L'évolution du ballet
in collaboration with l'École supérieure de ballet du Québec
presents One career, One story An interview with Rhodnie Désir
"L'évolution du ballet", an initiative led by young people,
not only invites Canada's youth to rally around equity, reconciliation
and racism against Black persons within the ballet world,
but also gives them the means to achieve this goal.
The talk is presented by two leaders of the project
- Hello, my name is Victoria, - And I'm Héloïse
and welcome to One Career, One Story A discussion with Rhodnie Désir.
This is a learning session for the Ballet Forward project,
which is a project that brings together about 30 students
from Canada's five major professional ballet schools.
It is a project that allows us to address issues of fairness,
reconciliation and racism
directed towards Blacks in the ballet world,
but more importantly, to find ways to combat these issues.
Our goal is to make the ballet world as well as the artistic world
more inclusive and accessible to the entire Canadian population.
So today, we have the chance and the great honour
to welcome Rhodnie Désir.
Mrs. Désir is a documentary choreographer, dancer and chief creative officer
with RD Créations, her own company.
She has produced around 30 creations
and recently collaborated with Danse Danse.
Some of her projects earned her two Montreal dance awards :
the Envol Award and the Dance Grand Prix.
Rhodnie's choreographic signature is linked to her roots in Haiti,
as well as other parts of the Caribbean, Africa, Central Africa,
and sub-Saharan Africa.
We can refer to her style as "Afro-contemporary".
Rhodnie is an amazing and inspiring woman
and most importantly, she's truly involved in the community,
which earned her international recognition.
Thank you very much, Rhodnie, for being with us today.
I will hand over to you,
so you can talk to us about your career and everything.
Thank you, thank you very much for this introduction.
It's a real joy to be with you,
because it takes me back to the time when I was your age
and was dreaming of making a career in this field.
How would I summarize my career?
I think it's important to mention that I grew up...,
I have been dancing since I was three years old
and my initial training was classical ballet.
And later on, I wanted to join the artistic world,
but of course, as I was coming from a Haitian family,
the understanding and explanation were like,
"We want to make sure that you can get by in life and in the arts,
and maybe that's not the right path."
That was the mindset back then.
So, I went looking for another training,
while I was still pursuing my dance classes.
Which means that I was pursuing two diplomas at the same time,
one in communication and marketing,
and another one in dance, which was classical dance back then.
However, at the same time,
I directed my practice a little more towards Afro-contemporary dances,
as you have explained correctly.
I would summarize my career as a succession of milestones
where I would constantly evaluate how far I've gone,
and how I can be useful,
how my dancing can be useful, and how art can be useful.
And I like to say that what I'm doing today,
is what is called “documentary choreography”
and we can delve more into the subject.
It is a methodology that I wanted to develop
to achieve my own ambition.
But maybe in five years,
dancing will help me to think about architecture.
Then maybe in ten years, it will help me to consider
developing a new cultural hub.
I see dance as an element of my career,
as a tool to open new doors.
And that's how I would summarize the vision of my career.
You mentioned that you are a documentary choreographer.
I'm not sure what it means, can you please further explain?
You also said that you are a Chief Creative Officer,
when we last spoke,
so these are the two things I would like to know.
Actually, one thing I can say is that what I'm currently doing
is exactly what I was doing when I was seven years old.
When I was young, I used to live in Laval,
in a community nearby, for people who live outside of Montreal,
it's not very far from the city of Montreal.
And I was simply curious about my neighbours, about humans,
and I wanted to understand how humans work.
So, some might say that it is a journalistic approach,
others, that it is an anthropological approach.
But in all of this, I just wanted to understand how humans work.
Then I realized that dancing and asking questions,
when you create, when you want to create,
may sometimes lead you to make some assumptions.
What is documentary choreography?
I could summarize it by saying that it's done in four main stages.
Often, an idea will arise in me when I see a social challenge.
For instance,
if I consider the current situation around deportations
happening in the United States,
it's a disaster, it's chaos,
and it raises a lot of questions regarding injustice and unfairness
throughout the world.
