Fin de série
Mass-produced girls struggle against their standardization and planned obsolescence. They resist – bodies rear up and cookie-cutter girls turn into wild women. A collaboration with Quebec writer Martine Delvaux (Les filles en série. Des Barbies aux Pussy Riot, 2013).
Ultimate Combat
Skilled at addressing the tensions between expressing female power and submitting to stereotypes, Manon Oligny presents mass-produced girls struggling against their standardization and planned obsolescence. A haunting look at the crushing confines and torment of conditioning. A scathing critique of a world in the quest for perfection.
Chic and stylish, almost perfectly identical, these young women are all cut from the same cloth. Dancers driven by the same perpetual movement, a soprano in an irrepressible musical frenzy, items from a production line whose noise creates a heavy, piercing blanket of sound. Complex formations unfold like a synchronized chorus line, a military parade or a cheerleading routine, but the machine keeps breaking down. Bodies rear up, gestures disintegrate, the robotic girls turn into women resisting their eradication. A manifesto on the fate of Woman in an era of fundamentalists and rampant consumerism.
Artistic director and choreographer Manon Oligny in association with Performers
Performed by Geneviève Bolla + Miriah Brennan + Marilyn Daoust + Karina Iraola + Anne Le Beau
Soprano Florie Valiquette
Assistant dramaturge Martine Delvaux
Composer Création Ex Nihilo aka Guillaume Bourassa + Sébastien Gravel
Artistic advisor and assistant to rehearsals Christine Charles
Lighting design Bruno Rafie
Technical director Julien Véronneau
Co-produced by Festival TransAmériques with the support of Production Rhizomes (Québec) + Transcultures – Centre interdisciplinaire des cultures numériques et sonores (Mons) + Espace Marie Chouinard (Montréal)
Creative residencies Escaut architectures (Bruxelles) + Espace Marie Chouinard
Premiered at FTA, Montreal, June 4, 2016
Manon Oligny (Montreal)
Manon fait de la danse
The difficulty of being a woman and coping with natural urges, stereotypes and other shackles has been a theme in the work of Manon Oligny since 1993. Whether their prison is physical, mental or relational, the heroines of her dance pieces carry out a relentless struggle to escape confinement under the impotent gaze of the audience, often placed in the position of voyeur.
