In an intimate open-studio visit, we invite you to take a behind-the-scenes look at the early stages of research for a new RUBBERBANDance Group work, on May 18, 8.00pm, at the Segal Centre for the Arts. Free passes can be reserved online on the Segal Centre website and by telephone (514-739-7944), or can be obtained at the door.

We are pleased to be able to return to Europe this spring for several performances of Gravity of Center in the U.K. We are eagerly awaiting our first appearance in Southbank, London.

April 25 and 26 – Patrick Centre, Birmingham (U.K. premiere)

May 2 and 3 – Southbank Centre, London

This summer, Victor Quijada and the other company members have again been invited to teach at Domaine Forget, from June 30 to July 13, 2013. A few spots are still available; the registration link is: http://domaineforget.com/1/stages/danse. Don’t wait too long!

From June 3 to 7, 2013, Anne Plamondon will participate in Montreal’s annual contemporary dance workshop, TransFormation, where she will teach the basics of the RUBBERBAND Method. To register: http://transformationdanse.com/stage-2013/inscription/

In addition, Victor Quijada will teach the RUBBERBAND Method, which he created, from June 10 to 28 at Springboard Montreal.

On March 11, the company entered the studio for a short creation period. Our new work, quotient empirique, will be presented at Place des Arts de Montréal from November 20 to December 7, 2013, as part of the upcoming Danse Danse season. It is a great pleasure and a source of immense pride for us to be in the Danse Danse program once again.

We are proud to announce that the short film Gravity of Center won two awards in the Prends ça court! category of the 31st Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois. These were the Les Enfants Prize and Air Canada’s Quebec Gold Prize; passengers will be able to screen the film on all Air Canada flights during the next six months.

The short film Gravity of Center continues to be presented at festivals. After showing at Dance On Camera in New York City at the end of January, it was included in the Diagonals/Dance section (Media Arts) of Montreal’s International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) in March, and at REGARD, the short film festival in the Saguenay region.

On Sunday, March 3, after holding a workshop with the dance students of Cégep de Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, we gave a matinee presentation of Gravity of Center at Théâtre des Deux Rives in Saint-Jean, with over 550 spectators enthusiastically applauding the show.

The company then flew to Los Angeles for a March 9th performance of the same work at the Luckman Fine Arts Center. Victor Quijada took advantage of his presence in L.A. to share his experiences with students at his former high school.

The team is back in Montreal, fresh from our recent tour of Western Canada. In all, we gave eleven performances in six cities, along with ten audience development activities. Our welcome was even warmer than we hoped, and the tour ended with five sold-out shows in Vancouver.

The links below offer a Radio-Canada television interview with Victor Quijada on the occasion of the presentation of Gravity of Center at The Cultch in Vancouver: http://www.radio-canada.ca/widgets/mediaconsole/medianet/6601963#

and the review in the Vancouver Sun: http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/Rubberbandance+stretches+dance+styles+from+street+concert+hall/7995396/story.html

It is on the 3rd of December 2012 at Place des Arts that RUBBERBANDance Group hosted a 5 à 7 to thank the many collaborators and partners of the company over the last 10 years. Here is what our Co-artistic Directors had to say:

From Victor Quijada:

It was actually before I relocated to Montreal that I was already itching
to choreograph. I remember back in 1999, Manhattan’s New Dance Group was offering a space residency; you apply by audition, so I showed a work in progress.

Now the application asked: “what are you hoping to accomplish with your
work?” Obviously it was asking about this specific work I was
auditioning…

But with this large vision I had for the potential of urban & contemporary
forms I wrote: “I am hoping to create a new contemporary dance form!”

Well, after I showed the piece, the Artistic Director is sitting behind
this big table holding my application form says to me, “it says here
that you want to create a new contemporary dance form… Well, I didn’t
see that…”

Crushed, but not destroyed – I said, “well, just give me some time.”

And he did. Not much time really. Twenty hours. Two hours a day for two
weeks. But it meant the entire world to me.

And a year later, in April 2000, just a couple months before moving to
Montreal,I would make my professional choreographic debut at the “Joyce SoHo Presents…”

Within days of arriving in Montreal I would slowly make a place for myself
in the hip hop community. Months later I was sharing work through the
Vernissage-Danse series at 303 and the Ateliers chorégraphiques of Les
Grands Ballets. In the following year, important platforms like Espace
Tangente and the MAI would help the company to jump forward by leaps and bounds.