In relation to that,
I can choose to either get angry in front of my screen or to wonder,
How about interviewing people with different mindsets,
so I can better understand what's going on,
and then maybe I could make use of my art
to offer a vision,
a hypothesis in relation to what's going on.
So, I start by holding interviews.
I have my question: What is bothering me?
What's making my stomach ache?
What makes me want to scream, to shout, what is it that seems so unfair to me?
After that, I ask myself: Who could I meet?
And then, I will go and meet some experts in a specific field.
On this topic, they may be sociologists, politicians, social workers,
migrant-hosting organizations
or people with connections
with the communities who are being deported.
They could be family members,
or the very people who are being deported, who are being transferred,
they could be policemen, policewomen.
From there on, my backpack is full of information.
And there are lots of tools in it.
Then, as I reshuffle those tools in my bag,
I can hand some of them over to some musicians who might say,
"I can hear a rhythm there."
And this rhythm might inspire me to make some types of gestures,
gestures that are more circular
or that have more weight, more physicality, more poise,
movements that are sharper,
because someone's telling me, "It's going so fast, I am confused."
So, the image arising in me from these words,
is one of sharpness, of physicality,
weight, aerobatics,
flowing down to the ground.
So, I start from my idea, from the question,
I bring this to the witnesses, to the specialists,
the specialists are the human element.
Their testimonies take me away towards other creators and designers.
I bring this to the interpreters,
and all along this line of process, I also compose songs.
I compose songs in an invented language.
I like to say that it's a language that I don't speak,
but that I speak secretly.
And after that,
I arrive at the work phase.
This work is a hypothesis that I offer to the citizens
who become my audience.
So, documentary choreography allows us
to preserve the peoples' memories,
it allows us to excavate social issues based on orality.
It eventually takes me back to one of my great loves which is orality.
Through the ages,
oral tradition, which means speaking to each other,
telling stories to each other,
"I tell you something, keep it secret...",
has transcended all ages.
I think it will beat AI for a very long time.
So, I rely on this basis,
then after that, I can develop my work
and that's what I have been doing through most of my works.
So, that led me to connect with specialists :
experts in social sciences, anthropology, history,
ethnomusicology, ethnology and what have you,
to connect with environment specialists
in relation to climate change as requested.
It got me to connect with specialists like, at the present time,
experts in theology, thanatology, and astrophysics.
Now, how will the body deploy this through documentary choreography?
It's about listening,
then trying to put your body and knowledge at the service of the cause.
That's all I can say.
So that's it, it was a lot of talk,
but basically, this is what documentary choreography is about,
I hope it was clear.
I've watched videos of a choregraphy that you have created about the heart.
That's right.
I found it really beautiful,
but I think that, it's documentary choreography,
you really represented not the heart just like that,
but the actual human heart in motion.
I saw some videos and I found it really beautiful.
What is really interesting,
actually, what I find fascinating with documentary choreographies,
is that truly, I could do this all my life.
It's the one thing, I can tell myself, when I'm 90 years old,
I can still reflect on
how we could explain to people
the challenges experienced by young people
who cannot find their bearings, for example.
Or by a five year old child who suffers from malnutrition
but who still has to go to school.
How can we tell the story of his resilience?
What's interesting about the story of the heart,
about Symphonie de cœurs,
is that I always thought that I'd never create a work about love,
because I don't think that I have a lot to say,
and the theme in itself does not impress me that much.
It's not that I don't care about actual love,
but because I couldn't find any core that I wanted to address.
And when I became interested in cardiovascular diseases
and stories of resilience that people live through,
and how, within the body,
the heart and the entire cardiovascular system,
which is in direct connection with the dancing process, works,
and going into operating rooms, seeing open hearts,
and the whole system as it moves,
and seeing how the surgical teams in the operating rooms work,
which are actual choreographies being performed before your eyes...
As I left these spaces, I had plenty of materials,
which I could use, together with the conductor,
to provide guidance to the orchestra.
