PuSh Play

Gabrielle Martin chats with Andréane Leclerc of Nadére arts vivants for the Season 3 Finale of PuSh Play! Throughout the Festival, Andréane will be sharing her practice through a variety of workshops and consultations for students and professionals as part of a PuSh Festival Artist Residency.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Andréane discuss:

• How do you integrate difficult contortion movements with somatic practices? What is the relationship between your practices 20 years ago and those you have today?

• How do you write circus?

• What does it mean to deconstruct and body and language of contortion?

• What is dramaturgy in this context?

• How are you working in the community?

• How does contortion inform non-contortionist bodies?

• What does relational ecology look like in the rehearsal process and onstage?

• What are you currently researching?

About Andréane Leclerc

A conceptual and performance artist, Andréane Leclerc is interested in human encounters that guide her towards interdisciplinary and interartistic processes. Trained as a contortionist (National Circus School of Montreal, 2001), she draws inspiration from her 20 years of circus practice to reflect on contortion as a philosophical posture and to develop her scenic language. Her approach, focused on listening, relational ecology and perceptive attention, is part of new body practices emerging from the somatic and performance fields.

In 2013, she completed a master's degree on the dramaturgy of prowess at the UQAM theater department. That same year, with her partner Geoffroy Faribault, she founded the company Nadère arts vivants in order to pursue her exploration of a body/matter evolving in sensation rather than in sensationalism. She created the conceptual pieces Di(x)parue 2009; Bath House 2013; Mange-Moi 2013; Cherepaka 2014; The Whore of Babylon Featuring The Tiger Lillies 2015; Sang Bleu 2018; À l'Est de Nod 2022 and (X) currently in creation. Her pieces have been presented in Tokyo, Florence, Cairo, Tenerife, Sao Paolo, Guadalajara, Chicago, Rouyn-Noranda and Montreal, on contemporary stages, as well as in museums and galleries.

In parallel to her artistic career, Andréane Leclerc is a teacher and offers contortion classes to physical artists since 2015. She also develops interdisciplinary dramaturgy workshops for circus, dance, theater and performance artists (Studio 303, En Piste, Playwrights workshop Montreal in Montreal, La Gata Cirko in Bogota, La Grainerie in Toulouse, Fabbrica Europa in Florence). In 2017, she participated in the creation of Cirque OFF, a living manifesto for the biodiversity of circus arts in Montreal (Studio 303). She also occasionally act as a dramaturgy and movement consultant (Dialogue of Disobedience & Black light, white noise by and with Dana Dugan, 2018 & 2022) and performs for various international projects (Variations pour une déchéance annoncée by Angela Konrad, 2012; The Tiger Lillies Perform Hamlet since 2016).

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

Majula joined the conversation from what is now known as Montreal, on the traditional territory of the Kanien’kehà:ka, a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst many First Nations including the Kanien’kehá:ka of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Huron/Wendat, Abenaki, and Anishinaabeg.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

00:02

Hello, and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Artistic Director, and today's episode highlights the dramaturgy of the circus body and relational ecology. I'm speaking with Andréa Leclerc of Nadir Arvivant, a performer, director, researcher and pedagogue. Andréa Leclerc has developed a somatic practice inspired by contortion for over 25 years. She creates transdisciplinary scenic works based on cooperation, listening and relational ecology. She's also a 2025 Push Artist in Residence, and will be sharing her practice through a variety of workshops and consultations for students and professionals throughout the festival.Find out more at our Push in the Community page. Here is my conversation with Andréa. I am thrilled to be in this conversation with you today. We're going to be talking about your practice and what you'll be up to at Push and what brings you here, what's brought you to this point in your career and what you're thinking about next. And just as we are about to get into that, I really just want to take a moment and acknowledge the land I'm on today. And, you know, this morning I was reading an article about PFAS or forever chemicals in our water, and I know we're all really aware of the signs of our extractive dynamic with the earth. And these signs are all around us and they seem to be pressing in daily. And I just I'm really incredibly grateful to live in this rich nature of so-called Vancouver, these unceded ancestral territories of the Musqueam Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Coast Salish peoples. And to reflect on what it means to be a citizen of these lands and to live in reciprocity, which, you know, a totally different posturing than this extractive dynamic that's got us here today.And again, where are you where are you calling from? And I would love you just to I would love to hear you share your relationship to the land you're on. Yes, thank you, Gabrielle. I would like to acknowledge that the dramaturgy called Spirit, which runs through another of the event creation, has been shaped by contact with various unceded indigenous territories where beings and their memories coexist. So I'm joining this conversation from Jojagi Mounia in Montreal, which has long been a meeting place for diplomatic activities between indigenous nations. You started practicing contortion over 25 years ago, and this has evolved into your own unique somatic practice and pedagogy. And many many people would not associate contortion with its references to circus, virtuosity, the extreme, you know, painful looking positions with somatic practice, which tends to refer to more internal mind body methodologies. I would love it if you can describe how you made the connection between contortion, the contortion you were practicing, you know, when you started 25 years ago and the contortion you practiced today.

