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"Make Way For Magic!"
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Automatism, York University is presenting Make Way for Magic! - Montreal Automatism, 1948 and Onwards, a symposium, exhibition and performance taking place Nov. 13 and 14.
Among the symposium participants will be two Refus global signatories: dancer, choreographer and visual artist FranÁoise Sullivan and painter, broadcaster, and television writer Pierre Gauvreau. Cultural historian and award-winning author Patricia Smart (whose latest book, Les femmes du Refus global, is currently shortlisted for a Governor General's Literary Award) will give the keynote address entitled Automatism, Women and Performance. Other presenters will include dancer and choreographer Jeanne Renaud, composers Christopher Butterfield and R. Murray Schafer, and historians Ginette Michaud, Ramsay Cook and Gilles Lapointe.
With its focus on music and performance, the symposium reflects one of the most distinctive features of Automatism: its wide reach and strong impact on many artists and art forms.
"It revolutionized all the arts it touched," said York English professor Ray Ellenwood, the symposium's organizer.
As Ellenwood points out, Automatism not only produced some of Canada's first and most radical non-figurative art, but also exciting innovations in design and photography, pioneering work in radio and television, experimental poetry, and new forms of music, theatre and dance.
Some of those groundbreaking works will be showcased in a special performance following the symposium on Sat. Nov. 14 at 8 p.m.
The program will feature the first stagings outside Quebec of some of Claude Gauvreau's theatrical pieces. AndrÈe Lachapelle and Marie-France Marcotte from Montreal's ThÈ’tre du Nouveau Monde will present excerpts from Les oranges sont vertes, and the York Theatre Group will perform fully-staged productions, in English translation, of The Beggars' Play and The Bulrushes, from Gauvreau's collection Entrails.
Contemporary musical settings by Christopher Butterfield of Gauvreau's sound poems, Jappements ý la lune, will be performed by vocalist Fides Krucker and the Contemporary Music Ensemble of the University of Toronto conducted by Gary Kulesha.
Other program highlights include the York Dance Ensemble's reconstruction of DualitÈ, a dance choreographed by FranÁoise Sullivan and first performed by her and Jeanne Renaud in 1947. Quebec dancer Ginette Boutin will perform two other early pieces by Sullivan, DÈdale and Black and Tan Fantasy, as well as an extract from a later Sullivan work, En face de moi.
Complementing the symposium and performance will be an exhibition on Automatism comprising photo and text images, posters and programs, a selection of books, and slides and videos documenting the movement and the work of its artists.
Make Way for Magic! - Montreal Automatism, 1948 and Onwards is presented by the Faculty of Fine Arts and takes place in Burton Auditorium, York University, 4700 Keele St. Symposium registration is $35 (students free). Admission to the performance and exhibition is free. For more information, please call 736-5533 or visit www.yorku.ca/faculty/finearts/automatist.
WHEN/WHERE:
An Evening of Automatist Dance, Theatre and Music
Exhibition
For more information, please contact:
Brigitte Kleer
Ken Turriff |
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