I would say things like,
"Now they should play with more affirmation,
because when instruments fall in the operating room,
I need us to create real chaos in order to set the scene."
I was able to recount each step of the cardiac transplant,
what actually is emptiness like,
and I was able to tell the musicians,
"You've been excelling at playing the same thing for maybe 40 years,
but now, I need you to act as if you didn't know how to play anymore,
because that is what a cardiac transplant is about.
A new heart is implanted in your body,
your body is on the blink,
and no matter how top-notch your technique may be,
you must instantly drop it all
and start again from scratch.
So that was a challenge also for the musicians.
In other words, documentary choreography,
to make a long story short,
is really a tool that allows us to better challenge dance,
to better challenge the power of art,
and to better challenge
where the human being stands today in society.
It's really fascinating.
It's clear that you are very present
and involved in all social problems.
Is there a personal reason or story
why you became truly interested
in the problems we face in our society today?
Was there something personal that really gave birth
to this urge to research and create?
Yes, actually,
I can mention that in 2014...
I started choreographic methodology in 2015.
That's when I officially started the documentary choreography methodology.
In 2013, I created a piece called BOW'T
which talks about migration and deportation,
and I wanted to establish a bridge between these two themes.
And when the time came to tour this BOW'T piece,
here in Montreal, in Quebec,
my agent and I came up against systemic barriers.
How were they expressed?
Mainly, we were told things like, "Rhodnie's dance is very traditional",
whereas I have never performed traditional dances in my created works.
I did take classes,
but it has nothing to do with what I present.
So I realized that there was really a big misunderstanding issue
and many hurdles were raised
beyond a mere analysis of the excellence of my work,
of whether it is excellent or not,
if the understanding of what excellence can be
for a work expressed in a language that is not that of classical ballet
or eurocentric contemporary dance,
how contemporary dance is vulgarized,
I saw that there were barriers,
and a lot of education was yet to be done.
So, I wanted to leave the milieu,
as I couldn't picture myself in it anymore.
But a beautiful life saver manifested
in the shape of an idea,
which was to develop a project whereby I would demonstrate
to what extent African and Afrodescendant cultures
are purely contemporary.
And even if they are ancestral,
they are indeed contemporary
because they directly combine with the people who are creating
and renewing it in the present moment.
So I created BOW'T TRAIL.
BOW'T TRAIL is a remembrance journey through the Americas,
which led me to seven territories across the Americas
where I re-created each time the same piece.
When I say "re-create", I mean that there is the BOW'T work,
there are like walls on the stage,
there is my body, there is a musician,
and there are three wooden boxes.
These three wooden boxes followed me to Martinique, to Haiti,
to Brazil, to New Orleans, to Mexico, to Halifax
and to [Chojag] Montreal.
So I took the same piece of work and I challenged myself,
What if I gave myself 30 days to re-create it from A to Z
with some local musicians?
As a matter of fact, I didn't know the musicians,
I didn't know if we would get along,
we didn't even speak the same language, I didn't speak Portuguese.
I would mumble some pidgin words to try to say,
"Can we develop this? Here is my idea", while I was in Brazil.
And they would reply, “Rhodnie,
we don't know what language you are speaking.
The show is in two weeks' time and we don't understand,
but based on your gestures, I guess we understand each other."
So eventually, dance opened doors for me,
helped me speak languages that I could not speak,
and create succesfully.
Then after 30 days,
I presented my work at a remembrance place.
And the BOW'T work that was created in each one of those countries
will never tour, not in my life, not in my death.
It's already written in my will, it will not tour.
The only work that can tour is BOW’T TRAIL Rétrospek,
a work where in fact, the territory is my body.
And as I was tracing back the memory
and the history of Afrodescendant peoples in the Americas,
I conducted interviews with specialists in each one of the territories,
and I realized that it's really trippy.
It's hard to perform BOW'T TRAIL,
but there is something beautiful and crispy about meeting people,
going straight back to the studio, and creating from these testimonies,
rather than burying yourself in history books,
because, once again,
history is poorly told in history books about African and Afrodescendant issues.
