PROJECT // concerto
BIOGRAPHY
Charlie Prince (1991) is a Lebanese dance & performance artist. His interests are rooted in the intersection of the political and the poetic body, and the many profound resonances this may create. His trandisciplinary choreographic works been presented in several major festivals and theatres– including Impulstanz SPRING Festival, Dansmakers Amsterdam, Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis , Vancouver International Dance Festival, Oktoberdans, Fabricca Europa and Beirut International Platform of Dance. Charlie holds a Bachelor of Music from McGill University in Montréal with a minor in Religious Studies- and continues to engage as a composer in his artistic practice. In 2023 he was artist in residence at the Villa Empain in Brussels, after having received the Prize for Dance and Performance awarded by the Boghossian Foundation in Belgium. He was also an apap 2020 artist supported by European Union Commision for Culture from 2017-2020.
Olivia Tapiero (1990) is a writer, translator and musician. Her shifting work is crossed by a sense for disintegration, a contempt towards institutions and nationalism, and the exploration of non-consent to the state of the world. She is the author Les murs (Robert-Cliche Award, Prix Senghor finalist), Espaces (2012), Chairs (codirection, 2019), Phototaxie / Phototaxis (2017 / 2021, Lambda Literary Awards finalist), and Rien du tout (2021, Grand Prix du livre de Montréal Finalist, Governor General’s Literary Awards finalist). She is editor-in-chief for the literary magazine Moebius, and has also contributed, with her poems and essays, to magazines such as Spirale, Estuaire, Lettres québécoises, tristesse and Muscle. She has also translated works of contemporary writers such as Roxane Gay, Anne Boyer and Billy-Ray Belcourt. She is slowly seeking to escape the book-form, in order to integrate an embodied and musical practice to her work. She is based in Montreal.
| DETAILS OF THE PROJECT |
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| A body floats through a synthetic landfill beneath a suspended cello. A Mozart piano concerto slows down to the point of disintegration. Incantations are whispered and sung. Traces on a wall generate cavernous sounds of a world succumbing to its own collapse. There is no pianist. Both a gutted concert and a living installation, ‘concerto’ stems from a decade-long intermittent collaboration between writer Olivia Tapiero and choreographer Charlie Prince. The two artists become at once technicians, performers, and witnesses. Their gestures unfold in a suspended time, giving way to a profound meditation on the cost of grace, and what it means to mourn the world as the world mourns itself. |
| Financial Support & Co-production — Canada Arts Council (CA), Charleroi Danse (BE) Studio support: Par B.l.eux (CA), Tangente (CA) Studio 303 (CA) Festival Caniches (CA), Montréal Arts Interculturels (CA), La Villa Empain – Fondation Boghossian (BE) |
