In the fall of 2020, Festival TransAmériques launched FTA Respirations in solidarity with a community that has been heavily affected by the pandemic. In 2021, FTA reasserts a determination to foster artistic creation and encourage experimentation: Respirations is here to stay as a research and development lab for artistic practices.

The principal focus of FTA Respirations is the creative process. They offer a space for artistic research and development, along with time to oneself, which FTA’s Associate Dramaturg Emmanuelle Jetté has discreetly documented. Through a series of short texts, she outlines these projects below, which remain little-known to the public.

#1 – Inhabiting the space, now more than ever

Lucy M. May, Amanda Acorn and Catherine Lavoie-Marcus question the manner in which we inhabit our bodies, both individual and social, and the way we take care of them.

#2 – Writings of reality, a plural self

Anne-Marie Guilmaine, Marilou Craft and Sophie Gee have taken the path of writing to explore their own theatrical practices.

#3 – For a vibrant after-world

It is hard to believe that we will soon find ourselves on the same dance floor. Yet the projects of Parker Mah and Elle Barbara dare to defy reality.

#4 – The art of coming together

Artistic approaches from dancers and choreographers 7Starr, Naishi Wang and Benjamin Kamino favour exchanges, both behind and before the stage. Here is a tribute to dialogue.

#5 – Beyond Artistic Creation, Resistance

Works by Sovann Rochon-Prom Tep, Ellen Furey, Malik Nashad Sharpe and the company projets hybris all reflect an urgent need to reconfigure current practices and assumptions.

#6 – Bleu Néon

Real and imagined memories of a faraway—and at times imagined—Vietnam. Bleu Néon recounts the Kim-Sanh Châu’s quest for identity.

#7 – Parler mal

Gabriel Robichaud and Bianca Richard explore the stigmatization of accents and the internalized linguistic discrimination they face daily as Acadians.

#8 – The Cloud

The Cloud by Alexis O’Hara et Atom Cianfarani reveals the actual effect of each digital transaction and deconstructs the mythos of the cloud, an invisible space.

#9 – MANUAL

MANUAL by Christopher Willes and Adam Kinner seeks to disrupt the library experience by highlighting the sensory nature of reading.

#10 – Wahsipekuk / Kashipekut

With the project Wahsipekuk / Kashipekut, Ivanie Aubin-Malo and Natasha Kanapé-Fontaine are working to gather ancestral knowledge from their own and other Indigenous communities to preserve for future generations.