03:13

Yes, that's a very good question, because it's actually at the core of my problematic that has been leading my research from all that disconnection between what I perceived and live and embody my contortion body and all the perceived from and the perception from the audience that they were projecting upon my body when I was doing more classical circus forms. So since I was very young, contortion always have been for me a place for breath and accessing imaginary landscape and other sphere that were for me very fertile in terms of creation. And I always wanted and so new narratives and so on. So I was really traveling throughout my body and it was a way to resonate with the world and a way to be and live, experience the world. And so that always have been something I wanted to share with the audience.But then I'm starting from a very classical approach of contortion. So I was I did my education at the National Circus School in Montreal and I graduated in 2001. So a few years ago now, I've been really, fun, highly skilled, like contortion practice. So sitting on the head on handstand with very precise code and codification from spectacular, I would say, marketing law, when I'm understanding that. And so by, but that was just a way to do. And so by traveling the world working as a contortionist, at some point, even though, like, I was also formed as a contemporary circus artist, I always felt so unsatisfied by the impossibility to reach the audience with what I wanted to express.So then I was like, okay, so then how can I do that? And at some point, I did one creation in Germany. And we it was the first time I was doing like, proper, I would say, research on quantum physics. And it was a show inspired by quantum physics. And we had talks with researchers and scientific and scientists. And there was like an opening on new possibilities. And so there was very clear dramaturgical choices that has been made in matter to be linked with the subject. And so for me, there was a before and an after, because with that creation, there was a possibility to question the codification of how to write circus.And so art did not add to happen in between the circus technique. But the technique and the body and the circus body could talk itself out. Then there was some limitation of my research by was I opening door to actually come back to the university in theaters studying dramaturgy of the body, where I really passed few years to deconstruct the language of spectacular deconstruct the language of contortion deconstruct the body of contortion to try to make this body a matter for scenic representation.And how does that body through contortion, of course, because that is my first entrance door, how does that body can generate imagination and stimulate the true sensation and kinetic kinesthetic, and also composition of the stage, stimulate the imaginary role of the audience? So how can it become a language that audience can read? And that is really dramaturgy, right? Like just for our listeners who may not be as familiar with that term, or when you talk about dramaturgy of the body or dramaturgy of the circus body.

08:00

I can also reflect on how I interpret that. But can you kind of outline that a little bit more? Actually, yeah, I think it's a, I can go further, it was more about then after that to deconstruct and enter this somatic practice, so a language. So I was not any more into like a circus language, but I was in an embodied practice of amplitudes. So that was how I could actually get out from the spectacular aspect from the contortion to enter like a more sensation tools of writing. But then after that, from And then I can develop more about what is made that somatic practice, of course, but then the idea was really to enter about into interrelation of the body and how like composition of the body can generate new ideas or new meaning through sensation.So basically, I've been working a lot upon Francis Bacon and logic of sensation of Gilles Deleuze in order to get out of a way to represent in a narrative way or in an illustrative way, but to really work around the figure and the dramaturgy of the sensation. And with the painting of Francis Bacon, it's also about how the body relate to the space and how the body relate to oneself and how the body relate to the overall and the triptych, so the whole composition of the painting together. So for me, that really became true, like an abstract body made of flesh, bones, sensation and finding new relation within the body, a place for new composition and rethinking all our perceptive idea upon the body and finding new possibility of adjustment to generate new meanings and new mental representation. And so new dramaturgy. Yeah. And I think that term or that word you used reading is really important, like how the audience reads that body.And so often in circus, you know, the acrobatic vocabulary of circus has been expressed in a really until very recently, like a kind of narrow piece, a narrow context with a lot of this projected narrative of, you know, the cabaret or, you know, certain often it's used in theatrical interdisciplinary context in the contemporary world where, you know, there's a there's a text narrative, but what is the what is what does the body say? And I think that you've kind of distilled, you know, hearing you talk about amplitude, distilled kind of the truth of the body through this vocabulary. And then it's like how to dive into that. And to really explore like, what is the truth of that language through the body, which I mean, I think it's obvious to say through the body when we're thinking, okay, circus is clearly usually such a physical practice, but also the the the research development has often physical research has often been a quite operated in a quite a different sphere from say, contemporary dance. And so I've felt that often, when we talk about dramaturgy in the circus realm, it's more like a theatrical dramaturgy in terms of, you know, there's a text or there's like, a storyline, and that is the the physical vocabulary inserts into that, rather than digging into the like, yeah, what is when you really dive into amplitude, or these things that you're referring to, what is that?

