A choreographer with a strong and unique signature
After completing a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in contemporary dance at UQAM, Catherine Gaudet established from the outset a reputation as a choreographer with a strong, distinctive style. Slipping under the mask of social conventions, she tracks down the convulsive movements of the subconscious in the body, the micro movements that reveal emotions and sensations we try to hide. Obsessed by the quest for existential truth and well-being, she plunges into the meanderings of the psyche, finding beauty in flaws in contradictions. Her state of dance emerges from opposing forces that constrain and control her tormented characters. Her raw yet precise physicality is complemented by a theatricality that subtly combines absurd dramatic tensions with black humour.
She presented her first choreography in 2004, making her mark over the next two years with Grosse fatigue(2005)—acclaimed at the Arhus International Choreography Competition (Denmark)—and L’arnaque (2006). In 2009 she delved into the effects of loss in her first long piece, L’invasion du vide. After participating in creative residencies in Brussels (2010) and Berlin (2011), she created Je suis un autre in 2012, in which she scratched beneath the surface of social façade to reveal the ambiguity of beings grappling with their contradictions. She pursued this intention in 2014 with Au sein des plus raides vertus, tapping this time into the concept of morality.
In 2016, on top of partaking in a residence at the Centre chorégraphique nation de Tours (France), she co-created La très excellente et lamentable tragédie de Roméo et Juliette with Jérémie Niel, which transposes the Shakespearean drama to a hermetic space full of sensual melancholy. In Tout ce qui va revient (2018), she reunites on one stage 3 solos from her repertoire, created in 2014 and 2015. In Fall 2018, she presents in Montreal her last creation, The Fading of the Marvelous.
Catherine is a founding member of the structure for choreographers Lorganisme, and she is among the creative minds behind the new Centre de création O Vertigo (CCOV), together with Mélanie Demers, Caroline Laurin-Beaucage et Ginette Laurin. She is an active member of Circuit-Est centre chorégraphique.
