Hieronymus Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights - Program

april 19 – 23, 2017 Bluma appel Theatre

hieronymus the garden of bosch: earthly delights Ch o r eog r aph y

Film crew (ac t 3):

Marie Chouinard

Scri p t write r an d di r ec to r

O rig i nal m us ic

Marie Chouinard

Louis Dufort

Di r ec to r o f ph otog r aph y

S e t d e s ig n an d vi d eo

Jean-François Gratton

Marie Chouinard

Director’s assistant and editor

Dan ce rs

Charles Cardin-Bourbeau Sébastien Cossette-Masse Catherine Dagenais-Savard Valeria Galluccio Motrya Kozbur Morgane Le Tiec Scott McCabe Sacha Ouellette-Deguire Carol Prieur Clémentine Schindler Lig hts

Miguel Raymond Pe r fo r m e r

Lucie Mongrain Vi d eo Co n su ltant

Jimmy Lakatos Vi d eo Ass istant

Sylvain Robert Set design and props production

Isabelle Gauthier Cédric Lord Costu m e pro du c tio n

Zdravka Tchakaloff

Marie Chouinard

Tou ring Crew:

Costu m e s an d pro p s

Artistic Di r ec to r o n To u r

Marie Chouinard

Jean-Hugues Rochette

Mak e- u p

To u r Manag e r

Jacques-Lee Pelletier

Jade Marquis

This production runs approximately 75 minutes with no intermission

Jérémie Boucher

A COMPAGNIE MARIE CHOUINARD production in coproduction with the Jheronimus Bosch 500 Foundation (Netherlands), commemorating the 500th anniversary of the painter’s death. *Dancers for the world premiere: Sébastien Cossette-Masse, Paige Culley, Valeria Galluccio, Leon Kupferschmid, Morgane Le Tiec, Lucy M. May, Scott McCabe, Sacha OuelletteDeguire, Carol Prieur, Megan Walbaum The COMPAGNIE MARIE CHOUINARD wishes to thank the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts de Montréal.

Technical Director and Stage Manager Lig hti n g Manag e r

Isabelle Garceau So u n d E n g i n e e r

Jérôme Guilleaume DANCE PROGRAMMING SUPPORTER

with the support of

CANADIAN STAGE MEDIA SPONSOR

#csBosch

Artistic director’s note

Matthew Jocelyn

For the month of August, 2016, the town of ‘s-Hertogenbosch in the the Netherlands chose Québécois choreographer par excellence Marie Chouinard to create a dance piece in honour of the 500th anniversary of the death of its most famous child: Hieronymus Bosch. They made the right choice!

Beginning with perhaps Bosch’s most celebrated painting, the triptych that makes up “The Garden of Earthly Delights”, Marie Chouinard led her dancers through an elaborate and uncensored exploration of the mysterious iconography that makes up the three panels of this remarkable painting (Eve being presented to Adam, a landscape of erotic exuberance, a hellish land of ghouls and monsters). No aspect of this densely complex, yet eerily sensual work was left untouched, no shape or distortion or relationship disregarded.

What results is not so much an illustration of the painting, or three-dimensional rendering of its iconography, as an intoxicatingly attractive, deeply unsettling plunge into the phantasmagorical life that inhabits our inner beings; atavistic, ever-questing. It is a ritual, a trance-induced rite of passage, but from where to where? And for whom? Chouinard’s “Garden of Earthly Delights” is an invitation to explore and experience, definitely not to explain.

creator’s note

Marie Chouinard

Here is a choreography in three acts from the famous triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights.

Act 1 : The Garden of Delights (central panel) Act 2 : Hell (right panel) Act 3 : Paradise (left panel) Just as a choreographer can start with a piece of music in order to create, I am starting with the painting by Bosch.

And just as a choreographer can choose to “stick” to a musical score (or not), I have chosen to “stick” to Bosch’s painting, its spirit.

The joy of bowing before a masterpiece!

biographies

Today, Compagnie Marie Chouinard enjoys an international reputation. Its trajectory began in 1978, when Marie Chouinard presented her first creation, Cristallisation. This work was followed by thirty solos performed on stages at home and 2

photo : Karine Patry

Marie Chouinard, choreographer, is the Executive and Artistic Director of COMPAGNIE MARIE CHOUINARD, Founding Chair of the Prix de la Danse de Montréal, an Associate Dance Artist of Canada’s National Arts Centre and Director of Dance at the Venice Biennale.

abroad, including Marie Chien Noir (1982), S.T.A.B. (Space, Time and Beyond) (1986), and Afternoon of a Faun (1987), landmarks in contemporary dance of the past 40 years.

