Art never rests—and neither does the FTA!

Montreal, March 24, 2021—The Festival TransAmériques has always been a huge collective effort, and this year more than ever! Despite everything we’ve been through, we’ve envisioned with renewed urgency a Festival that will bring us together, to celebrate the joy of the indoor experience. We very much hope that the FTA will once again be presented in theatres and public spaces. For the first time, the Festival will offer virtual programming. With two months to go, it is with great emotion and excitement that Artistic Director Martin Faucher is now unveiling seven productions, including six world premieres, that will be part of the 15th edition of the FTA from May 26 to June 12, 2021.

“For a year now, the artists have been hard at work. Even invisible, even in the shadows, they have not stopped creating. Because the dream doesn’t sleep, and the imagination has no curfew.” — Martin Faucher

We are delighted to be able to present the latest works of two exceptional Quebec artists, Louise Lecavalier and Marie Brassard. After the dazzling duets So Blue and Mille batailles, Lecavalier offers Stations, an intimate and high-spirited solo in which she sets out on a dizzying odyssey in quest of her own personal truth, presented by La Presse. The incomparable woman of the theatre Marie Brassard is endlessly fascinated by Japan, a country she has visited many times over several decades. In her most ambitious project to date, Violence, she draws inspiration from these lands to penetrate, through music, images and words, the mystery linking creation and destruction.

As a follow-up to Post coïtum, which was part of the 2020 FTA before being interrupted, Mélanie Demers is now returning with a brand-new work. As a reaction to the harshness of the world, to its callousness and acrimony, she is proposing a pagan Mass with La Goddam Voie Lactée. Inspired by the constant mourning engendered by our age, the artist and five female performers reflect upon the notion of incompletion.

The multidisciplinary artist 2Fik embodies 100 characters, all of whom burn with an ardent desire. In La romance est pas morte, 2Fik ! these avatars meet on a dating site imagined by the artist-performer. The app is a virtual space in which the public is invited to interact with these characters, to chat with them, and—who knows?—to seduce them. During the Festival, the public will even be able to meet them in the flesh during a performance spanning several days, seven hours a day.

BOW’T TRAIL is the name of the vast project carried out over several years and in different countries by the Montreal artist of Haitian origin Rhodnie Désir (Grand Prix de la danse de Montréal 2020). BOW’T-Tio’tia:ke (“Montreal” in Kanien’kehá:ka) represents a new and essential phase of the project. This three-part work, presented in outdoor locations charged with memory, examines our city’s slave-owning past. Surrounded by musicians, the choreographer explores the heritage of Afro-descendant peoples of the Americas in a powerful hymn to resistance.

Two works will be installed in the garden of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. Lara Kramer, choreographer of Oji-cree and Mennonite heritage, explores in Them Voices the artist’s body in relation to memory. In this confined urban space, she creates a world where stories meet to question the impact of our past and present actions on future ancestors.

The land of Montreal is not what it once was, but it still lives under our feet and around us. Uprooted too quickly, the trees, like the elders, have disappeared without passing on their knowledge. Meshtitau (“he destroyed everything in his path” in Innu), by the multidisciplinary Pekuakamilnuatsh artist Soleil Launière, is an ode to ancestral roots and healing. By following the trajectory of the sunset, this performance invites us to repair the broken links with the land and the ancestors.

These 7 FTA co-productions are among the 23 shows to be presented in this 15^th edition, which will be held from May 26 to June 12.

See you on April 27 for the unveiling of the full program!

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7 shows offering a sneak peek of the 2021 edition

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