BIOGRAPHY

Marie Béland is a dance artist based in Montreal, Canada. She graduated from the University of Québec in Montreal (UQAM), where she received the William Douglas Award of Excellence as a student in dance creation. In 2005, she founded her company, maribé - sors de ce corps and created maribé – live in Montréal during a summer residency at Studio 303, and then Twis-manivelle, a work for youth audiences for which she received a grant from the Montreal Mayor's Foundation for Youth. Twis-manivelle was declared one of the top 5 dance performances of 2005 by ICI magazine and was performed more than 30 times. Her latest work, Dieu ne t'a pas créé juste pour danser, was presented at Tangente in October 2008 and toured the Maisons de la Culture (a system of neighbourhood theatres) in Montreal during the 2009-2010 season, thanks to the Montreal Arts Council. Supported by the Quebec Arts Council among others granting bodies, the piece has been well received by critics and many of the shows were sold-out. Parallel to her work on stage, Marie Béland is interested in site-specific performance, multidisciplinary work and teaching. Her first site-specific piece, Espace Vert, was created in 2006 and was presented as part of The Art (pronounced dehors) , an outdoor event produced by La 2e Porte à Gauche. In 2008, she was commissioned by the Théâtre de Verdure to create Les Précédents, an architectural choreography presented in the Lafontaine Park during the summer of 2008 and was brought back in 2009.

Marie Béland is a founding member of La 2e Porte à Gauche, an organization that creates and produces contemporary dance events which take place outside of traditional dance venues, in places such as apartments, stores, bars, parks, and which aim to question different relationships between artists and their audiences. Most notably L2PAG has produced: projet Vitrines, The Art (pronounced dehors), 7 ½ à part., and Blind Date : un rendez-vous chorégraphique. Their most recent project, Te situes-tu dans l'in situ ?, was presented by Tangente as part of the 2009 Montreal High Lights Festival. In 2009 she also founded the collective Le P.I.Q.U.A.N.T. (Le Projet Indisciplinaire Québécois Utilisant les Arts Nécessaires à son Travail) with two musician colleagues. Their first collaboration won the award for the “Best Francophone Show of the Year” at the Fringe Festival 2009. In 2011 it will be presented again at the USINE C in Montreal. Lastly, Marie creates and performs the choreographies that accompany concerts of the electro-yéyé band Les Handclaps.

Through the entirety of her work, Marie hopes to share her questions and preoccupations about the phenomenon of dance with her spectators. Her choreographic world links physical virtuosity, theatricality, and absurd humor. It's characterized by a deep reflection on the medium of dance and its relation to the public. She tries to engage her audiences as often as possible and places them at the heart of her work. Company maribé - sors de ce corps is a member of Circuit-Est Choreographic Center and is administrated by Claire Piétin, Diagramme Gestion culturelle.

For more details about La 2e Porte à Gauche, visit www.la2eporteagauche.ca.