2020-12-11
 
This section is reserved for RQD members
Become a member
Not a member yet?
Join now!
This article is for RQD members only.
Log in
This article is for RQD members only.

Parts of this site have been translated into English. If you have any questions, please contact info@quebecdanse.org

Thank you for your understanding.

Go to the website
  • fr
Join the RQD
Member area
Member area Join the RQD
Regroupement québécois de la danse Regroupement québécois de la danse
  • Dance News
    • News
    • Press Feed
  • Dance Agenda
  • Billboard
  • Membership
    • Become a member
    • Privileges and advantages for members
    • Exclusive discounts
    • Dance Training Support Program
    • Membership Policy
  • RQD Trainings
    • Professional Training Programs
    • Eligibility and conditions
  • Member Directory
  • Resources (FR)
    • Health and Safety
    • COVID-19 (FR)
    • Inclusion and Equity (FR)
    • Harassment Prevention (FR)
    • Skill Development (FR)
    • Human Resources (FR)
    • Financing and Management (FR)
    • Touring (FR)
    • Promotion and Communications (FR)
    • Directories (FR)
    • Publications (FR)
      • Briefs and Manifestos (FR)
      • RQD Studies and Publications (FR)
      • I-Mouvance (FR)
      • Dance History (FR)
  • About the RQD
    • Presentation of the RQD
    • BOARD OF DIRECTORS and Committees
    • Master Plan
    • Prix Interprète
    • Quebec Messages for International Dance Day
    • Toile-mémoire
    • Media
    • Partners
    • Team
fr
  • Join the RQD
  • Home
  • Actualités de la danse
  • Nouvelles
  • International Dance Day 2018: Québec Message from Mélanie Demers
Version française
11 December 2020

International Dance Day 2018: Québec Message from Mélanie Demers

by Ann, Principessa

Whether we completely abandon ourselves to it or attempt to resist it, we’re all part of the world’s great movement. Ineluctably, this complex system, beyond all comprehension, observes the human ballet, where bodies, by turns, conquer and beguile the other, stoop, touch, kill, and slip away, and where they love, mesh and coalesce before succumbing to exhaustion and one day dying out.

This is the order we obey.

By way of a challenge, we allow love and death to simultaneously inhabit us, we seek out the brutal, thermal, seismic shock that only a body that’s exulted can experience.

Dance is but the expression of that desire for what is absolute and absolutely free.

Because we fear this world’s great movement, this overwhelmingly powerful life force, we try in vain to harness it by ordering our gestures, regulating our steps and codifying the human impetus.

Perhaps only those who truly fear movement attempt to dominate it. Those who do so move me. They are my peers and soulmates, and it is they who transform dance into a performance. The others, imbued with a deeper wisdom, simply let the steps overtake them.

Whether our dance is invested with a pure need for action or a desire for creation, our bodies are heroic and erotic; they are carnal vessels made of flesh and blood, noble and out of the ordinary, inhabited and habitable.

Above all, our bodies are sovereign, capable of politicizing our debates and poeticizing our existences—which collide relentlessly within this world’s great movement.

 

Mélanie Demers
Choreographer, General and Artistic Director, MAYDAY
► Biography 

 

Production: Regroupement québécois de la danse
Message: Mélanie Demers, general and artistic director of MAYDAY
Filming, montage: Xavier Curnillon
by Ann, Principessa
Back to news
Représentation et concertation
25 March 2025
Budget 2025-2026 : victoire pour le Front commun pour les arts
Appels à l'action
25 March 2025
Un nouveau chapitre pour la danse au Québec
Développement numérique
20 February 2025
Sondage sur les outils numériques de création, production et diffusion
Représentation et concertation
20 February 2025
Communiqué | La prolongation d’une importante collaboration
Subscribe to our newsletter

Receive the RQD communications.

Please enter a valid email address.

About RQD
  • RQD Presentation
  • Board of directors
  • Master Plan
  • RQD Trainings
  • Dance Training Support Program
  • Dancer Prize (Prix Interprète)
  • Quebec Messages for International Dance Day
  • Toile-mémoire de la danse au Québec
  • Media space
  • Membership
  • Team
Join the RQD
  • Join the RQD
  • Membership Categories
  • Membership Policy
  • Individual Membership
  • Corporate Membership
Resources
  • Health and Safety
  • Inclusion and Equity (FR)
  • Harassment Prevention (FR)
  • Skill Development
  • Human Resources (FR)
  • Financing and Management (FR)
  • Touring (FR)
  • Promotion and Communications (FR)
  • Directories (FR)
Navigation
  • Team
  • Dance Agenda
  • Dance News
  • Billboard
  • Directory
  • Member area
Social Media
Address

3680, rue Jeanne-Mance, bureau 440
Montréal (Québec) H2X 2K5
View map

Phone: (514) 849-4003
info@quebecdanse.org

Language
  • English
  • Français
Regroupement québécois de la danse
Le RQD reconnaît que nous sommes situés en territoire non-cédé de la nation Kanien'kehá:ka, gardienne des terres et des eaux. C’est dans le respect des liens avec le passé, le présent et l'avenir que nous reconnaissons les relations continues avec les Peuples Autochtones et autres personnes de la communauté au Québec. Le RQD reconnaît également ses biais discriminatoires passés et travaille continuellement à les éliminer, en demeurant à l'écoute et en apprentissage continue des réalités des membres de sa communauté.
© 2025 Regroupement québécois de la danse. Politique de confidentialité — Conditions d'utilisation — Web agency : Pixel Circus
Manage cookie content
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functionnal Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}