MAMA is a short film adaptation of Icône Pop, the celebrated work by Montreal based company MAYDAY. Icône Pop is a work where religious and pop iconographies - the sacred and the profane - collide. Originally conceived and performed as a solo by Montreal based choreographer Mélanie Demers, over lockdown the work was recreated as a choreography for camera, performed by others. Featuring dancers Chi Long, Stacey Désilier, Marc Boivin and directed by Xavier Curnillon.

Mélanie will present the premiere of the film and speak about the wider context and themes of Icône Pop.

ABOUT ICÔNE POP

Inspired by the religious postures of the Pietà and the blazing colours of the voodoo divinity Erzulie, Icône Pop flirts with the subversive image of the Black Virgin, alongside pop culture imagery, in a slippery terrain between saintly glorification and self-glorification.

Singer-composer Mykalle Bielinski calls upon the music of Dvorák, while choreographer performer Mélanie Demers combines the auras of both the Virgin Mary and Beyoncé. Together, they invent a kind of Barbie doll under the influence: both divine and throw-away.

A multidisciplinary artist, Mélanie Demers founded in Montreal her own dance company, MAYDAY, in 2007, exploring the powerful link between the poetical and the political. Les Angles Morts (2006), Sense of Self (2008), Junkyard/ Paradise (2010) and Goodbye (2012) have all been created from this perspective.  With MAYDAY remix (2014), she deepened her engagement with cross-genre works and hybrid forms. Her fascination with the interplay between word and gesture crystallized with WOULD (2015), which won the CALQ Prize for best choreography. In 2016, Mélanie Demers began a new creation cycle with Animal Triste and Icône Pop; both works are touring internationally. In 2017, Mélanie Demers was invited to work as a guest choreographer at the Skånes Dansteater in Malmö (Sweden) for the creation of Something About Wilderness. Now that Danse Mutante has hit the stage, she is focusing on her next project, The Goddam Milky Way, which will launch in 2021. To date, she choreographed over thirty works and was presented across Europe, America, Africa and Asia. 

For many years, Xavier Curnillon has collaborated with Mélanie Demers, notably with the project 'Danse mutante' which took them to the four corners of the world. Xavier Curnillon is a director and visual artist who specializes in capturing movement. Trained at the Paris Film Conservatory, he has worked for the last 10 years as a director and editor with dancers and choreographers in North America and Europe on a number of video projects. His films have been screened at many festivals. His last documentary, 7 PERSPECTIVES was selected at the International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) 2021.

MAYDAY chooses to be a place of exchange and reflection, a sort of artistic think tank, for the artists working with Mélanie Demers. They come from various spheres, some from Montreal, home base of the company, others from around the world. Their personalities are both dazzling and eclectic. Here, the maturation of the work is a collective process. The physicality, rhythm and images used in the choreographies are characteristic elements of MAYDAY’s works, which find their meaning when encountering with the public. MAYDAY uses the stage as a platform to examine the role of the artist and uses the theatre as a space to meditate on the fate of the world and individuals. Its works, unquestionably committed, are simultaneous distress signals and an invitation to change. Mélanie Demers received the Prix du CALQ pour la meilleure oeuvre chorégraphique de la saison 2014-2015 for WOULD and the Buddies in Bad Times Vanguard Award for Risk and Innovation for Icône Pop in 2017. Since its creation in 2007, the company has developed international collaborations and was already presented in America, Europe, Asia and Africa.
maydaydanse.ca

Concept, choreography and direction: Mélanie Demers
Performers: Marc Boivin, Stacey Désilier, Chi Long
Filmmaker: Xavier Curnillon
Photography: Yann Manuel Hernandez
Editing: Xavier Curnillon
Music: Mykalle Bielinski
Costumes: Mélanie Demers
Rehearsal director: Anne-Marie Jourdenais
Production director: Mélanie Primeau
Technical director: Julien Veronneau
Sound recording: Sylvain Courcelles
Subtitling: Studio Sonogram

Icône Pop is a co-production with Operaestate Festival - Comune di Bassano del Grappa. The project is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Conseil des arts de Montréal. Co-commissioned by Take Me Somewhere with funding from the Québec Government Office, London.

Part of our Québec Focus, several digital works presented with funding & support from the Québec Government Office, London.

MAYDAY is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Conseil des  Arts de Montréal. Member of Circuit-Est centre chorégraphique and Art Circulation. Associate company at the Agora de la danse. In artistic collaboration with the Centro per la Scena Contemporanea/Operaestate Festival.