Sometimes hard work, perseverance, and a vision – just isn’t enough. It is
most definitely a good base, a very good foundation for any entrepreneur or business venture to begin with.

But sometimes you simply cannot move forward, unless you have some help; Sometimes it takes having special people around you, that will believe in you and will give you a chance.

That is what this event is all about. We are giving thanks and celebrating
the collaborative efforts that have achieved so much. Everyone here has
been a part of that journey, in a big or small way.

If you are a presenter, then you are in that privileged position to find
talent, to believe in that talent, and to give that talent an opportunity
to shine. To those early believers, Miriam Ginestier, Dena Davida, Yves
Sheriff, Danielle De Fontenay, your support symbolized our potential.

To Michel Gagnon and his wonderful team at Place des Arts our cherished collaborators for the past 5 years, and to Clothilde Cardinal and Pierre des Marais at Danse Danse, we are so proud of what we’ve been able to develop together through these relationships.

If you are a cultural agent or in development, then you have an interest
in seeing and helping an artist navigate from emerging to an established
status; and seeing that actually happen must be an incredibly rewarding
experience. I’d like to specifically thank Lyne Lanthier and Stéphane La
Roche at CALQ, Anne Valois and William Lau at CAC.

If you are a dancer, then what you have invested is not only time and
sweat in the studio, but also that precious belief in this particular vision, and in this process. For those original members that are here tonight,
Jayko Eloï, Joe Danny Aurelien, Jacobs Osakue, Matt “Hatch” Morein, and of course Anne Plamondon. I thank you. there have been many others! Including my current team of all stars, Emmanuelle Lê Phan, Daniel Mayo and Elon Höglund.

To the artistic collaborators: the designers, the film makers and creators, I am grateful that universe brought us together, put us in the right place at the right time, and allowed us to grow together: Yan Lee Chan, Jasper Gahunia, René-Pierre Bélanger, Julie Charland, Thibaut Duverneix. Thank you for sharing your talents with me.

And there are so may others: our board members, Benoit Labbé, Nicole
Doucet, and Pierre Leroux, and our mentors, those at the Arts Councils, our peers and colleagues who have been there for us, looked out for us, cheered for us.

In whichever role you’ve played, tonight I take the opportunity to thank
you all on behalf of myself, Anne and the company, and to celebrate what your efforts have helped us to accomplish.

We are very proud that we are able to put RUBBERBANDance Group out there nationally, and internationally to represent not only Montreal, Quebec, and Canada, but all of these collective efforts that have been part of this spectacular journey.

From Anne Plamondon:

When I met Victor in 2002, I was immediately won over by the freshness and authenticity of his artistic aspirations. In the unlikely encounter between urban and contemporary dance, dancers of surprisingly diverse backgrounds have converged around him.

I remember the days when we worked in a kung-fu studio on the corner of St-Laurent Boulevard and Ontario Street. We’d walk down St-Laurent lugging a ghetto blaster and we practised our moves in the ring. To reward us after rehearsals, Victor would make tacos. That was our payback – that, and a strong sense of belonging.

Our training also took place in clubs and in cyphers. This was how I learned an important lesson: never lose sight of what you want to say in your dance. For those unfamiliar with the cypher, it is a circle, an impromptu performance that springs up anywhere, at any time. Each in turn, the participants go inside the circle to express themselves, challenge or “battle” another person, or just explore. There is always a high level of tension. When you go into the middle, you do what you have to do, giving it all you’ve got, because others are impatiently awaiting their turn. They want to respond to you, or simply affirm their presence – affirm that they exist. The cypher is a visceral experience that exposes you to danger.

For me, arriving by a completely different path, the cypher was a reminder of the importance of the creative instinct in its raw state. The main purpose of taking part in a cypher is to appropriate a space where you can assert your identity, make a statement of who you are.

It is partly in this spirit that RUBBERBANDance Group has brought together dancers, artistic collaborators, and varied kinds of audiences over the last ten years. Taking risks may be intimidating, but often, we grow by doing just that.

Our deepest wish for the unique creature that is RUBBERBANDance Group – this hybrid – is for it to continue broadening our concept of what dance should be.

Obviously, this kind of exploratory vehicle cannot exist without the support of many individuals and organizations. It is a privilege to evolve in a milieu that is so open to research and to the flowering of a distinct and original artistic identity.

Thank you.