Poetic Encounters with the Present

Montreal, Tuesday, January 28, 2025 – Festival TransAmériques today unveiled four shows of its next edition, taking place in Montreal from May 22 to June 5, 2025. FTA’s co-artistic directors Martine Dennewald and Jessie Mill proudly announced that the Festival will feature new works by two leading figures in Quebec’s performing arts world: danses vagabondes by Louise Lecavalier and Hiroshima Mon Amour by Christian Lapointe. There will also be two shows by international artists pushing the boundaries of contemporary creation: Hatched Ensemble by the South African choreographer Mamela Nyamza and Wayqeycuna by the Argentinian director Tiziano Cruz. These shows will be presented along with Taverna Miresia and LACRIMA, two major theatrical works previously announced in November.

The four shows announced today provide a taste of the discoveries in this year’s Festival, with over half of the invited artists making their first appearance at FTA or, in some cases, in Canada. Their bold, vibrant work breaks free from the shackles of traditional ballet and opera, locks horns with the conventions of literature and cinema, and celebrates the invention of unique languages drawing on the future and the distant past. As usual, FTA delivers extraordinary experiences and powerful, poetic encounters on both a small and large scale: an invitation to dance, a call to celebrate, and an appeal to our collective intelligence.

Lecavalier in All Her Glory

Louise Lecavalier is often described as a ball of fire, a performer of incomparable virtuosity. But beyond such commonplace comparisons, she is above all a “glorious fool,” someone who dances with all her gut and heart. The connection between her and FTA goes back many years: in 2008, the Festival presented one of her earliest works as a choreographer, Is You Me, followed by Children + A Few Minutes of Lock (2010), So Blue (2013), Mille batailles (2016), and Stations (2021). This year brings the North American premiere of danses vagabondes, a solo piece inspired by the many faces and stories of the vagabond—a figure driven by an irrepressible desire for freedom.

danses vagabondes will also be the centrepiece of FTA’s benefit evening on Tuesday, June 3, 2025, celebrating the work of this immensely talented and generous artist.

An Opera for Hiroshima

Festival regular Christian Lapointe likes going where no one expects him to go. Along with the Australian composer Rósa Lind, he revisits Hiroshima Mon Amour in search of the opera that lies concealed within the cult film by Alain Resnais and Marguerite Duras. Paying tribute to the film’s remarkable modernity and uncompromising script, this contemporary opera for eight instrumentalists and three singers defies conventions and blurs the boundaries between genres. Developed in collaboration with Quatuor Bozzini and the opera company Chants Libres and incorporating a live performance by filmmaker Karl Lemieux, Hiroshima Mon Amour is—like its namesake—a bold and passionate cry for peace.

A Vast Liberation Movement

A revered artist in her homeland, Mamela Nyamza has been writing an alternate history of dance for almost 20 years by decolonizing bodies and practices. In Hatched Ensemble, the South African choreographer and activist invites ten ballet dancers, an opera singer, and a musician to revisit her well-known autobiographical solo Hatched (2007). In this radically beautiful and subtly spectacular work, Nyamza deconstructs the norms of the classics. As the rigour of ballet gradually gives way to a dance of liberation, voices and movements revel in the joy it brings. Powerfully invigorating.

Accessing the Andes

In 2023, Argentina’s Tiziano Cruz stunned audiences with Soliloquio and the parade leading up to it; now he returns with the final instalment of his trilogy that weaves together family history and a critique of neoliberal power structures. Wayqeycuna (“my brothers” in Quechua) is the story of his return to his Indigenous community in northern Argentina, evoking life in the high Andes with words and images. Alongside the games and pleasures of childhood and the festive traditions, there is poverty, exclusion, and danger. After previously giving a voice to sadness and anger, Cruz now seeks peace of heart and reconciliation. Outside the community, there is no salvation.

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Four major shows announced for this year’s FTA

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