Ellen Furey | Lay Hold to the Softest Throat
Lay Hold to the Softest Throat is an interdisciplinary project which seeks to explore – through a contemporary dance process – an aesthetic relationship between vocal composition, and choreographic structure. This work will focus on drawing connection between non-essentialist ideas of Holy-ness, femininity, and physical discipline and the different and contradicting ways that these concepts show up in the three performers’ respective artistic and personal lives. The final production will premiere at Theatre La Chapelle (Montreal) in Fall-Winter 2021/22.
Ellen Furey is a choreographer based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, working in experimental and contemporary dance forms. Since 2012, she’s been involved in collaborative and messy discursive processes mostly re-purposing ideas/potentials of dance virtuosities and performer type showmanships as grounds for living, bodily, oblique rebellion, and debate. One of her interests in collaboration and choreography at the moment is an attempt to unset her own learned notions of legibility, and unsound (unjust) assertions to personal comfort. Another interest is creating situations where multiple and contradicting perspectives can be in motion, unresolved, together. Ellen’s work has been presented in France, UK, USA, and Canada. She’s been working with, for, and alongside independent artists including Malik Nashad Sharpe, Dana Michel, Andrew Tay, Christopher Willes, Stephen Thompson, Simon Portigal, and many others. She’s appeared in works by Daniel Léveillé Danse, Frédérick Gravel, Marten Spangberg (SE), Tina Tarpgaard (DE), and Susanna Hood. From 2012-15, she was a company member at Dancemakers (est. 1979 Toronto, CA) under the direction of Michael Trent, Benjamin Kamino, Amelia Ehrhardt. Most recently, in co-creation with prolific choreographer, Malik Nashad Sharpe (UK, USA), they premiered their first full length work together titled SOFTLAMP.autonomies in April 2018. SOFTLAMP.autonomies had its American premiere in January 2019 at American Realness Festival.
Credits
Choreographer and performer: Ellen Furey
Singers and performers: Alanna Stuart et Romy Lightman
Dramaturgy and composition: Christopher Willes