• Luminato 2023

Ginelle Chagnon

• Dance

Since 1971, Montreal based dance artist Ginelle Chagnon, has been working professionally at deepening the dance experience. After 10 years of dance studies at Académie des Grands Ballets Canadiens, then performing with this company and later acquiring contemporary dance expertise, she turns her attention towards teaching and the creative process. For many years she assisted choreographers Jean-Pierre Perreault and Paul-André Fortier as well as teach at Concordia University’s Dance Department and in professional training schools in Canada. 

Her sensitive gaze also brought her to collaborate with many other Canadian choreographers in their creative and performance processes. In the ’90s and in collaboration with Agora de la Danse, she creates workshops for non-dancers and later proposes new workshops that use contemporary dance repertoire. This proposition became the participative component of the dance exhibit “Corps Rebelle” in 2015. At Circuit-Est/Choreographic center’s invitation, she collaborated in many international platforms of artistic exchanges as a dance dramaturg, facilitator. During the last thirty years she has taken an active interest in documenting dance, the relationship to archive and the preservation of Quebec’s contemporary dance patrimony. This brought on the virtual exhibit of Jean-Pierre Perreault’s choreographic works in 2010 and the creation of the “choreographic toolbox” for the Foundation of the same name. Always fascinated by the depth of the dance experience, she still accompanies performative projects with dance artists engaged in the same quest and, in parallel, presently works in the archivistic milieu. In 2022, she is awarded the Ethel Bruneau prize at the Prix de la danse de Montréal.