At least, their history is being rewritten,
but unfortunately, it was poorly written.
What drives me to keep doing documentary choreography today?
Because I see that it is a tool for social change,
for a possible social change.
What drives me to create in the face of injustices?
I grew up in a family where issues around human rights
were discussed at the dining table.
My parents came to Quebec during the Duvalier Sr. era,
so for sure, the Haitian radio station,
plus the Quebec radio station
and the US TV channel were all on at the same time at my place.
I would hear about challenges occurring in all kinds of places
and my parents would encourage us
to talk with confidence about those issues,
and to try to solve them while we were sitting at the table.
We could talk about the Colombia issue
and we would go, "Ah, we don't agree, what's going on there?"
And we would debate the subject around the table.
So, I was trained to reflect
about how, as a human being,
we have a role in the decisions we make,
but also to be aware of social inequalities,
whether they may be
in terms of the blatant increase in homelessness rates
and profiles of people
who usually were not identified as being homeless people,
but who faced this inequity from one day to the next
due to the housing situation.
So for me,
I quickly spot situations of inequity
not only when they are talked about, but also when they're not.
And I have always thought that art is an extremely powerful weapon
and that if I was to use this weapon,
it should be strong enough to capsize something that is as big as it.
That's my motto.
It doesn't mean that I won't be led to create works
just for the fun of it,
but I really want to... ,
There needs to be a cause to which I respond.
This is my art for me.
We would like to move on to another topic
- if you don't mind, - Of course!
because actually, Ballet Forward focuses on anti-Black racism,
so our project goal is to open minds.
And I wanted to know if ballet,
since it was created in Europe a long time ago
on conservative and traditional grounds,
is an art that can discriminate and exclude many communities?
And if you are comfortable talking about the topic,
is racism something that you have already experienced
or maybe are still experiencing in the ballet world,
as well as at an earlier stage?
I think the basis...
There are many layers in there.
It's important to remember that
the body is one of the most magnificent instruments to rally
and at the same time,
it's one of the most drastic and terrible instruments to discriminate us.
And dance being an environment,
where the body is the main tool,
unfortunately, whether in ballet or in other forms,
the gaze and perception
become a measuring tool.
What is it that I perceive of the capacity of a body
before it even moves?
Do I feel that it fits into the categories
that my practice... defends
or that my practice states?
I'll give you an example.
When I was 11 years old, I had gone through several auditions
because I wanted to join a dance-study programme.
Back then, there used to be, in your current school,
I was told it had a different name in older days, it was École supérieure...
- Danse? - No, there was another name,
I can't remember the exact name,
but it seems to me that the title included École Supérieure de...
there was a... anyway!
I had applied for this school
like most of the girls who were coming out ot Pierre-Laporte school,
so that was mostly girls.
And I had also applied to join the Pierre-Laporte School.
And when I received...
I very much wanted to join the first school I had applied for.
When I received my rejection letter,
the letter did not merely state that I had been rejected,
It analyzed my body according to stereotypes
of what ballet should require.
I think I did keep my letter, actually.
It dissected my muscles,
saying that my leg muscles were too wide compared to the desired aesthetics,
that my curves did not meet the aesthetic standards.
It was absolutely horrible.
I am convinced that no one would ever send this kind of letter nowadays,
because times have evolved
and there has been a lot of education since then.
But when I opened this letter,
I had been waiting for the postman,
I saw the postman coming, I opened the letter, I was very excited.
Then, it was like a lead coat,
it was carving out a different body
that I supposedly should have.
It's like telling young people who want to become dancers,
"Here, take this magazine, look at this body,
then make your body fit inside it.
And if you can't fit, you're out."
And being in an environment where excellence,
but I would rather say, the stringency,
the relentlessness, which can be positive,
with which you want to achieve perfection, to surpass yourself,
when you are very young and have already been trained in this,
and you receive such a letter
telling you to go and sculpt your body in a different way,
that you don't fit in the cultural codes that we want in ballet,
and it's not even a matter of size or what have you.
