Ephemeron

Ephemeron plays with the seemingly opposing notions of performance and media as transitory experiences, and the idea of a timeless event inside a short-lived moment.  In doing this Ephemeron explores new relationships between sound, image, the body, and text.

Since the invention of the printing press in late medieval times the influence of written text has been continually integrated into more intimate moments of daily life. In contemporary times smartphones have rendered images, sound, and text increasingly transitory.  Ephemeron adjusts common perceptions of the relationships between text, sound, image, and the body by relocating them from where they would normally occur in daily life. Ephemeron evokes a paradigm where images hold their own power beyond symbolism, or representationalism, where the human body is not a tool used to represent the power of church or state, but an entity with its own autonomy, where sound becomes object, and where text becomes image.

Montréal Choreographer GEORGE STAMOS is known for his hybrid practice of fusing of dance with performance art, and other media. He is a graduate of Amsterdam’s School For New Dance Development, a leading academy in the world of contemporary dance research. Throughout his career he has continued to pursue the development of dance as both a physical and intellectual practice in research and creative process.

George has also regularly been a guest artist performing in the work of other prominent choreographers (Benoit Lachambre, Sara Shelton Mann, and Zab Maboungou to name a few), and has taught numerous professional workshops in technique, improvisation, and creative process across Canada.

In 2012 George was selected to be a resident choreographer at L’Agora de la Danse, he was a faculty member at The Contemporary Dance Department of Concordia University in Montréal, and received the prestigious Northrop McKnight Fellowship for International Choreographers Award from the University of Minnesota to pursue his choreographic research in 2013.

Jackie Gallant is a musician and performer who composes, improvises and performs for dance, video and film. She began her musical career as a drummer for several Montreal rock groups. Since then she’s toured internationally playing drums and percussion with everyone from La La La Human Steps to Lesbians on Ecstasy and has also created music and sound design for several filmmakers, video artists and choreographers. Ephemeron marks her fifth collaboration with Stamos. As a solo artist, she creates sound pieces and performs sample based improvised work using electronic drums and other instrumentation.

Performance and Choreography: George Stamos
Art Direction: George Stamos
Live Music: Jackie Gallant
Costume: George Stamos
Sound Direction: Jackie Gallant

Opening act: Masked Explorations
by Elise Legrand

ELISE LEGRAND is a dancer and choreographer from Sherbrooke, trained at the Conservatoire de Danse de Montréal.