12:17

Where does that take you in terms of an experience for the audience and for the artist? I'm really excited by your work.And I guess I think you were already talking about what's been revealed, you know, yeah, you did your master's degree on dramaturgy, the circus body at the University of Quebec at Montreal. And do you have anything further to share about what that revealed has revealed to you? Yeah, but to answer what you just said, or to rebound on what you just expressed around circus, I think, yeah, there's a there was an idea in content in modern circus in mother to wish to tell a story that to break out the traditional circus was to add dance and theater to circus where in a more multidisciplinary approach and in the we're calling it more like a mosaic type of writing of following each of the act and the prowess, and then inserting some theater and dance. And so for me, I was more thinking about if if circus is an art form, it needs to be talking on its be capable to talk on its own and express itself on its own. So more about how to dig into the language not only of the circus, but of the prowess, which is normally a vocabulary, sorry, in the circus world. But now to see it really as a complex organization, to unfold that and see how we can recreate now new way of writing in matter to get out of a certain type of tendency and circus not to generalize, because there is very beautiful and extreme, complex works happening. But to I'm still talking about more like the new circus, maybe ideas was still in the cabaret and those more like popular format, I am interested into searching beyond the self and the eye and the meep to enter into something that the artists can talk about something that transcends the personal point of view. Of course, the la pajole, so what they want to talk comes from them, it's their fire. But then after that, through the art piece that they're creating, it goes beyond the eye and they can talk about other subjects and only what they are living inside their body to become something more an encountering between different people, a place to meet. Yeah, which is also unique, because often circus discipline, the whole discipline practice formation is often very, well, I was gonna say individual, yes and no, because interestingly, like I think circus training spaces or where circus artists practice day to day, often tend to be very communal spaces, sometimes more so than dance or community spaces, but clearly it depends where you are. But for example, in Montreal, that was my experience. But also so much of it is solo work, whereas the dance, often a dance student will be focused on developing their skill and their technique in the ensemble context. And obviously, this is a big generalization and it's discipline specific, but within circus, but that often there is such a it's such a self focused practice. So I'm really also interested in your work for how you're working in community through your pedagogical practice and in the how you've designed your creative process and the presentation of your work.

16:25

Yes, it's very interesting what you're saying because it's true that circus has a very solitude aspect to the development of their own discipline. The work of a circus artist is very personal.But then it's interesting how collectivity also organizes itself in a way of living in a type of nomadism or circus nomadism that is still happening and how all like how the circus is traveling as a ladean of that discipline. And so with what you're saying in terms of contortion, I think what I wanted to do is that even from within the circus world, contortion is the only practice that has its own body in terms of an apparatus. So all circus discipline is always in relation to an object. Contortion, its object is its own body. And so I felt really isolated within even the circus world. And so I think that need my personal need to build bridges, my need to be in relation to be in dialogue and to share my practice to find a way that through my practice and all what my practice have been giving me in terms of knowledge, because I really believe that the body's own knowledge are way beyond our mind that can produce.And so it was about how can I build those bridges to enter in dialogue to create new possibilities through that entrance door. And there's a question, how does contortion inform non-contortionist bodies that you've shared as a starting point for your creative approach, or at least in the recent years? So why does that question draw you in and what have you discovered so far? Um, yeah, I mean, in parallel to my studies, I've been asked to give contortion classes to non contortionist people, because people are very interested to do a contortion and explore. And that has been for me, a huge school, I learned so much from all those encounters. And it's a huge drive in my artistic process.Because contortion for me became, with that question became a philosophy, because it was not anymore about what one self can do, because we did a workshop of like 15 hours, I'm not going to show someone to sit on their own head. And so it was more about how to defocus from the goal oriented, and then to really enter a process. That's one thing. Also, because when we didn't 15 hours, or if we're goal oriented, and with contortion, it doesn't goes with the rhythm of the body. And so it's, and especially as we're getting older, because now I were more with professional artists, so we're not six years old anymore, or nine years old, where the body is all very soft and virgin to the life, we hold history, we hold trauma, we hold time that sits within our body has been forming, we hold also belief that has been also forming our body. So with time, by focusing on the process, I realize how the limits and the zone of resistance that we can feel that one that our construction of life has been forming us that we feel that is blocking us to access contortion is actually places of protection. And so we have to find gratitude towards those resistance. They are very important because they're talking to us and they have things to reveal us. So we cannot like avoid what our body is telling us.