It's really telling you that your body will never fit.
And I remember crumbling down at that moment.
Luckily, Laporte held auditions not long after,
and I was selected.
But I still remember sitting during my summer training,
with the other people in my class, and we were telling each other
about the letters we had received from that school.
So, I do consider that these were acts of selective discrimination
based on my cultural physiognomy
and not on my accomplishments in terms of gestures or excellence,
or my training background in classical ballet.
This was not a comparative measuring tool
related to one's learning experience.
It was based purely on aesthetics.
And that, for me,
was one of the biggest obstacles I saw.
Because I didn't see myself,
while I was very often the only black person in my classes,
I had not seen these discriminations until that very moment.
And subsequently in secondary school,
it was obvious in the attribution of certain roles,
I didn't necessarily get the main roles,
because that possibility was ruled out fairly fast.
What was also upsetting unfortunately in ballet,
is that often, your body within the corps de ballet,
they don't actually tell you why, but sometimes it can be sneaky,
they pick you up and say, "Rhodnie, go to the edge.
you see, go to the end."
And you tell yourself,
Okay,,first work, I go to the end, second work, I go to the end,
third work, I go to the end.
For all works, I'm always at the end,
on all the pictures I look at, I was always put at the very end.
What am I disturbing in the corps de ballet?
Is it because I just unbalance the photo?
Or is it because the role I play should always be on the right?
And this is something that can be easily seen,
even in other official pictures.
So for me, it was like the thing
that forced me to question, especially in ballet,
to question about opening.
I had conversations too, on the opening in the body.
"Ah, you know, it's correct actually,
but can you just bring it to that level?"
Then I said to myself, but no, I can work my extension,
it's not that I can't.
So these are
small seeds of information
which, while the piano plays, when we hear "And one, and two",
then [we breathe to see], etc.,
that this information also finds its place
at the same time as a posture adjustment.
And what happens is - it's sneaky -
but unfortunately, it ends up sculpting
your own perception of your body,
and you want to do a lot more
than the person standing in front of you or behind you
at the training bar, for example.
So it's because of those little things
that, like other people in my class who have gone through the same,
I always did more, more, more.
Even when the classes were over,
I would stay in class to work more and more,
to be able to not only reach the mark
which was given to everyone in the class,
but to also reach my own marks,
and then do better because I have to do better.
So the result is that you never feel in your place.
And I will always remember,
I had a teacher one day, Marie-Rose Chama, to whom I still speak
who came to see me one day then who told me:
"Rhodnie, I have to tell you what you will likely experience."
And this woman is of Lebanese origin,
then she took me aside and she said: "You will experience barriers,
you will experience racism in this environment.
There are different markets.
and you will soon audition for some them,
so I just want you to get ready right away."
And back then, I could not understand this woman.
I was thinking, Why is she telling me those things?
No, no, I'm fine.
But she was preparing me for what ballet presented me,
and for what I wasn't told directly,
but she had the courage to tell me very clearly.
And it was later that I chose other artistic forms
because it was really what I wanted,
but it is certain that being told things like:
"When you go up on your toes, you don't have a perfect line
because we're aware that your body is different."
These are small adjustments,
but because we know that in ballet or dance,
there are constant adjustments,
that we always want to be perfectly aligned with others,
to be one with the corps or even as a soloist,
it means that we're being set aside.
So that's all, it's a long story,
but I can tell you many others like that.
After sharing all of this with us,
I have a question and so do my peers:
for people who are,
I don't know if it's the same situation,
but who share a feeling of rage or sadness
or feel that they are never going to find their place,
do you have any suggestions,
whether it is some advice,
some advice like, I don't know,
it may be more personal,
or trying to understand the world of dance.
Could you share some advice?
I think that anger has value in those moments.
And often, we want to,
because we learn to be...
I think that what ballet taught me, among other things,
as well as other things I learned in other disciplines,
is to show restraint, politeness,
we don't talk too much, we don't show too much,
"Don't show, don't show!"
