Montreal's Festival International de Nouvelle Danse Explores Process Over Product

The 10th edition of the Festival International de Nouvelle Danse, titled 'Le Grand Labo' and curated by Chantal Pontbriand, editor-in-chief of Parachute magazine, ran from September 19 to October 6, 2001, across multiple venues in Montreal. The festival highlighted a shift from finished artworks to process, experience, and labor, echoing 1960s-70s US practices. Key performances included works by young European choreographers Boris Charmatz, Jérôme Bel, Xavier Le Roy, Vera Mantero, and Christine de Smet, with a carte blanche given to Canadian Benoît Lachambre. Lachambre and Andrew de L. Harwood presented 'Not to Know,' an improvisational program that exemplified a contemporary, deceptive approach to dance. The festival featured about thirty companies, exposing a growing divide between emerging, perception-driven dance and more spectacular Canadian productions. Critic Laurent Goumarre praised the former while critiquing Marie Chouinard's '24 Préludes de Chopin' as showy, Jean-Pierre Perreault's installation-framed work as aesthetically conventional, and Manon Oligny's choreographic act as abandoning the body. The festival's success lay in reaffirming that dance must reclaim thinking bodies.