21:06

So then, about how does contortion inform non contortionist bodies about how to get in dialogue with your body, and to listen to what your body has to say throughout the process, to dig into those limits that are constructions of oneself, to enter places of amplitudes and opening, because without that without passing those face it phases, then you the body will keep protecting you. So you need to acknowledge that and you need to work with those sensations.And so that's how I am shifting focuses and the mind and to enter in a place, a posture of listening. So now for me, contortion is a is a posture of listening is a posture to enter in relation is a place to receive information and then see how we can re transform them in movement. I love I love hearing you discuss your process and I think and your philosophy and I think it's especially exciting because it is so truly unique. I think also with circus being such a relatively young discipline, the number of practitioners locally internationally, who are really like teasing out or expanding upon a foundation of circus languages, it's really rare and it's really interesting.And so you create transdisciplinary scenic works, based on cooperation, listening, and you've spoken about relational ecology. So what does relational ecology look like in the rehearsal process and on stage? And I would love it if you want to talk about your piece, Alestinod, because I know that that's really an example of this transdisciplinary work, where you're really developing a relational ecology. The question how does contortion from non contortionist body and what I just kind of explained are is really the foundation about the piece of Alestinod.And so this whole philosophy and this idea how to embrace one's voice and one's history and how each individual are fundamentally essential for the survival of a group. And so as contortion is my, again, disciplinary entrance door, I am focusing on the experience of each of the artists within the performance and I am embracing their voice within the piece.And so with Alice the Nerd, I developed all based on the contortion systemic organization to access amplitude and ecosystem in a complex choreographical partition, which we are activating within very precise law of movement and interrelation. So it's not a choreographical piece with a beginning and an end and a very formal writing.The choice all the performers within Alice the Nerd engage their agency within the piece to get in relation. And so that's how I also reverse our idea about performance and it's performative piece, but not a performance piece because we are not producing movement. It's about how we're not producing and as it's a piece that question limits at structure, as I just explained about contortion, my idea about contortion, we're not pushing boundaries and we're not activating or we're not engaging a language, which is a colonial way of thinking.

25:39

It's really just a system of law and organization within the group with a very precise, like I said, writing of organizing the movement where each of the participant performers receive information and transform them with their agency and so contribute. So somehow being in that piece is an action verb. So it's not just a state. So you are and so you take action in full consciousness.And so with this, then there's like very complex composition that are happening through just living time and space throughout the body. And so that's how I would explain more the relational ecology. And with this also, I'm rethinking my posture as a choreographer. So I've been developing this complex, um, scenic writing, uh, with the dramaturge, um, Miriam Stefani Peraton Lambert. And I work with local performer, uh, every time I remount or even recreate, um, locally, the piece, Aleister Donaud. So with this approach comes from an ecological statement also to first to create big scale piece, because there's between 13 and 30 people on stage. and but without traveling, first of all. Secondly, it takes a lot of time. So I'm not just like passing on a formal piece. It is a practice that is being shared. And so that the local artists are learning and engaging in. And so this takes time and time is resources, but times allow that regenerating nation of also resources and creates meaning. And then we did this as the piece has been already created as I see my posture as a choreographer in those places as a facilitator. And so I have a role, but it's not a dominated role. I have a role, of course, to hold the space, guide the performer, show and share the practice and so on. But there's a kind of, I try to reverse or rethink what is an ethical posture of a choreographer in the relation with the performer, especially contortion that cannot push boundaries, but how we can create together and turn in dialogue together through the piece that is that place of encountering and doing together. So how can we find how can we do together? And so at a question, also the model of creation and so the performance, of course, a question, also the model of production and touring, especially, but locally and also internationally. And so all those places of resistance become a place about dialogue and how we can do together. So it's about also facing realities and different realities and how you can acknowledge them. And so not to blend everyone in one way and diminutive way about who has more resources is more about, okay, how can we make that out, how we can find solution. And so we have to rethink the model. So it's really a place, I think, Alison, that is really a piece that demand to apply very at the core, or the idea and new idea about the situation and the ecological crisis we're facing on now. Getting out of theory and let's get it into practice. So it's not perfect. There's a lot of places, but I really wish that I'm contributing for evolving and it's a place of learning and it's a place of mutual growing and a place to stimulate critical thinking through practice.