In 1990, the soloist and choreographer founded her own company. Since that time, Compagnie Marie Chouinard has performed all over the world, and co-produces its creations with renowned partners such as the Venice Biennale, the ImPulsTanz International Dance Festival (Vienna), the Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), the Fondazione Musica Per Roma (Rome), Place des Arts (Montreal), Festival TransAmériques (Montreal) and the National Arts Centre (Ottawa). In 2007, the Compagnie moved to its own building, Espace Marie Chouinard, in Montreal.

For Marie Chouinard, each creation is an odyssey through the history of humanity that evades the linearity of a narrative.

The intimate intelligence of the body, the inexhaustible complexity of its articulations and mutations command constructions that are achieved through form. The choreographer is thoroughly engaged in every aspect of a work, from music to scenography, lighting, costumes, and hairstyles, so they resonate with each other in a whole with great power of evocation.

Hailed for their technique, versatility and performance skills, the ten permanent dancers of the Compagnie, trained in different somatic approaches, bring Marie Chouinard’s iconic works to the stage. The award-winning dancer Carol Prieur celebrated her 20th anniversary with the Compagnie in 2015.

The Compagnie has a vast repertoire of works, most still performed internationally: The Rite of Spring, Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, 24 Preludes by Chopin, Le Cri du monde, Étude no 1, bODY_rEMIX/ gOLDBERG_vARIATIONS, Henri Michaux : Mouvements, Soft virtuosity, still humid, on the edge and Hieronymus Bosch : The Garden of Earthly Delights.

The Rite of Spring has been performed for almost 25 years and become a classic in the history of contemporary dance. The choreographer's works also appear in the repertoires of major ballet companies such

as the National Ballet of Canada, the São Paulo Companhia dance, the Ballets de Monte-Carlo, the GöteborgsOperan and the Gulbenkian Ballet. Moreover, since 2015, Marie Chouinard has created works for other companies, such as the Martha Graham Dance Company and Ballets de Monte-Carlo.

In 2009, Marie Chouinard, the dancer, returned to the stage after a 20 year absence with her solo creation morning glories :)-(: and since 2012, has danced In Museum, a three-hour solo performanceinstallation. An author, set and lighting designer, photographer and film director, her opus includes multimedia works (Cantique no 3, Icônes, and Corps Célestes); films (bODY_rEMIX/gOLDBERG_vARIATIONS, Marie Chouinard: The Rite of Spring, and the music video Jamais by Serge Fiori); a collection of poems entitled Chantier des extases; the photo-installation Paradisi Gloria, and an art exhibit entitled DRAWINGS. In 2015, Marie Chouinard designed CANTIQUE, an application for iPad and iPhone, free from the App Store. Whatever the medium (stage, screen, digital, print, etc.), the crux of the work is always the body.

A true cultural ambassador for Quebec, Marie Chouinard has received several awards and distinctions in recognition of her contribution to the arts, including the Bessie Award (New York, 2000), the Grand Prix du Conseil des arts de Montréal (2006), the title of Officer of the Order of Canada (2007), the title of Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France, 2009), the Denise Pelletier Award (Quebec, 2010), the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec Award for best choreography for The Golden Mean (Live) (2012), the Samuel de Champlain Award (France, 2014), the title of Companion of the Ordre national des arts et des lettres du Québec (2015), the title of Chevalier of the Ordre national du Québec (2015), the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement (Canada, 2016), the Positano “Choreographer of the Year” Award (Italy, 2016) and the Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts (Canada, 2016). The name of Marie Chouinard became a dictionary entry in Le Petit Larousse, illustrated edition, in 2010 and in Le Robert in 2011.

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DANCERS Charles Cardin-Bourbeau completed his training in contemporary dance at The School of Dance in Ottawa.

He performed with the company Ottawa Dance Directive, working with choreographers including Tedd Robinson, Yvonne Coutts, Noam Gagnon and Andrew Turner. He also danced for O Vertigo. He joined Compagnie Marie Chouinard in 2016.

Sébastien Cossette-Masse trained at l’École de danse de Québec in 2011.

