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Ballets Jazz Montréal
Currently celebrating their 50th Anniversary, Ballets Jazz Montréal is an internationally renowned repertory company that embodies excellence, innovation, and above all passion. With Alexandra Damiani as Artistic Director since the spring of 2021 and its troupe of of high calibre dancers from around the world, the company continues to pursue its original mission while collaborating with celebrated contemporary dance choreographers that push boundaries and explore new ways of moving and expressing emotion. Ballets Jazz Montréal is one of the most prolific dance companies in Canada and a major force on the Montréal cultural scene.
Their highly acclaimed full evening work Dance Me was originally conceived to celebrate the city of Montréal’s 375th Anniversary and is “a feast for the eyes and a delight to listen” (Huffington Post). Created from the timeless music and words of Leonard Cohen, the piece was approved by the Montréal-based poet, artist, and songwriter during his lifetime. The experience combines choreography, music, lighting, visual design, and videography in a riveting homage to the famed artist exploring “the grand cycles of existence” through Cohen’s beloved songs.
Ballets Jazz Montreal's new work is a creation by Jo Stromgren, master of contrasts and tender tears. In this fragmented fresco, thirteen performers cross the shadows of the end of life to celebrate the light of the encounters that shape us. On stage, a community weaves, unravels and reunites. Under the watchful eye of a sensitive ghost, gestures become memories in suspension, a surge that tells of love, friendship, loss, and the silences that say it all. In voice and body, everything wavers, everything vibrates, celebration embraces melancholy, nostalgia flirts with the urgency to live, goodbyes are thundering with renewal. The scenes follow one another in music imbued with symbolism, like so many heartbeats: intimate, spirited, dizzying. The Final Review is a sea of light, a cathartic tribute to what which survives oblivion. A troubling, visceral journey, where dance becomes a refuge, a ritual, a resistance, a final and uncompromising joy.
To date, Ballets Jazz Montréal has presented over 2,600 performances in 68 countries, reaching nearly 3 million total audience members, making it a true ambassador of Canadian dance and artistic vitality acoss the globe.
"Dance Me is a hymn to life, to love, to joy, to sadness, to humanity and for which Leonard Cohen had given his approval. He should have no regrets about this decision which, in addition to being a tribute to his career, is also a beautiful legacy that he has left us."
- Les ARTz Review for Leonard Cohen's Dance Me
“Dance Me: Leonard Cohen's art and soul shine on in this stirring tribute."
-The Telegraph's Review for Leonard Cohen's Dance Me
“The work opens with a mesmerizing slow-motion play of light and shadow on two bodies in
sculptural flux, connecting and disconnecting, limbs entwining, long lines softening into curves
and spirals.”- Boston Globe Review for Leonard Cohen's Dance Me
