Andrea Peña & Artists

At first, everyone is sitting around, tugging at clothes or jumping around, as if to get the circulation going. Then a single person stands, then another, completely upright. Later, all of them. In anticipation. In readiness. This is the beginning of the show. The dancers now receive and do as they are told. In the three-part 6.58: MANIFESTO by the Canadian choreographer Andrea Peña, it is a variety of announcements or voices and moods to which the dancers submit. And anyone who has ever taken dance lessons knows the “five, six, seven, eight!” command. Whether numbers, tones, beats or waltz tradition, they do the deciding for the seven people on stage. In the process, repetitions, sequences, pairings emerge. No stories. Only the bodies become exhausted. But already they are stretching their arms again, strutting, bending, kneeling.

ANDREA PEÑA, a native of Colombia, worked in Canada as a dancer with Ballet BC and Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal, among others, studied industrial design and founded her own company ANDREA PEÑA & ARTISTS in Montréal in 2014. As someone who lives in two cultures, she is interested in the in-between spaces, she says. She wants to dig into them, “and show on stage the relationship between the known and the unknown”.

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Artistic director: Andrea Peña

Choreography: Andrea Peña in collaboration with the artists

Dance: Erin O’loughlin, Francois Richard, Laura Toma, Veronique Giasson, Gabby Kachan, Benjamin Landsberg, Jean-Benoit Labreque

Soprano: Rebecca Gray

Sound designer: Marc Bartissol alias dull

Stage design: Andrea Peña & Alexis Gosselin

Dramaturgy: Mathieu Leroux

Artistic advisor: Hélène Simard

Lighting designer: Hugo Dalphond, Roxanne Bédard (director)

Technical direction: Hugo Dalphond

Costumes: Polina Boltova, Rodolfo Moraga Visual design: Bobby León

andreapena.net

Co-production: Banff Center for Creativity – Clifford E. Lee Choreography Award 2018 World Premiere Residencies Danse Danse, Arsenal Art Contemporain, Maison de la Culture Claude-Léveillée.

FOCUS CANADA is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada (Embassy of Canada) and the Québec Government Office.