Educating yourself is the best thing.
You have to educate yourself.
Educate yourself, talk to people from different generations.
I have been speaking with mentors, and I still do.
I still have mentors
and I will never stop having mentors.
And dare to knock on someone's door,
even if you don't know if this person may have had the same experience,
but ask them, "Hey, you, some 10 years ago,
20 years ago or 30 years ago,
could you possibly have gone through this kind of experience?
And could you tell me about it?"
Share,
never doubt your instinct.
You know it when there is discrimination,
there aren't million different ways.
And many times, you're told, "Oh, come on, you're exaggerating."
And what I learned,
is that when your instinct tells you that it is discrimination,
you can be sure that it's true 95% of the time.
And maybe there was a 5% where I said to myself,
Okay, I admit that I was maybe a little hasty in the matter.
But the foundation of discrimination, particularly when it's underhand,
meaning they don't tell you to your face,
they don't tell you directly,
but you realize it through actions.
It could be, suppose you're sitting at a table
or sitting somewhere, and all of a sudden the place is full
so there's no more room for you and you don't know where to sit.
It may be in the attribution of certain roles.
What I learned is to confront intelligently,
which is not always easy, and it's still not easy to do.
But the conversation,
once you have asserted yourself,
is often a formidable tool.
And to dare to question without seeking an answer,
dare to question the opponent, I would say,
or dare to question the person or the contexts.
And when it is a collective situation,
because unfortunately, this happens too,
you have to call a pause,
and say: “We need to talk.
You need to really listen
and I know you won't be happy with what I'm going to say,
but we'll have to examine the situation.
You probably won't like the mirror I'll show you,
you might not be happy with my mirror nor even agree with it,
but I don't expect an answer from you today.
I just ask you to understand
that there's a mirror waiting for you to look into.
Pluck up your courage, and hold your mirror to them.
Then sometimes, it works for some people.
There really were wonderful stories
of reconciliation, of encounters,
of respect, of apologies, and I do believe in that.
The human being, just like other species,
is compelled to adapt and to evolve.
We are not different from other species.
However, there are people who are tough.
But as long as things are done with respect,
and sometimes it's good to let time pass.
I for one, let go of certain things
and I remained without saying a word for several years,
not because I didn't want to say a word,
it's not because I don't say a word in front of people
that I don't do anything in the background.
And I think that BOW'T TRAIL is a perfect example of that.
When the 75 video web documentary came out
and I'm told that there are still more videos which were not published yet,
I didn't find the time to release them,
when Radio-Canada announced,
three days after I had given birth to my little one,
that they would take a web documentary, the web series and a medium-length film,
I was holding my child, and I said to my team:
"Will you let me have a week off, I just gave birth."
I really was not expecting to see three of my projects
being released on Radio Cannes at the same time.
I was really scared of not being able to produce
everything I had harvested over the years,
because not a single broadcast company would accept them.
We were told no,
that it wouldn't interest people, then that was it.
So,
I deeply believe in conversation,
but in its own time.
When I say in its own time,
it means that not everyone is ready to converse.
You should not force yourself to converse.
Then even when there is a situation of discrimination,
if you want to sit down and talk,
if you're not ready, you're not ready.
You have the right to not be ready.
Discriminations are scars on the soul.
They often last for a lifetime.
And at this depth,
if it is even slightly grasped by people,
this will allow them to understand why there is no conversation,
why it can take five years, six years, seven years,
why there will be a distance
and why, when the time comes that we can talk to each other,
it will be the right time.
So meet, give yourself time, educate yourself,
read, watch documentaries, talk with people.
I think this is going to be our last questions,
I'd like to talk again about your creations,
we thought about this before, we mentioned it,
how do you precisely approach racism
and other such stakes in your creations?
I know you explained to us
how you handled the documentary choreography,
but when we're talking about racism, have you created one
and if so, what was your foundation?
Was it about your past or witnesses?
What is interesting in documentary choreography,
is it's never about me.
