Where is the Love?

Over the last century dance has traveled from continent to continent, shifting its focal points of creativity and intensity. Historically, the fluctuating cartography situates long traditions in Berlin, Paris, and London. In the mid-1980s rejuvenation occurred in places like Brussels, Ljubljana, Barcelona, and Montéal.

Guy Cools, the former dance programmer and artistic coordinator at the Vooruit Arts Centre in Ghent, who was named artistic director of Mon­tréal’s Fondation Jean-Pierre Perreault in its final days, takes the view that artistic identities, indivi­dual qualities and geographic content are linked. “There were new territories – where a group of individuals, and dialectics between them, started to be powerful.”
Montréal rose up as a key centre of dance invention, Cools speaks of a generation of choreographers, led by someone like Paul-André Fortier, “who didn’t necessarily have international recognition, but who influenced a generation.” In fact, there was a diversity of voices within Montréal’s ranks, including artists ranging from Fortier and Perreault, to Édouard Lock, Marie Chouinard and Ginette Laurin. Equally important, the dance community managed to organize itself ...