The role of artists is very clear: they must open a workshop and take in and repair the world, by fragments, as it comes to them.”
-Francis Ponge
Paul-André Fortier
Oana Suteu Khintirian, Director
René Chénier, Producer
Oana Suteu Khintirian studied film production at Concordia University. Since graduating, she has worked as a director and editor, with a strong interest in documentaries, art films and dance. She has won a Prix Italia and awards at Montreal’s International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) and Toronto’s Moving Pictures Festival of Dance on Film and Video, and has been nominated by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television for several directing and editing awards.
Paul-André Fortier
2012 Lifetime Artistic Achievement (Dance)
Dancer, choreographer, teacher and artistic director
Dancer and choreographer Paul-André Fortier is internationally renowned for dance that is marked by innovation, renewal, and a desire to defy convention. In a career spanning over three decades he has created 49 original works, given more than 750 performances in a dozen countries, and received numerous awards. Constantly challenging himself to meet the highest artistic standards, he has dedicated his professional life to contemporary dance at an unparalleled level of excellence and has inspired an entire generation of choreographers. Describing himself simply as “a man who dances,” he continues to perform all over the world and to create works for his own company and other ensembles and artists in Canada and abroad.
Born in 1948 in Waterville, Quebec, Mr. Fortier entered the world of dance in 1973 as a member of Le Groupe Nouvelle Aire, one of the most innovative choreographic companies in Canada at the time. In 1981 he established his own company, Fortier Danse-Création. He also co-founded (with Daniel Jackson) Montréal Danse in 1986, and taught dance at UQÁM for 10 years.
As one of the founders of the powerful contemporary dance movement that originated in Montreal, he pioneered a form of dance that blends theatrical elements with the tensions and ambiguities of the modern world. He has frequently collaborated with other leading artists, including dancer Peggy Baker, multimedia artist Betty Goodwin, writer, musician and visual artist Rober Racine, composer Alain Thibault, videographers Patrick Masbourian and Takao Minami, and composer and violin virtuoso Malcolm Goldstein.
In the late 1980s he embarked on a solo adventure with a trilogy of landmark pieces: Les Males Heures, 1989; La Tentation de la transparence, 1991; and Bras de plomb, 1993. His most recent solo is Solo 30x30, a 30 minute piece presented outdoors in urban spaces at the same time every day for 30 consecutive days. Since its premiere in 2006, Mr. Fortier has performed the work more than 420 times in 14 cities in North America, Europe and Asia, in highly diverse venues and under a wide variety of weather conditions.
Awards and honours include the Jean A. Chalmers Award for Choreography (1981); Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Choreography (1993, for La Tentation de la transparence); Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la France (2009).