I can start from an experience,
I think that like any person, we are biased on a subject
because we have experienced it.
The beauty of it is the BOW'T TRAIL journey
because not all my works speak of racism and discrimination.
Even BOW'T TRAIL is a journey,
yes, that talks about the slave trade, about discrimination,
but it's moving forward.
And the 15 musicians with whom I have worked all over the world,
it highlights the strength of resilience,
the force of cultural re-creation.
It's still quite fascinating that today,
today, we are not capable,
we are not even capable in fact to name all the rhythms
and all the musical movements of the world
which exist based on African, Afrodescendant rhythms,
because as we speak,
there are plenty more being created,
that we don't even know about.
I take an example, when I was in Brazil,
there is what is called the Passinho.
The young people from the favelas came to tell me about this.
I was in a museum called
El Museo de los Pretos Novos, in Rio de Janeiro.
They were sitting with researchers, then we talked,
I talked about my research.
There was a silent lady who told me, "I am a lawyer,
I am also a dancer, Carolina Peres,
I was the only black lawyer in my university,
then I launched a movement
which allows young people to mobilize rather than using weapons."
Then at the time, it was every...
I think it was every 30 minutes...
Oh my God, I should review the statistics.
Every 23 minutes, there is a young black man
who dies because of systemic racism in Brazil,
that was in 2016.
So this situation,
she told me, "I have young sons,
and one of them might just go any moment
because the police made a different decision about his life."
Then when I arrived in Brazil,
there was a demonstration with Afrodescendant and Native mothers
marching side by side
to fight against racial discrimination.
When we talk about racism in our works,
for me, it's more about giving a voice
to those women who were marching in the street,
to give a voice to these young people who told me about Passinho,
who tell me that they dance barefoot in the favela
to say that they still exist.
Then how I gave them a voice in the artwork,
I was in tears when they told me their stories
that despite me being solo, I told them, I can't dance a solo,
that would be me not listening to you.
Which means that halfway through my work when I go to open my message,
because I always have a message,
I need you to leave the audience,
then you come on stage and do what you want,
it's not about excellence, perfection,
it's about the excellence of saying to the people that you exist,
and that you may not be there for much longer.
I would like you to come speak out in my work,
and do what you want with it, it belongs to you.
And this is how I speak.
This is how I give voice because I build bridges with realities.
Then we talked to these young people again,
they had tears in their eyes, they said to me : "Rhodnie,
you understood our reality, you understood what we are going through."
As for me, I am happy because I was able to show people that I exist,
but we are not applauding a work because it's beautiful or not.
These are matters of life and death.
And in the end, it's also what BOW'T TRAIL is about.
BOW'T TRAIL tells exactly that.
The manner how I trace these images,
is through gravity that resides in my body.
So when I dance BOW'T TRAIL Retrospek,
I would even challenge you to learn an excerpt from BOW'T TRAIL Rétrospek.
You need to feel the 140 testimonies in your body
all speaking at the same time,
then one gesture,
it's 140 voices at the same time.
That's the weight of BOW'T TRAIL Rétrospek
That's why I love it so much.
So,
addressing inequity issues
means agreeing to put your body
in a burning oven.
Like that, yes.
We are far from aesthetics.
We don't take away the aesthetics.
But you know,
dancing goes beyond just saying, I want to achieve that.
That you carry inside you such a strong message
that it is absolutely necessary that you pass it on to someone else.
That's what interests me in my works.
That's it, I'll stop there.
- That's super inspiring, thank you. - Rhodnie, thank you.
Thank you so much.
One last question to conclude the discussion,
what are you currently working on?
Any plans, things like that?
Yes, so right now, this is really my beautiful baby.
So right now, Im finally updating
something I've been wanting to develop for 10 years
which is a documentary choreographic laboratory
which means that RD Créations
having developed expertise today in documentary choreography,
we are now launching two laboratories at the same time,
it means that we are developing our works in prototype form,
a bit like engineers who do research and development.
We do prototyping of works
to see the full potential around the work
both at the partner, costumes, dance and lighting level.
