Icône Pop
MAYDAY (Montreal)
February 18 & 19 – 8PM MT
Army and Navy (10411 82 Ave NW, Edmonton)
Icône Pop is a playful clash between religious and pop iconographies, the sacred and the profane, saintly exultation and self-glorification. Nods to the Virgin Mary and Beyoncé feature side-by-side in a striptease of the utmost modesty.
“I don’t know if Icône Pop is an important work. But it was for sure an important process for me. Because as a mother, an artist, a black woman, I was given the opportunity to reflect on the sanctity and profanity of womanhood, motherhood, spirituality and other trivialities.” – Mélanie Demers, MAYDAY Artistic Director
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This Season, MZD has commissioned poets to respond to the work created by dance artists. Thinking about dance through poetry adds a different perspective to the work and opens up conversation between artists in their creative practice.Sue-Shane Tsomondo's poem Ave Maria’s reprise is in response to MAYDAY's Icône Pop.Icône Pop
Featuring
Mélanie Demers
A multidisciplinary artist, Mélanie Demers founded in Montreal her own dance company, MAYDAY, in 2007, exploring the powerful link between the poetical and the political. Les Angles Morts (2006), Sense of Self (2008), Junkyard/ Paradise (2010) and Goodbye (2012) have all been created from this perspective. With MAYDAY remix (2014), 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 Prize for best choreography. In 2016, Mélanie Demers began a new creation cycle with Animal Triste and Icône Pop; both works are touring internationally. In 2017, Mélanie Demers was invited to work as a guest choreographer at the Skånes Dansteater in Malmö (Sweden) for the creation of Something About Wilderness.