Finalists: Marie-Josée Chartier
Muriel Sherrin Award for International Achievement in Dance
Marie-Josée Chartier is a choreographer, performer, director, vocalist, teacher and artistic director of Chartier Danse. As an artist she finds great inspiration in contemporary art forms and believes in bringing contemporary artists of diverse disciplines from the beginning of the creation of a new work to allow the development of layered and integrated work and foster a level of communication that is central in accomplishing a strong artistic vision.
She has created over thirty works that have been presented in dance series and festivals in Canada such as the Canada Dance Festival, Dancing on the Edge, New Dance Horizons, Brian Webb Dance Company, DanceWorks and abroad notably at the Vooruit in Gent, Impuls Tanz in Vienna, la Ménagerie de Verre in Paris, the Substation in Singapore, P.S.122 and Joyce SoHo in New York, Festival Distrital Bogotà, Colombia, Los Talleres in Mexico and Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. She is fascinated by contemporary visual art and has created a cycle of works based on the human figure: seated woman, five seated figures, studies for the human body, study for a crouching figure, figures in stillness and in motion. Ms. Chartier has received numerous choreographic commissions such as Vestige for Toronto Dance Theatre, fifty-one pieces of silver for Dancemakers, Quicksilver for dancer Yvonne Ng, Variations on figures for the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto and the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina, étude pour deux mammifères for Kaeja d'Dance, La Lourdeur des Cendres for Four Chambers dance project, a short voyage and Terrain for dancer Jolene Bailie and How to Wrestle an Angel for Old Men Dancing.
She has received numerous government grants for her work as a performer and choreographer and was the winner of the K.M. Hunter Artist Award in Dance for 2001 and was nominated for 9 Dora Mavor Moore Awards in categories of choreography, direction and performance. She won the 2002 Dora Mavor Moore Award for New Outstanding Choreography for fifty-one pieces of silver and shared with the collective URGE two Dora awards for And by the way Miss…a play for teenage girls produced by Theatre Direct.
In 2003, she created Chartier Danse in order to support her creative activities and collaborative projects such as Screaming Popes a full evening work created in co-production with fabrik Potsdam, Germany, with performances in Potsdam, Toronto, Winnipeg, Québec and Vancouver. Chartier Danse premiered Bas-Reliefs that brought 11 collaborators from Montréal and Toronto to create a full-evening work upon the invitation and co-produced and presented by Danse-Cité and DanceWorks and performed by Chartier and Dan Wild.
Upcoming projects for the seasons from 2009 to 2012 include the creation of a one-woman show for Chartier directed by Ruth Madoc-Jones, co-directing, choreographing and producing Histoires pour enfants pas sages, a multi-disciplinary work for young audiences in collaboration with PPS Danse, directing and choreographing: the opera Les Aventures de Madame Merveille for ECM+, Eugene a music-driven production with composer David Sereda and Home a solo show for dancer Shannon Litzenberger.
Her opera credits include choreography and/or direction for Sirens, Echoes and Love Songs, full evening works produced by Queen of Puddings Music Theatre, Stitch by urbanvessel, Salome Dancer a production for the Open Ears Festival, directing and choreographing Constantinople a music/multi-media work performed by the Gryphon Trio, touring internationally to sold-out audiences. Since 2005, she is resident director for l’Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal staging various music and vocal concerts which all received OPUS music awards nominations. She regularly teaches movement and interpretation as well as staging solos works for classical singers. She is a member of URGE, a collective of women who create works involving music, voice and theatre and of which she is a co-founder and member since 1992.
Her work has been the subject of a 30-minute documentary film in stillness and in motion that has been shown on national television and selected for the Montréal's Festival de Films sur l'Art, as well as Devenir for La passion sans entracte premiering on ARTV in Québec and TFO in Ontario.
Marie-Josée Chartier continues to be in demand as a dancer and her performing career which spans 30 years has taken her on international and national stages as a freelance artist working with more than 25 choreographers and with dance companies including Pointépiénu, Louise Bédard Danse (Urbania Box), Jean-Pierre Perreault (JOE) and for 10 years with Toronto's Dancemakers under the direction of Bill James and Serge Bennathan. She still performs several solo works in Canada, Europe and Latin America.
Ms. Chartier is also active as a guest teacher in major training centres in Canada as well as in Latin America in the field of modern dance, movement for singers and musicians, voice exploration and improvisation. She has been a guest teacher in the following Universities: UQÀM, Ryerson, York, U of Regina, U of Calgary, Grant McEwan and Simon Fraser. Recently, she has been involved in projects as a mentor for upcoming dance artists as well as outside eye/artistic advisor for the projects of established performers and choreographers.
She believes in being involved socially and politically in the artistic community and therefore she has over the years served on several boards, consulted dance associations, participated in many conferences addressing the dancer’s life and volunteered for fifteen years for the formation of the Canadian Alliance of Dance Artists.