for Gender Advocacy.They dance in Clara Furey’s recent creation, Dog Rising - alongside Winnie Ho, Brian Mendez, and Baco Lepage-Acosta. This endurance piece uses repetition to explore primitive impulses, dissonance, unison, and
polyphonic vibration. Simultaneously, artist supported by Parbleux, Be is in the process of creating a multi-media ambulatory performance and installation. Their studies in eroticism, energetic boundaries, meditation, medicine, trauma, healing, illness, and death are at the foundation of their practice. A larger part of this work is a quest to co-create alternative economies and community-based structures of radical tenderness and care.
Brian Mendez · Creator/Performer
Originally from and living in Montreal, Brian Mendez has always had an interest in the art of dance and it was first in urban dance that he began his training. At 20, he attended the Urban-Element Zone dance studio (2013) where he took classes in Hip-hop, Waacking and Dancehall. A little later, he did a pre-university program in contemporary dance at Collège Montmorency (2014-2016), before beginning his training at
the École de danse contemporaine de Montréal (2016-2019). It was during his studies at EDCM that Brian discovered Voguing, a style born in Harlem, New York by the Latin American and African American LGBTQ+ community. This dance becomes for him a form of expression that brings together an entire community. At EDCM, Brian had the chance to collaborate with Kyra Jean Green, Edgar Zendejas, Darryl Tracy, Catherine
Tardif, Virginie Brunelle, Iker Arrue and Marie Béland. A graduate of EDCM, Brian continues his education on Voguing and its culture in order to share it in Montreal. He dances notably in Dog Rising by Clara Furey,
an endurance piece that uses repetition to explore primitive impulses, dissonance, unison and polyphonic vibration.
Baco Lepage-Acosta · Creator/Performer
Baco Lepage-Acosta is a trans/non-binary multidisciplinary homebody that occasionaly comes out to play. A slow walker at heart, although they can speed up, they work in resistance to linear time. Some might use adrift to characterize their early adult years, but really they prefer to call it life. The years spent busking from coast to coast, juggling clubs, standing on one foot, on a ball with a water bottle on their head eventually lead them to the journey of the Quebec circus school, where they graduated in 2019.
Now based in Tio:tiá:ke/Mooniyang, colonially known as Montréal, they have been working on Paysages Dynamiques- a juggling piece that centers simplicity and collective listening, directed by Erika Nguyen and Jimmy Gonzalez-Palacios, as well as their own solo project 1+1≠2, a juggling playground installation research. Poetics to Activate the Thechnology of the Body is a collaborative performance video series with Be Heintzman Hope, inspired by guided meditations and the “how to” approach of a work-out video. Baco has taken this technical interest in video to the next level by starting Film Production at Concordia University in
September 2021.
Their main inspirations to date are: the fleuve, snuggles, ice cream, dogs and puppycats (in no particular order). They take joy in learning, jokes, relaxing, curiosity, honesty and friendship.