30:22

And as you're speaking, I'm hearing about the relational ecology on the micro level, on the macro, or maybe not the micro, but like the different layers of how you are creating the work and sharing the work with the public and the relational ecology between the bodies in the space, the composition, the process of formation and the philosophical process that I'm sure is woven through that or the philosophy that's woven through that process with the artists. And then there's the relationship between how your work intersects with the world in terms of embedding for a longer term process, a more durational process, not touring with a large cast and really thinking about how your work actually connects and relates to the local culture and the local bodies.It's really fascinating. And having experienced an excerpt of this work, it's also, even though you say it's performative and not as much a performance, and I think that's a really interesting and differentiation to make, and I can see the truth in that, it was incredibly captivating. So the depth of the work in terms of the the action of being that you've created and how you've worked out that with the artist is really, really fascinating and compelling to watch. And we hope that we will be lucky enough to host this piece in the future here so that people can experience it from the inside and from the out.I would just love to hear about what you are currently researching, where you're going, what direction you're going with all this wealth of practice and research behind you. Many things. No. I think in the continuity, Alice did not open in 2022, so directly while right in the middle of a pandemic. We've been touring that piece, but first of all, we've been touring that piece in Armenia, Mexico, Buenos Aires, so Argentina and France, and also in Quebec in different regions here. As I just said, Alice did not, it's an ongoing recreation process. So I feel I have so much to learn from Alice did not still. So that's kind of, you know, you know, let's see what is the life of Alice did not will be. But of course, like that's a big, big trend that will live within me for still, I think many years because I still have a lot to learn from it. But in parallel, I have I'm also developing a solo, so another traditional performance. But I have probably for another four years maybe to do research for it because I, as I said, like I am returning to my own body right now, I am facing a place of rupture in my life in terms of like, I think with all the change of context in the world, I am questioning a lot about what is the meaning and role of art into the society.And I want to be really aligned with that. And I am with all Alice did not the master degree, the workshop I've been giving. I am just seeing how much all the bodies knows way more that we do human beings that are inhabiting our body. And so I really want to put myself as an artist to listen what nature has to say, and what my body has to say, and what are the new contemporary mythologies that are that are going to be born from what exists already.

34:51

So see differently. So a big shift in my posture, my way to read, my way to listen, my way to receive, and trying to listen what is happening and what are the shifts right now.And so encounters with other artists, people, culture, be in contact with different realities, learning, listening, and see where this will form itself into the new project. I love that term new contemporary mythologies. That's really beautiful. Thank you so much, Andrean. It's been an absolute pleasure to speak with you. I have been following your work for a very long time coming from the circus world myself. I've just been so inspired about your practice from afar, and I'm really so pleased that we've been able to welcome you, that we will be hosting you very shortly in residence here, so that other people have the opportunity to get to know your practice in a variety of ways. Thank you so much, Gabrielle. I'm so looking forward to being in Vancouver and meet everyone over there, the land and the people.

36:12

That was Gabrielle Martin and André-Anne Leclerc from Nader Arvivant. Throughout the festival, André-Anne will be sharing her practice through a variety of workshops and consultations for students and professionals as part of the Push Festival Artist Residency.The Push Play podcast is produced by myself, Ben Jarland, and me, Trisha Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. This is the final episode of Season 3 of Push Play.We hope you'll have a chance to get out to see some of the works being presented in Vancouver and online January 23rd to February 9th. If you'd like to explore more of Push over the past 20 years, please look at our special 20th anniversary retrospective Push Play Season where Gabrielle Martin talks with an artist from one of the shows in each of the past years of Push. And to discover the full lineup of more than 20 works of theatre, dance,

37:06

music and multimedia performances at the

37:09

25 Push Festival, visit pushfestival.ca and follow us on social media.