So, we just entered two creation prototypes
for our two subjects.
The first one is called SCÒ.
SCÒ addresses the issue of scoliosis.
I have scoliosis.
So, while we are talking about resistance and inequity,
I had scoliosis and I almost had surgery.
But I kept dancing and I still do.
So, SCÒ addresses the issue
of all these psychological and physiological twists
that young teenage girls have to carry until adulthood.
And I say young girl because
it's mainly 90% if not more of young girls who suffer from it.
And it's going to become a digital installation
with performance and musical performance.
Then in fact, another work is also coming soon,
I'm starting right now my research regarding KÒSA.
KÒSA in Creole means this body
and we address the issue of death told from the children
and from specialists in astrophysics, in theology and dermatology.
Wow!
Just to compare, but do you have places where you present them
or it will be on the internet, do you still know...?
In fact, the beauty of a documentary choreographic laboratory,
is we give ourselves the freedom not to know how it will turn out,
and that's the fun of it.
For example, SCÒ, I was convinced it was going be a group work
with maybe four, five performers,
then we were going to have scenographic objects on stage,
then the musicians we work with,
the Aukan group in Toronto,
we say OK, it's going to be a work on stage.
And after 36 hours of creation in the laboratory with a scenographer,
videographer, lighting coordinator,
the testimonies I collected from Saint-Justine, chiropractors,
a lot of people.
And with the University of Montreal as a partner too.
In the end, I realized it wasn't a dance show on a regular stage,
that the message had to be channelled
in an audio, digital, projection and performance installation,
from time to time,
which means that our new market becomes museums.
So, RD Créations has already set up an exhibition,
the Conversation exhibition,
but we are going to do our second iteration
in digital installation,
then it will be the SCÒ project.
In fact, we are right on the dot right now,
which means that the dance,
then the documentary choreography takes us to something else.
And in holding this freedom,
if we had sealed it right away with a dance diffuser,
we would be in a bad position to say that in the end, it wasn't a dance show.
The dance show is coming into the performance
of the digital installation which should be in a museum.
Whereas now, we are really capable of having an even clearer vision,
a more measured proposal,
then an ability to rally partners
which will be all the more oriented towards what we want to do.
Then for KÒSA, I imagine it is my next symphony
as it is still a work which is likely to be quite big
because of the three major subjects that we are approaching.
And it's a piece scheduled for 2028, 2029.
So, we work on three years,
our company, our creations rarely drop,
the earliest is two and a half years, two years and some of work,
but the documentary choreography requires three years of work.
You really, really need good documentation,
relevant archiving,
rallied partners,
a choreography where the signature, is all the more refined.
Then let's not forget polyrhythm for RD Créations and language,
documentary choreography which is really important.
If we want body language to be really strong,
musical language must also be written
at the same time than body language.
So this is another body that we could talk about.
What is the link body/music, body/instrument.
Yes,
the role of the musician as an accompanist
outside the classic
because there's a whole universe in polyrhythm.
Super inspiring, really inspiring.
Thank you very much for your time
allowing us to discuss and chat like that, it's really interesting.
I'm happy to hear that, but I have a question for you.
Yes.
I would like to know today, if you look at the dance world,
you have your dreams, but what are they?
I think that touching people
because I dream of being on stage,
but more than impacting myself,
I want to have an impact on those around me.
So I think that all that you explained to us today,
what you shared with us is inspiring
because it confirms that it is possible
to touch hundreds and thousands of people
and yes, that's it.
For me, it's a bit the same thing,
I think it's about living especially through dance
and see how it can affect everyone,
then I would say people are more open nowadays,
and the fact that we are open to all communities,
and that everyone will have the opportunity to dance,
so that's my dream.
It's that there are no more barriers.
I wish that for you collectively, yes.
Thank you!
Yes, to make the biggest dreams come true,
the wildest dreams that you already have in mind
and especially those that you don't know yet.
Yes, thank you.
Follow those young Canadians and join them in their efforts to change the world