Lay Hold to the Softest Throat

Ellen Furey

Mixed Mystery and Vibrations

Lay Hold to the Softest Throat is the Shakespearean-sounding title of a choreography for voice with three performers, an affirmation of Ellen Furey’s interest in everything that emanates from the throat. Whether it’s a surreal text, a siren song, or a nasal voice, all things coexist in the harmony of dissonance, sidesteppping the logic of meaning, and together generating a space of quivering care.

By reviving director Jerzy Grotowski’s “holy actor,” a figure she heckles tenderly, Furey has some serious fun bringing together all the values and qualities she considers sacred, disparate though they may be. Lay Hold to the Softest Throat is lyrical communion, it is childlike play in adult bodies, it is cardboard props, committed physicality, medieval deities in 80s wigs…. The show is a mysteriously vibrant journey, guaranteed!

Credits

General info

About the artist

Ellen Furey (Montreal)

Canadian choreographer Ellen Furey left Cape Breton to study dance, voice, and theatre in Toronto before moving to Montreal in 2010. She has since had an extensive career as a contemporary dancer while developing her own work and experimenting with collaborative ways of making.

Full biography

Media Coverage

“Furey and Sharpe are talented performers both as vocalists and as dancers.”

Rachel Levine, Montreal Rampage, 2022-05-31 about High Bed Lower Castle

« À la manière des enfants qui inventent tout un royaume avec les objets les plus banals, les décors et les accessoires servent les fantasmes, grands et petits. »

Laurence Pelletier, JEU, 2022-05-30 about High Bed Lower Castle

« Embrassant les mondes émergeant des mouvances et des corps, Ellen Furey et Malik Nashad Sharpe accueillent l’inattendu et multiplient les perspectives. »

Penélope Desjardins, Artichaut magazine, 2022-05-29 about High Bed Lower Castle