Contributor
Helen Simard is a Montréal-based choreographer, rehearsal director, and dance researcher. After working with Solid State Breakdance for twelve years, an artist collective that combined street and contemporary dance, she switched gears in 2012 to lead her own artistic projects. Her current choreographic research explores the codes and aesthetics of rock music, creating lively, interactive, performances that challenge the conventions of stage dance forms: her most recent work, REQUIEM POP, premiered at Agora de la danse in April 2019. She is currently writing her first play, when your baby dies. Helen holds a BFA (2000) and MA (2014) in contemporary dance.
Helen Simard's Work
Repetition is a Form of Change
Andrea Peña’s Untitled I + III By Helen SimardIn her latest work, choreographer Andrea Peña uses “sameness,” or repetition, as a catalyst for change, highlighting the transformative nature of the body as it oscillates between a site of resilience and vulnerability.
Posted November 12, 2019Organic Mechanics
By Helen Simard Volume 22, Issue 6Emmanuelle Lê Phan and Elon Höglund have a contagious, fast-paced energy and have always approached their art with a fierce passion. As co-founders of Tentacle Tribe, the Montréal-based pair have had a long creative partnership. They talk candidly about their work together and what’s next.
In the Cypher
Three street-to-stage performances in Montréal By Helen Simard2019 might be the year that the Montréal stage dance community finally catches on to what’s going on in our city’s street dance scene.
Posted March 1, 2019Dancing in Domestic Spaces
By Helen Simard Volume 21, Issue 1Traditional black box theatres allow audiences and performers anonymity from each other. How does domestic performance put these relationships at the forefront of the work?
Moving Forward, Looking Back
By Carol Anderson, Kate Stashko, Helen Simard Volume 20, Issue 4A special three-part feature on dance in Canada
Slippery Identities
By Helen Simard Make Banana CryIn their new work, Make Banana Cry, Andrew Tay and Stephen Thompson tease and out the tensions between identities and stereotypes in the layers and performance of Asian-ness in western society.
Posted April 19, 2017In the Shadows
By Helen Simard Volume 20, Issue 1They work under many titles, but rehearsal directors and dance dramaturges provide essential support to the creative, technical and administrative work of choreographers and dance artists. Four practitioners who have worked in this position discuss how they understand their role and what they bring to the creative process.
Moving Bodies
How does the centrality of bodily experience affect interdisciplinarity in dance? By Helen SimardIt is perhaps the presence of the body – and a desire to express one’s self through and from the body – that continues to define dance as an art form.
Posted October 26, 2016
Moving Beyond the Pas-de-Deux
Four Montréal-based dance artists discuss gender in contemporary dance By Helen SimardHelen Simard discusses issues of gender in contemporary dance with four Montréal-based dance artists.
Posted August 15, 2016
