Mile Zero Dance presents:
Confession Publique
MAYDAY (Montreal)

Its title serving as a promise, Confession Publique explores ambiguity and paradox, probes the noble and the vulgar, oscillates between grace and brutality.

Tuesday, October 14
7:30 PM
$30/$35

Location:
MILE ZERO DANCE
9931 78 Ave NW
Edmonton, AB

CONFESSION PUBLIQUE

Confession Publique is an autobiographical solo that has never seen the light of day. Luckily, Angélique Willkie has rekindled interest in this artistic object previously consigned to obscurity. Confession Publique has now taken on the guise of an offering to her. This intimate dive into self-interrogation is now a two-person operation. From now on, Angélique is its muse, and it is her mysteries that form and structure what the work confides in us, a work where introspection has no choice but to come face-to-face with its inevitable opponent, confession.

In this work, we take on the themes of privacy and secrecy, delving into the marshy depths of the psyche in a revolt against the vulgar self-exposure that bombards us every day. We examine the nobility and elegance to be found in the ways we acknowledge our shortcomings, our flaws, and our manufacturing defects. We try to see confession as a poetic gesture, a necessity, a small concession to our vanity.

The protagonist concentrates on the margins as she takes a deep dive into herself and ourselves. The connection is intimate, intimidating. The performance becomes the setting for questions asked a thousand times over: our relationship to the world, how the environment holds our destinies in its hands, and the power others have to dictate and dominate our life-choices.

Amidst grand declarations and petty confessions, doubts and half-truths, the shadowy zones of the psyche confront reality and take on verbal form in words spectacular or trivial, meaningless or visionary. We immerse ourselves in a duel between intimacy and publicity. It’s through this crack that we observe our shortcomings, nurse our scars, and contemplate our faults. Because it’s in our flaws, our fractures, and our fissures that we are at our most authentic. And dance is the best way to glue all these pieces back together. 

The show features the ghostly yet earthy musical presence of Frannie Holder and her electroacoustic soundscape. Their voices tinged with just a tad of nostalgia, Frannie and Angélique form a celestial combination that strangely conveys a biting message, imbued with the spirit of a nursery rhyme but breathing like a hymn.

Biography Mélanie Demers

A multidisciplinary artist, Mélanie Demers founded her dance company, MAYDAY, in 2007 in Montreal, exploring the powerful link between the poetic and the political. Her body of work has all been created from this perspective. With each new creation, she deepened her engagement with cross-genre works and hybrid forms. Her fascination with the interplay between word and gesture crystallized with WOULD (2015), which won the CALQ Award for best choreography. In 2016, Mélanie Demers began a new creation cycle with Animal Triste and Icône Pop; both works toured internationally. In 2017, Mélanie Demers was invited alongside Laïla Diallo to work as a guest choreographer at the Skånes Dansteater in Malmö (Sweden) for the creation of Something About Wilderness.

After the ambitious international project Danse Mutante hit the stage, La Goddam Voie Lactée (2021), Confession Publique (2021) and Cabaret Noir (2022) entered the spotlight in various prestigious venues and festivals. In 2021, Mélanie Demers received the GRAND PRIX de la danse de Montréal, which recognizes the unique mark she left on her field. The next year, she was awarded the CALQ Award for best choreography for Confession Publique, while Angélique Willkie received the best performance Award for the same work at the ceremony of Les Prix de la danse de Montréal 2022. She recently turned to theatre and directed the piece Déclarations by acclaimed author Jordan Tannahill. In April 2023, Mélanie Demers was a finalist for the Jovette-Marchessault award.

She regularly teaches in the greatest theatre schools in Canada and is a regular contributor on radio and television shows. She won the 2024 NAC Award as part of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards and, more recently, the 2025 Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize. Her recent play l’amour ou rien premiered in May 2025 at Théâtre ESPACE GO.

To this day, she choreographed thirty works and was presented in some forty cities across Europe, America, Africa and Asia.

Show Credits

Ideation, direction and choreography : Mélanie Demers
Interpretation : Angélique Willkie with the participation of Anne-Marie Jourdenais
Direction of rehearsals : Anne-Marie Jourdenais
Dramaturgy : Angélique Willkie
Original music : Frannie Holder
Additional music : Excerpt from The Fairy Queen, composed by Henry Purcell and sung by Angelique Willkie
Scenography : Odile Gamache
Lighting : Claire Seyller
Costumes : Elen Ewing
Technical management : Hannah Kirby
Production management : Alec Arsenault

Thanks : Éléonore Loiselle
Teaser production : Stefan Verna
Creation 2021
This creation is the subject of a doctoral research-creation at UQAM’s Département d’Études et pratiques des arts.
Co-producers: La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines (Montréal, Canada), Agora de la danse (Montréal, Canada), Centro per la Scena Contemporanea/Operaestate Festival (Bassano del Grappa, Italie)

Funders: MAYDAY is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Conseil des arts de Montréal.
Member of Circuit-Est centre chorégraphique