My Toes Striving Till the Tips of Your Fingers
Jen Zoratti, Free Press Review Team, 2024
This full-length contemporary dance work from Montreal choreographer Johanne Gour is an absorbing meditation on our fickle physical body, and the ways in which it works as we expect and ways in which it doesn’t.
Performed by Amélie Albert, Alexandra MacLean and choreographer Gour — who uses a wheelchair — and set to a collage score, My Toes Striving… is all about contrasts in the body: struggle and ease, freedom and confinement, stiffness and flexibility, and just how quickly it all can change.
Sometimes Albert and MacLean move around like Barbie dolls that have been animated with no articulation in their knees and elbows, all sharp angles; other times they move fluidly, their bodies round and loose. Some of the vocabulary feels repetitive, but some is achingly beautiful — especially a scene in which Gour slowly, lovingly puts on pointe shoes she cannot stand in and bangs her feet on the floor in frustration.
All three dancers must come to each other’s aid at various points, occasionally reluctantly, helping each other to sit, to stand, to lie down. Sometimes, in order to move through the world, we must learn to lean on each other.
https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/2024/07/20/hook-line-and-sinker-even-more-fringe-play-reviews?cx_testId=49&cx_testVariant=cx_1&cx_artPos=4#cxrecs_s
Fringe Festival Reviews #6
D’arrache-pied jusqu’au bout de tes doigts
Jacqueline van de Geer, 2024
Johanne Gour is a mid-career choreographer working since 2009 and she once again presents her piece D’arrache-pied jusqu’au bout de tes doigts created in June 2023.
We enter the room where two dancers drag a body wrapped in a gray blanket until they find the ideal place to leave it, over to the side.
It is the beginning of a performance where the tangible and the intangible, the formal and the sensitive respond to each other in a very touching way.
We witness the body as a bearer of meaning.
The piece testifies to the fascination with the relationship between the obligatory immobility of those who sit and the capacity to set out to discover. Wheelchair-bound choreographer Gour is on stage alongside Alexandra MacLean and Esther Gaudette. For an hour, they illustrate the reality of a functional disability as well as the human need to get closer to others. This choreography is tender, relevant and takes us into a world of emotions.
It shows that Gour is interested in movement, in its mechanics, its organization, and its expressive capacity. Accompanied by two wonderful dancers, we appreciate the piece with its sensitivity, technical precision, and tone above a little madness.
A must see!
https://montrealrampage.com/fringe-festival-reviews-6-2/
Jen Zoratti, Free Press Review Team, 2024
This full-length contemporary dance work from Montreal choreographer Johanne Gour is an absorbing meditation on our fickle physical body, and the ways in which it works as we expect and ways in which it doesn’t.
Performed by Amélie Albert, Alexandra MacLean and choreographer Gour — who uses a wheelchair — and set to a collage score, My Toes Striving… is all about contrasts in the body: struggle and ease, freedom and confinement, stiffness and flexibility, and just how quickly it all can change.
Sometimes Albert and MacLean move around like Barbie dolls that have been animated with no articulation in their knees and elbows, all sharp angles; other times they move fluidly, their bodies round and loose. Some of the vocabulary feels repetitive, but some is achingly beautiful — especially a scene in which Gour slowly, lovingly puts on pointe shoes she cannot stand in and bangs her feet on the floor in frustration.
All three dancers must come to each other’s aid at various points, occasionally reluctantly, helping each other to sit, to stand, to lie down. Sometimes, in order to move through the world, we must learn to lean on each other.
https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/2024/07/20/hook-line-and-sinker-even-more-fringe-play-reviews?cx_testId=49&cx_testVariant=cx_1&cx_artPos=4#cxrecs_s
Fringe Festival Reviews #6
D’arrache-pied jusqu’au bout de tes doigts
Jacqueline van de Geer, 2024
Johanne Gour is a mid-career choreographer working since 2009 and she once again presents her piece D’arrache-pied jusqu’au bout de tes doigts created in June 2023.
We enter the room where two dancers drag a body wrapped in a gray blanket until they find the ideal place to leave it, over to the side.
It is the beginning of a performance where the tangible and the intangible, the formal and the sensitive respond to each other in a very touching way.
We witness the body as a bearer of meaning.
The piece testifies to the fascination with the relationship between the obligatory immobility of those who sit and the capacity to set out to discover. Wheelchair-bound choreographer Gour is on stage alongside Alexandra MacLean and Esther Gaudette. For an hour, they illustrate the reality of a functional disability as well as the human need to get closer to others. This choreography is tender, relevant and takes us into a world of emotions.
It shows that Gour is interested in movement, in its mechanics, its organization, and its expressive capacity. Accompanied by two wonderful dancers, we appreciate the piece with its sensitivity, technical precision, and tone above a little madness.
A must see!
https://montrealrampage.com/fringe-festival-reviews-6-2/