(Laurence Lemieux choreographed and performed a contemporary dance to Bach’s Christ lag in Todesbanden, as part of the TMC’s Sacred Music for a Sacred Space online concert, April 2, 2021. Photo by Jeremy Mimnagh)

How to express and describe human suffering, human loss in the time of the pandemic.
How can one dancer convey the global loss we are experiencing.
How can we even comprehend the scale of this loss?
Perhaps it is in the personal stories, the individual ones that we can understand the scope of this human tragedy.

The music inspired by the death of Christ.
The pain of its mother
The pain of all humanity.

My approach will be of course inspired by the music and its absolute beauty.
It resonates in so many hearts, and resonates with me because of its Christian background, because of my Catholic upbringing.

The starting point is the pain of the mother losing a child.
It is a universal pain.

The dance will aim to express in a simple setting, an empty room, the loss. The absence.
The “coming to terms with”

If music and dance are able to elevate the soul, to make us feel part of the bigger universe,
I truly hope to be able to pay homage to this, and in doing so actively participate in our global healing.

 

Laurence Lemieux
Artistic Director, Citadel + Compagnie