Gravel Works, was rock; this one is folk. Frédérick Gravel takes on the confusion of the contemporary American male, whether he hails from a bland suburb, a country road or a cowboy movie. He is accompanied by the musician Stéphane Boucher, a multi-instrumentalist who creates sound and music turmoil, Dave St-Pierre, the enfant terrible of trash choreography and Nicolas Cantin, an actor fascinated by clowning. Gravel himself is also onstage for the festivities for he is a musician, set designer and, as he likes to say, a “bad dancer who hopes to become an interesting bad dancer”. The music is performed live, the scratching of dirty chords. The lighting is vibrant, and the piece plays with irony and distancing.
It is a tale of distraught men, the ordinary run-of-the-mill North American male – beer, T-shirts, baseball caps, cowboy boots, beer bellies and their hesitations, outbursts of violence, confusion, brusque changes of mood, right left, front and back, lurching in a drunken haze of beer and powerlessness. (source: Festival TransAmériques 2010)
Created in 2010
CREDITS
Concept and Direction Frédérick Gravel / Grouped’ArtGravelArtGroup
Performers at the creation Stéphane Boucher, Nicolas Cantin, Frédérick Gravel, Dave St-Pierre
Music Stéphane Boucher
Light Alexandre Pilon-Guay
Dramaturgy Katya Montaignac
Rehearsal Director Anne Lebeau (à la création) / Jamie Wright
Artistic Consultants Ivana Milicevic, Anne Lebeau, Claude Poissant, Hugo Gravel
PRODUCTION
Production Frédérick Gravel
Executive producer Daniel Léveillé Danse
Coproduction Festival TransAmériques en collaboration avec la Place des Arts, Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis
Accueil studio Steptext Dance Project, Place des Arts
Development Marie-Andrée Gougeon; George Skalkogiannis
With the support of Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec
Frédérick Gravel is a member of Circuit-Est centre chorégraphique.
