Stir Q&A: Vancouver International Dance Festival's Virginie Brunelle talks about strings, artificial grass, and beauty
The Quebec artist’s Les corps avalés, performed live with the Molinari Quartet, explores human fragility with intense musicality
Les corps avalés. Photo by Vanessa Fortin
Vancouver International Dance Festival presents Les corps avalés at the Vancouver Playhouse from February 28 to March 2
POETIC CONTEMPORARY DANCE will meet swirling live classical music, as Montreal choreographer Virginie Brunelle teams up with the Molinari Quartet at this year’s Vancouver International Dance Festival.
Featuring seven dancers with the quartet onstage, the work is called Les corps avalés, translating as “Swallowed Bodies”—a reference to human fragility and the way we’re losing ourselves to technology, a dying planet, and other social unrest. Blades of artificial grass and scattered, luminous yellow grains allude to our disconnect from nature.
The notes of the acclaimed string quartet, which draws on selected pieces of contemporary repertoire, channel through the dancers’ bodies as they struggle to find resilience and hope. That intense, vibrating musicality may trace back to the Montreal choreographer’s own training as a violinist.
Stir spoke to her about this vibrant and achingly human piece making its West Coast debut—recommended by Montreal press as “elegant and intoxicating”, using “emotion as movement, emotion as transport.”
How long did you study violin and how do you think it has affected your approach to dance?
“From the age of 5 to 15, I was immersed in the world of classical music, playing the violin. From the age of 9, I was a member of youth orchestras, a quartet and a trio. With a traveling artist permit, our quartet played for several summers in the Old Port of Montreal, and we were often asked to accompany various events, like receptions and weddings. What drove me in music was that, through an instrument, notes, and melody, I could move people and bring them together. Music quickly became a way of expressing myself, a kind of second language, another channel of expression that went beyond words.
“Through my dance training, from the age of 20 to 26, it was the creative aspect that really appealed to me. By imagining bodies in relation to each other and to space, by creating new gestural languages, by conceiving evocative images, I rediscovered the same sensations and emotions as playing music. I also rediscovered the power to bring people together and touch them.
“My musical background has a direct influence on the way I create. Rhythm and musicality are always predominant aspects in my processes. The choreographic score is also written out, rather like a musical score—the melody, but also numerous annotations of dynamisms, which in my opinion infuse emotion and magnify the gesture. The music itself plays an important part in the ideation of the work. My music-listening sessions are essential to my approach, and I draw inspiration from the dramatic curves of musical works to imagine and compose my pieces.”
Do your dance works come from studio explorations or images, or something else? And what was the first inspiration for Les corps avalés?
“Much of the work is done before the rehearsals, but all the meat of the work is created in the studio. It's also very important for me to stay abreast of the group's synergy and what emerges from it, in order to nourish the process. In addition to my musical inspirations, literature and visual art also play a part in nourishing my processes.
“The primary inspiration for Les corps avalés was to bring together dance and live music on the same stage. I also wanted to stage a group of men and women torn between their deepest values and the desire to perform.”
Montreal choreographer Virginie Brunelle.
Have the social upheavals our world is experiencing right now directly influenced you—particularly the climate crisis?
“The climate crisis, turf wars, and our performance-based society are all monstrous issues that affect us whether we like it or not. For my part, I started creating to sublimate my anguish and existential questioning. Instinctive by nature, I've found creation to be a way of shedding light on darkness. I also like my work to reflect our behaviour and actions as a society. I observe how these upheavals affect us as individuals and as a community, and then transpose these observations into images and movements.”
Playing with the Molinari Quartet seems to bring together your two loves: strings and dance. How does having the Molinari Quartet on stage affect the piece and the performers?
“Live music undoubtedly adds another dimension to the show. The presence of the Molinari Quartet, four passionate musicians, brings an additional vibrancy to the production, adding power to the movement and even more humanity. A synergy is created between the musicians and the performers, and it's a real treat to be able to share this encounter with the audience.”
Where did the inspiration for the set pieces come from—the grass, and the yellow grains?
“I observe and hear many people around me (and myself for that matter) feeling a need to reconnect with the Earth. I believe that nature has the power to make us slow down, to offer us more contemplative time and to reconnect us with our primary needs. I realize that the performance-driven society in which we live swallows us up like an abyss; a spiral that's difficult to extricate oneself from.
“The idea for the grass strips initially came from a desire to talk about reconnecting with nature. But in the course of the process, the symbolism of these fake strips of green grass was transformed. The strips of grass became a mise en abîme of the rise of our individualism: every man for himself, erecting borders, tunnel vision. I wanted to say that, unconsciously, on a small scale, we are participating in the destruction of humanity. The grass also takes on another symbolism, becoming, for example, that our blinkers distract us from the disastrous effects of climate change. As for the yellow grains, they echo rituals and traditions that are being lost.”
Often, writers describe your work as “beautiful”, even if there are moments of pain or harshness. How have you come to define beauty through dance?
“First of all, I don't aim to do ‘beautiful’ as such, but I do want to move people! For me, I believe that ugly can be beautiful by humanizing it. In my work, pain is magnified to make it symbolic, pictorial, and intelligible. I try to deconstruct emotions, to take this abstract thing and give it a form, an image, a movement. Perhaps it's this process of materializing emotion, making the abstract almost narrative, that shapes the ‘beautiful’ and allows the viewer to see it! Who knows!” 
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