Mystic-Métallic is attuned to the ecological despair associated with the extraction of resources by the mining industry in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, where Audrée Juteau grew up and has lived since 2018. How do dance and politics fit together?

Zoey Gauld, Audrée Juteau, Catherine Lavoie-Marcus: The community has been highly engaged since 2022, when it was revealed that the Horne Smelter was releasing contaminants in levels that are harmful to the public health. Mystic-Métallic is a way of recognizing this social movement and contributing to it. It should also be noted that governments are using the energy shift as a pretext for ramping up extractivism.

In the face of the ecological and climate crisis, it would make sense to slow things down and reduce our consumption needs, but instead, what we’re seeing is a veritable mineral rush in the name of the energy transition. As Celia Izoard wrote in 2024, “In the name of the fight against global warming, we will need to extract as much metal in the next 20 years as we have done in the entire history of humanity.” Not to mention what happens to our technological waste. In Canada and the United States, as well as several other countries, this waste is sent to Rouyn-Noranda to be incinerated at the Horne Smelter and processed. Because of this retransformation process, which has a high environmental cost, a significant level of arsenic is found in the region.

In terms of specific actions, we educated ourselves about the state of extractivism, activism, and opposition to major mining projects in Quebec. We invited people to come and talk to us. We met with people from various communities (the heavy metal scene, environmental activists, mining sector workers, legal experts, artists, citizens). We went to see abandoned villages and met with prospectors and people impacted by prospecting, putting ourselves in direct contact with this dystopian world. We have tried to transform this grim reality through dance, as we continue to believe in its alchemical power.

In practical terms, how did this alchemy work? How did you translate what you had learned into art?

Using various techniques and practices, we tried to connect with the depths of the earth, to undertand its sadness and desire to protect itself. For example, Normétal, a short documentary film made by Gilles Groulx in 1959, served as a choreographic score that engaged our senses and imaginations. We also worked a lot on creating vibrations with both the body and the voice, which echoes the machinery of extraction, engines of colonialism that conquer the land, reaching all the way to our basements.

To connect with the depths, we also “plugged” our bodies into heavy metal, with its double bass drumming, which was originally an attempt to imitate the mechanical motion inside a motorbike engine. The guttural singing heard in metal music (growling) also seemed like an ideal means of connection, because it’s a subterranean sound. We took growling classes and tried to find movements corresponding to it. When you transpose extreme vibration into dance, you can’t keep it going for even a minute. It’s an unsustainable expression of power, which reflects the way the earth is exploited: it’s not sustainable because it makes regeneration impossible.

Growling led us into surprising emotional territory, monstrous dimensions that we dared to explore. From these emerged the gargoyle entities that watch over the mineral world. We also played with the contrast between geological time, which spans ages, and the ultra-rapid rhythm of heavy metal, which suggests the speed of extraction. Companies extract minerals as quickly as possible, then abandon the site.

Your approach to creation, which is horizontal rather than hierarchical, is aligned with the feminist and punk movements. How is that expressed in practical terms?

We are very influenced by Starhawk, a U.S. West Coast intellectual who defines herself as a feminist and neo-pagan sorcerer. She has written about the modes of organization used by various environmental movements and speaks about how individuals can change their role. Ours were never predetermined: each of us had the freedom to take on whatever role appealed to us during the creative process. It’s a very radical approach in terms of its spontaneity and acceptance of whatever happens.

As for punk, it’s a movement and also a lifestyle, a stance in relation to the established order. It advocates values that are in line with our way of seeing the world and working. We adopt the same resistance and resourcefulness embraced by the “do it yourself” movement. On stage, we throw our bodies around and make abrupt gestures, but just like in a mosh pit, we hold each other up.

Interview Fabienne Cabado

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Interview with N. Zoey Gauld + Audrée Juteau + Catherine Lavoie-Marcus | 2026

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