He taught at the École de cirque de Québec and danced for Harold Rheaume. Arriving in Montreal, he joined Cas public and continued his training at École supérieure de ballet du Québec. He was with DUSSO danse and Daniel Léveillé danse before joining Compagnie Marie Chouinard in 2014.

Catherine Dagenais-Savard completed her training at l’École de danse contemporaine de Montréal in 2015 and also studied music, singing and musical theatre. She has worked with Mélanie Demers, visual artist Lorraine Albert and the Castel Blast collective. She joined Compagnie Marie Chouinard in 2016.

Valeria Galluccio was born in Napoli, Italy. She studied ballet with Annalisa Cernese. For three years, as part of the Venice Biennale, she danced the works of Ismaël Ivo as main performer before joining Compagnie Marie Chouinard in 2011. In 2015, she was named as best Italian dancer abroad by the magazine Danza & Danza.

Motrya Kozbur is a graduate in contemporary dance from the Boston Conservatory. She worked as a seamstress for costume designer Naomi Luppescu in New York City, and danced for several years with LeeSaar The Company before joining Compagnie Marie Chouinard in 2017.

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Morgane Le Tiec was born in France.

She started out in dance at the Conservatoire de Saint-Maur, entering École de Danse de l’Opéra de Paris and subsequently the Conservatoire national supérieur de danse de Paris. She has performed with La La La Human Steps, the Montalvo-Hervieu Company and the Ballets Jazz de Montréal, joining Compagnie Marie Chouinard in 2015.

Scott McCabe was born in Toronto. He graduated from The Juilliard School in New York City. He has worked with Andrea Miller and Danielle Agami and was a member of Ate9 Dance Company in Los Angeles before joining Compagnie Marie Chouinard in 2015.

Sacha Ouellette-Deguire joined Compagnie Marie Chouinard in 2012.

His previous stage work includes Compagnie Omnibus and Compagnie Korimage. A multi-faceted artist, he studied mime art at Montreal’s École de Mime, as well as in Paris and in London.

Carol Prieur started her career with Winnipeg Contemporary Dancers and has worked with the Fondation JeanPierre Perreault. Grants permitted her to pursue her studies in New York, Europe and India where she was initiated into Kalarypayattu, an Indian martial art form. In 1995, she became a member of Compagnie Marie Chouinard, which has created three solos for her: Humanitas, Étude Poignante, and Mouvements. She received an Award for Best Performance in Marie Chouinard’s film, Cantique no. 1, at the Moving Pictures Festival of Dance on Film and Video Award in Toronto.

Carol was named Dancer of the Year by the magazine TANZ in 2010, and was the first-ever recipient of the Prix de la Danse de Montréal - Interprète in 2014.

Clémentine Schindler trained with l’École supérieure de ballet du Québec and was a member of the Jeune Ballet du Québec. She has danced with Le Carré des Lombes, Sinha Danse, Fleuve Espace Danse and Cas Public. She joined Compagnie Marie Chouinard in 2016.

Ten Things you might not know about Hieronymus Bosch The following text was originally commissioned by anothermag.com (London) in the context of “Jheronimus Bosch - Visions of genius,” a major retrospective of the medieval master presented by Het Noordbrabants Museum in ’s-Hertogenbosch (also known as Den Bosch). Commissioned for the 500th anniversary of his death in 2016, the award-winning exhibit later transferred to Madrid’s Prado Museum, home to Bosch’s most famous surviving painting, “The Garden of Earthly Delights.”

Lucy M. May, Compagnie Marie Chouinard. photo : Sylvie-Ann Paré

Zoom in on any one of the busy scenes that populate the paintings of celebrated Netherlandish artist Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516) and you are likely to encounter the most extraordinary array of creatures, architecture and human interactions you will ever see within a ten-centimetre radius.

From a human-headed, egg-tree hybrid filled with miniature diners to a pair of knife-bearing ears and a man inserting floral bouquets into another’s (willingly offered) backside, Bosch’s endless creativity has the power to ignite even the most dormant imagination, and continues to inspire new generations of creatives 500 years after his death (think Raf Simons’ Christian Dior Haute Couture Collection for A/W15).

