biographies
Clara Furey: After musical training at Conservatoire de Paris, Clara Furey launched her career as a singer-songwriter, later trained as a dancer at the EDCM. In 2017, Furey created her first solo work as artistic director with Cosmic Love and performed When Even The at the MAC Montréal. She is also the choreographer of Rather a Ditch (2019). With Dog Rising, Furey concludes her exploration of tension and immobility, freeing previously contained energies in a performance focusing on persistence, groove and pleasure. She insists on the repetition of infinite loops through an extreme physical journey, a mesmerizing, haunting, penetrating spiral.
Be Heintzman Hope: Moving between sound and performance, Be Heintzman Hope is a facilitator of music, dance and embodiment ritual based between Tio’tia:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal and the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəyəm, Sḵwxwú7mesh and səlílwətaʔɬ peoples. Their practice bridges dance training with conflict resolution, healing, community arts. They hold workshops offering meditation, singing, dance as medicines to those on the front lines of their healing journeys. Their studies in eroticism, energetic boundaries, meditation, medicine, trauma, healing, illness, death are at the foundation of their practice. A larger part of this work is a quest to cocreate alternative economies and community-based structures of radical tenderness, care.
Brian Mendez: Originally from and living in Montreal, Brian Mendez has always had an interest in the art of dance and it was first in urban dance that he began his training. At 20, he attended the Urban-Element Zone dance studio where he took classes in Hip-hop, Waacking, Dancehall, before beginning a little later his training at the EDCM. It was during his studies that Brian discovered Voguing. This dance becomes for him a form of expression that brings together an entire community. Brian continues his education on Voguing and its culture in order to share it in Montreal.
Baco Lepage-Acosta is a trans/non-binary multidisciplinary homebody that occasionaly comes out to play. The years spent busking from coast to coast, juggling clubs, standing on one foot, on a ball with a water bottle on their head eventually lead them to the journey of the Quebec circus school, where they graduated in 2019. Their main inspirations to date are: the fleuve, snuggles, ice cream, dogs and puppycats (in no particular order). They take joy in learning, jokes, relaxing, curiosity, honesty and friendship.
Tomas Furey studied classical piano at the Conservatoire à rayonnement régional de Paris, as well as electroacoustic composition at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal. Since then, he has composed music for contemporary dance (Dave St-Pierre, Benoît Lachambre, George Stamos, Clara Furey, Eric Arnal Burtschy), theater (Jérémie Niel, Louis Maufette), film (Carole Laure) and publicity. His first EP was published in 2015. He is currently on tour with Cosmic Love, Clara Furey’s piece and is working on the MCC composition for Moment Factory.
Karine Gauthier: Introduced to visual art and performance at a very young age, Karine Gauthier developed her passion for light very quickly. She has collaborated on several projects, in different countries (Barcelona, Chicago, Helsinki, Mexico City, New York, Oslo, Paris, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Stockholm, Tokyo, Vienna…). She has designed lighting for many artists. She also navigates between circus arts and music. In addition, she has provided technical direction for several dance companies in Montreal. After 20 years of career, Karine Gauthier is still as passionate about this luminous path.