Lucy M. May
Dancer, Choreographer, Instructor
“What binds micro to macro, macro to micro?”
Lucy M. May is a contemporary dance artist born in Wolastoqiyik territory (Fredericton, New Brunswick) and based in Tiohtiá:ke (Montréal). Attracted to the porousness of collaboration and the vastness of dancing, Lucy makes work for stage, paper, and unusual locations. Her creations, such as Anima / Darkroom (2019), in collaboration with the Krump artist 7Starr, Vivarium (2014/17) in collaboration with Noémie Avidar, Patrick Conan, and Paige Culley, and her new work-in-progress The Conditions, often ask how environments thread their way through human movement. She deepened her practice in her native province, during a three-month-long artist residency entitled Esemplastic Landing (2016-17), which culminated in performances for La Petite Scène in Québec City and Ibrida Pluri in Montréal.
On commission, she has created work for professional schools, recreational programmes, museums, bars, and events, including Diffusion En Scène + Musée d’art contemporaine des Laurentides, Atlantic Dance Festival + DansEncorps, Wants & Needs, and École de danse contemporaine de Montréal (EDCM), Her work has been programmed in Québec, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and the UK.
Between 2009 and 2016, Lucy was a member of Compagnie Marie Chouinard, touring internationally to four continents, and dancing over two hundred performances of twelve works. Lucy created roles for choreographies including Jérôme Bosch: Le jardin des délices; Soft virtuosity, still Humid, on the edge; Gymnopédies; Henri Michaux Mouvements; and Le Nombre d’or (LIVE); performed the solo FOXP2, and appeared alongside Manuel Roque in the virtual immersive performance CORPS CÉLESTES at Montréal’s SATosphère.
“She is of fabulous sensitivity, of great emotional richness, she is both powerful and very fluid, both of fire and milk.” − Marie Chouinard
As a freelance artist, she has worked with 14Lieux, Ariane Boulet, Compagnie Capriole, Meyer-Chaffaud Dance, Montréal Danse, DansEncorps, Alejandro De Leon, Lesandra Dodson, Fréderick Gravel, Susanna Hood, Sasha Kleinplatz, Mélissa Raymond, Georgia Rondos, Helen Simard, and La Tresse. She has been an affiliate of Margie Gillis’s Legacy Project since its inception in 2015, and is entrusted with two solos created by the iconic Canadian choreographer: The Complex Simplicity of Love (2003) and Give Me Your Heart Tonight (1983).
Lucy’s workshops centre movement improvisation as a means to explore human relationships to the world. She has been invited to teach at schools and organizations such as Kinetic Studio, Halifax, Fada Dance, Regina, The Love-In, Toronto, Studio 303, Montréal, Springboard Performance, Calgary, and Saint Thomas University, Fredericton.
Inspired by the labb & session form of practice learned through Montreal’s Krump & Hip hop communities, she created the community initiative Off_Script with dance artist Nindy Banks. Off_Script aims to create a space beyond the boundaries of style for dancers to develop their solo improvisation/freestyle and active witnessing in a community setting.
Lucy’s studies in Contemporary dance were completed at l’École de danse contemporaine de Montréal and the Rotterdam Dance Academy in The Netherlands. She began studying Krump in 2016 and has since been mentored by Jigsaw aka Ozcar the Grouch (Ja Britton Johnson) since 2018. She has battled under her aka Ravage Grouch in showcases at Empirical Freedom’s FiftyHype in Calgary in 2018, and at 2U4U in Toronto in 2019.