In celebration of this landmark anniversary, Het Noordbrabants Museum, in Bosch’s native city, Den Bosch, has compiled an unprecedented exhibition, reuniting the vast majority of his works from galleries and private collections around the globe. This has taken over nine years to achieve, and innumerable hours’ worth of research and restoration by a whole host of experts. The result is a breathtaking display, offering the most comprehensive overview of the enigmatic artist and his sublimely surreal and symbolic oeuvre to date. Here, as the hugely acclaimed show prepares to relocate to the Prado in Madrid, we unearth ten little-known facts about the great artist himself.

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The Garden of Earthly Delights (Detail) c. 1480-1490. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

1 His real name was Jheronimus van Aken, 5 While his strange and wildly imaginative but he signed a number of his paintings Jheronimus Bosch, the latter name referring to his hometown Den Bosch (‘the forest’).

2 His grandfather, Jan van Aken, was a

painter, as was his father and three of his four uncles. Indeed, it is believed that it was one of his uncles who taught him his craft.

3 In 1463, Den Bosch was struck by a

disastrous fire which destroyed 4,000 houses in the small town. The 13-yearold Bosch would presumably have witnessed this, perhaps a contributing factor to his multiple (and masterful) depictions of burning buildings within the backgrounds of a number of his paintings.

4 That Bosch’s paintings are rife with

potent symbolism is unquestionable, but the meaning of his works and their bizarre inhabitants has long been the subject of intense scrutiny and conflicting interpretation.

This is exacerbated by the fact that he left behind no writings or diaries as a means of understanding his artistic intentions.

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creations led some 20th-century art historians to view his work in a heretical light, Bosch was, in fact, a devout Christian, whose ideas were largely founded on the fearful beliefs and superstitions that dominated the western medieval world. In 1488, he was inducted into the Brotherhood of Our Lady, a prestigious, arch-conservative religious group comprising around 40 influential Den Bosch citizens, and seven thousand ‘outer-members’ from around Europe.

6 That’s not to say his art wasn’t radical;

a brief glance at the work of Bosch’s contemporaries shows his work to be utterly unique, his representations of great themes such as temptation, sin and final judgement depicted in an entirely idiosyncratic manner.

His drawings – 19 of which are presented in the show – offer a fascinating insight into the inner-working of his mind, in their plotting of the visual manifestation of the monsters that dominated his nightmares. He treated drawing as a medium in its own right, rather than simply a means of prepping for a painting – another quality that set him apart from the large majority of artists at the time.

7 Bosch was also highly original in his

application of paint; while the majority of late 15th and early 16th-century Netherlandish painters strove for utmost perfection in their renderings in attempt to convey them as more nearly divine creations, Bosch often employed a more sketchy approach, and frequently applied his paint thickly, giving his works a rougher surface than most.

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In around 1481, Bosch married Aleid van de Meervenne, the daughter of a pharmacist. It is likely that his in-laws’ profession inspired the artist in his inclusion of weird and whimsical interpretations of distilling and boiling apparatus in his work (think the glass cylinder, sphere, and beaker-like shapes in the central panel of The Garden of Earthly Delights.)

The Garden of Earthly Delights (Detail) c. 1480-1490. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

9 Bosch’s most eminent commission on record came from Philip the Handsome, Duke of Burgundy, in 1504. It was an altarpiece, standing at nine feet high and 11 feet wide, and depicting the Last Judgment, heaven and hell in three separate scenes. The painting has since been lost but the patronage of such an important figure demonstrates Bosch’s reputation as a master of his craft, as well as a man of great religious standing.

10 Indeed, when Bosch died in 1516 at the age of 66 or thereabouts, the official notices of his death described him as a “very famous painter” and his reputation continued to burn brightly in the years that followed, with many young artists directly referencing hs work.

Most notable among his followers was Pieter Bruegel the Elder, whose early work closely emulates Bosch’s style. By the 17th century, however, Bosch largely fell out of favour, his work widely disregarded by scholars and art lovers alike until the 20th century.

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (fragment), c. 1500–10. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

- Daisy Woodward, April 21, 2016 (reprinted with permission) 7

Canadian Stage’s presentation of Hieronymus Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights has been generously underwritten by the following individuals who have invested in a shared vision to ensure our boldest artistic initiatives come to life.

We applaud and thank them for their extraordinary support!

KEVIN GARLAND GRETCHEN & Donald Ross, O.C. ANONYMOUS

Leon Kupferschmid, Carol Prieur, Morgane Le Tiec, Valeria Galluccio, Paige Culley, Sacha Ouellette-Deguire, Megan Walbaum, Lucy M. May, photo : Nicolas Ruel